Forrest M. Ayers was a Portland homebuilding veteran, who worked as a carpenter for other homebuilders in the early 1900s and then went out on his own as an independent homebuilding contractor about 1907.

Forrest Minard Ayers was born in Fillmore, New York in 1882 and came to Portland in 1901. He and Pearl Fields were married in Portland in 1905. In the 1930s, the couple was living in a duplex at 2402 NE Oregon, just north of Sandy Boulevard. The Ayers had two children: Marion Robert and Harold W.

Ayers was a versatile builder, working from existing universal plan sets used by most Portland builders at the time. His earliest homes between 1907-1923 were mostly Craftsman-style bungalows. He also experimented with Mediterranean-style designs in the mid 1920s and later favored the Tudor revival and English cottage style that was so popular in Portland from the late 1920s into the 1940s.

A partial list of homes built by Ayers includes:

3809 NE 25th	June 1940
2745 NE 32nd	September 1930
3011 NE Thompson	January 1927
127 NE Cesar Chavez Blvd.	July 1926
2414 NE 25th	June 1923
2642 NE 43rd	July 1915
2810 NE 24th	June 1915
1815 SE 34th	1909
3736 SE Clay	1907

Ayers died in 1944 at age 62 and is buried at Riverview Cemetery. Pearl later moved to Seattle to be near their son and lived to the age of 102, passing in April 1985.