The City in Flames

London, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle-
Great cities have Great Fires. Portland’s was on August Second, 1873.

Portland in the early 1870s. Note the original line of Park Blocks, from one end of the city to the other, were starting to be breached by development.
(Click on pictures to expand.)

“The site of Portland that was a forest in 1843 is now a city that any state of the union might be proud of. The town of Portland that had one settler and one family in 1843 is now a city of 12,000 inhabitants, without any paupers.”
–Samuels Directory for Portland Oregon 1873.

Portland 1873: thriving, confidant and rapidly growing.

Despite dirt streets, wooden sidewalks, saloons and livery stables, the frontier character of the city was rapidly vanishing. In downtown, brick and cast iron were replacing wood as the building materials of choice. There were one hundred eighty-nine street lights in place; ninety four gas fired, ninety five oil. The Fire Department comprised of five volunteer companies, each with their own station house. The department had thirty-six cisterns with a combined water capacity of five hundred seventy two thousand gallons. There were twenty-two fire hydrants.
The city had a gas company and telegraph service. There were thirteen churches, two synagogues and six public schools (including a “Chinese Night School”). The library had 334 members and 5,448 books.

First Street circa 1872, just prior to the building of the horse car line. The Corbett Building (the First National Bank, 1870) was demolished in 1956. Its cast iron façade was shipped from Baltimore around the horn, the only one in Portland to do such. Beyond it, the Odd Fellows Temple, (1869) was Portland’s tallest building at the time. It was architect Warren H. William’s first in Portland.
The building was demolished in 1954. The tower was removed years earlier.

In the center downtown on First Street was the Odd Fellow’s Temple, the city’s tallest building, three stories high with a clock tower that rose thirty-six feet above the roof. The Newmark Theater (still existent), the largest entertainment venue north of San Francisco, was nearing completion on First and Ash Streets. Halfway between them was the cast iron magnificence of the Ladd & Tilton Bank on the south west corner of First and Stark.

Up and down First Street was Portland’s first mass transit, The Portland Street Railway Company; a horse car line.

“Street railroad cars were successfully introduced last year, and are well patronized by the public.”
–Samuels Directory for Portland Oregon 1873.

Portland on the Walamet.

Portland was a river city, but not a city of bridges. Ferry boats crossed the Willamette, dodging riverboats and tall-masted schooners filled with wheat for England, flour for California and lumber to everywhere, for ports such as Hong Kong and the Sandwich Islands.

Commerce flowed from the back of the warehouses which faced Front Street. Across the street, on the south west corner of Front and Morrison, was the St. Charles Hotel, Portland’s finest, conveniently located for river travelers.

The St. Charles Hotel
“This being the only first-class hotel in the city-being built of brick with Bar and Billiard Rooms on the premises. Table and attendance unsurpassed on the coast, and all the modern improvements- the subscriber trusts, with the above combination of advantages to meet with a proportionate share of patronage from the citizens of Portland and the traveling public.”
-Advertisement from the Democratic Era, April 11, 1872.

On the other side of the river was the City of East Portland; rough hewn and randomly laid out along the marshy inlets of the east bank.

Or… In the language of its boosters:

“Its adaptation for private residences is very attractive, and it stands much in the same relation to Portland that Oakland does to San Francisco and Brooklyn to New York.”

East Portland was the fiefdom of Ben Holladay. The former “Stagecoach King” was now a railroad magnate. Although Portland would not be connected to the national rail network for another decade, there were two local railroads and both were owned by Holladay.
The Oregon & California Railroad was building to south to the border, but had stalled in Roseburg, two hundred miles from its East Portland terminus.
On the west side, the Oregon Central ran from Portland to St. Joseph. It had been founded by Portland’s Front Street oligarchs, but later purchased by Holladay when it ran into financial problems.

“The grass will soon be growing on Front Street.”
–Ben Holladay.

There was little love lost between Holladay and Portland’s elite, who distained his rough manners and libertine ways. There was professional jealousy as well. For as the story went:

“When Ben Holladay bought a legislature, it stayed bought.”

Holladay for his part saw East Portland as the regions eventual metropolis and gathered up land accordingly.

First Street, Portland Oregon through booster’s eyes; a broad, incredibly crowded thoroughfare with over-sized buildings and the Portland Street Railway running down its center.

Strife between the Front Street and Holladay factions aside, there was wide spread optimism and excitement about Portland’s prospects. Much of it centered around the construction of the Portland, Dalles and Salt Lake Railroad, which was anticipated to increase local business a hundred fold and double the city’s population within five years.

An ordinance was passed allowing the railroad to construct the city's first bridge across the Willamette from Columbia Street in Portland to Asylum Street (Hawthorne) in East Portland. It would include road and a rail alignments.

