Nils Ossian Eklund immigrated to the US in 1902 from Ostervala, Sweden. Born there on August 14, 1885, Eklund traveled in steerage from Liverpool to Boston and then by train to Portland at age 17 to live with his uncle and with his older sister. Following a string of manual labor jobs in Portland, he worked for several years as a receiving clerk for the W.P. Fuller Company, a painting supply company. During that time, he met Swedish immigrant Signe Augusta Andersson, and the couple saved money so Nils could build their first house.

Not long after moving in, the couple received an offer to buy the house, which gave rise to Eklund’s building and real estate speculation career. From those first profits, he began to buy property in Rose City Park. In 1909 he launched the N.O. Eklund and Company, specializing as a “contracting architect,” though like many of his peers at his time, he was never a trained or licensed architect. Early advertisements noted that Eklund would “gladly provide artistic sketches of houses,” which he would then build for clients. Signe and Nils married on May 28, 1910 while he was building (and then selling) a house on NE 48th Avenue. By then the couple was expecting their first child and had begun construction of a home and office they would own for most of the rest of their lives at 6025 NE Sandy Blvd. In 1926, Eklund built the home at 3044 NE 60th, where the family lived and where he was living when he died in 1976.

Early on, Eklund did much of the work himself, from design to carpentry to negotiation and sales. He even dabbled in construction financing. During Portland’s building boom of the 1920s, a significant portion of Eklund’s work was on speculation: he and Signe would buy multiple lots in Rose City Park, Laurelhurst, Alameda, Irvington, Beaumont and Eastmoreland, where Nils would build and then sell completed homes.

Earlier in 1926, an advertisement for one Eklund’s houses reported: “Built by N.O. Eklund, a builder of unquestionable skill and ability to design and construct the best that money can buy.”

The Great Depression 1930-1933 was devastating to most builders, but Eklund survived by selling off many of the lots he and Signe had purchased and planned to build, and by renting out new houses he had built that hadn’t yet sold. In lieu of new construction Eklund survived by doing mostly renovation and repair work when the new housing market bottomed out.

In the late 1930s as the housing market began to return, Eklund was well established both as a real estate broker selling his own properties, speculating and listing other properties, and as a builder.

Later in his career, Eklund employed building crews to do the work, while he managed the building business and also conducted his real estate brokerage. By then, he had dropped the architecture and design aspects of his business.

Across the arc of his career, Eklund build hundreds of homes, mostly on Portland’s eastside, though in the 1950s he turned to speculating on Beaverton-area subdivisions including serving as a builder. A partial list of homes built by Eklund is below. There is a strong family resemblance among the houses he built in the 1950s.

Signe Eklund died in 1964 and Nils lived on until age 90, when he died in Portland on January 17, 1976. The couple had four daughters and a son.

611 E. 61st                                      1914

4063 SE Ash                                    1916

4049 SE Ankeny                              1920

932 NE Hazelfern                            1921

3944 SE Ankeny                              1921

4255 NE Laddington Court             1921

2945 NE 55th                                  1922

3306 NE 61st                                   1923

4008 NE 30th                                  1923

332 NE 22nd (apartments)             1923

2519 NE 59th                                  1923

3317 NE 59th                                  1923

2914 NE 60th                                   1923

3414 SE Oak                                     1924

3233 NE 59th Avenue                      1924

3322 NE 43rd                                      1925

2605 SE Lincoln                                  1925

3115 NE 61st Avenue                         1925

3044 NE 60th                                      1925

736 East 43rd                                      1926

241 NE Floral                                       1926

2811 SE 35th Place                             1926

3900 NE Wistaria                                1926

7505 SE 36th Avenue                         1926

7021 SE 34th                                       1927

1601 SW Elizabeth                              1927

4144 NE Wistaria                                1928

3508 SE Carlton                                  1928

7156 SE Reed College Place              1929

4123 NE Hoyt                                      1930

6501 SE 36th Place                             1950

1726 NE 65th                                      1950

5430 SE Belmont                                1950

717 NE 43rd                                        1950

3663 SE Clybourne                            1950