To the city’s boosters, the construction of the bridge and the prosperity to follow were imminent. Everything was falling into place; the very placement of the city’s streets was conductive to a sort of civic feng shui:

“The health of the city is secured by the admirable manner in which it is laid out. –The streets running North and South, East and West: by natural and artificial drainage; the streets being kept with commendable cleanliness, and an abundant supply of good water.”
–Samuels Directory for Portland Oregon 1873.

But there were undercurrents as well:
The previous year, there were 1,654 arrests in Portland, in a city with a population under twelve thousand.
There was concern building about the spread of alcoholism and the encouragement offered by Portland’s myriad saloons.
News from the eastern financial markets was not good.
And Ben Holladay was short of money...

The Oregon & California Railroad’s construction was stalled in Roseburg.
Chinese laborers, brought in by the shipload through the services of labor merchant named Wa Kee, were returning to Portland. Labor prices were falling.
It was a welcome development for the Portland’s business elite, not so for poorer workers.
Or the nativist lunatic fringe.

In first half of July 1873, letters began to appear, slipped under the doors of some who employed Chinese workers.
The letters, some written in red ink “in the manner of the Ku-Klux and the Commune” warned that the employment of Chinese had to cease in Portland. If not, in two to three weeks time, arrangements would be made to convince the public of the danger of hiring the Chinese.

The letters were signed: “28 Strong Men.”

Advertisements in the Daily Oregonian from June 18, 1873 for the Metropolis Hotel, Thompson’s House and the Cincinnati Chop House.
In a month and a half, all three businesses would be lost in the fire...

About 4:30, Saturday morning, August 2, 1873, Officer Mercer of Portland’s Police Department was finishing his rounds near Hurgren and Shindler, a furniture store and workshop on the south east corner of First and Salmon, when he saw a flickering glow behind the building.

“Fire!” he yelled, and again, over and over. The cry was taken up by waking neighbors. Inside the store, a salesman who slept in the building woke and was quickly driven out of the building by the advancing flames. Soon the furniture company’s magazines of oils and varnish began to ignite.

“And lo! from the bosom of the city a slender spire of flame..”
-The Dailey Oregonian, Monday August 4, 1873.

Warning bells rang throughout the city, from the tower of the Odd Fellows Temple and the five fire houses. Hundreds of people poured into the streets.
Columbia Engine Company #3, its engine pulled by horses through the streets with breakneck speed, arrived at the burning buildings and deployed.

Thomas Lawson, Columbia #3’s Foreman, grabbed a ladder and climbed to second floor of Hurgren and Shindler. He was partially through the window when a blast of hot air and cinders hit him full in the face. He whirled around, lost his balance and fell fifteen feet to the ground. Unconscious, he was taken away for medical attention.

The open space on the corner of SW First and SW Salmon, next to the offices at #26 SW Salmon, was the site of Hurgren and Shindler, furniture sales and manufacturers.

The island of landscaping beside the offices at 26 SW Salmon is location of the back walls of Hurgren and Shindler in 1873 It is the point of origin of the Great Fire. It is also where fireman Thomas Lawson fell and was seriously injured.

The fire spread to a neighboring stable. Within minutes the north half of the block was engulfed. Flames were shooting in all directions, fanned by warm winds, which were rising with the sun. The fire jumped First Street and spread to a carpenter shop, then Schades Saloon and the Multnomah House. It leapt Salmon Street and spread to a harness shop, a livery stable and the Metropolis Hotel, which went up so fast that it was impossible to save any of its contents. It crossed Front Street and spread north toward the new downtown and south toward Portland’s larger industries.

“Within eight minutes from the time the fiery tongues from the other side of the street were darted into its side, the walls began to totter, and in less than one forth an hour, the whole thing was a heap of blazing ruin.”
-The Daily Oregonian, Monday August 4, 1873, on the end of the Metropolis Hotel.

The Metropolis Hotel. Like many of the buildings in the older part of town south of Morrison, it was made of wood.

The northwest corner of Salmon and Front (Naito), site of the Metropolis Hotel.

At 6:28 am in Salem, the telegraph keys in the Wells Fargo & Company office clicked to life. A message authorized by Portland’s Mayor Henry Failing was pleading for assistance from any fire departments within reach. Egbert Brown, a Wells Fargo messenger received the telegraph, sent a message to Salem’s Fire Department and ran to the Oregon & California Railroad station where the morning train to Portland was about to depart and convinced the railroad to hold the train.
At the firehouse for Salem Capitol #1 Company, Foreman B. Crossman sounded the alarm. As the firefighters responded, they had no idea they would soon be bound for Portland.

Capitol #1's engine was loaded on a flatcar. Oregon & California Railroad Engineer W.H. Callicott, a Portland resident, eased back the throttle and sent the train sprinting for Portland.
Ben Holladay’s railroad was racing to save Front Street.
One Hour and eight minutes later (58 miles!) the train pulled up to the O&C Ferry landing on the east bank.

An Oregon & California Railroad train in the early 1870’s, near New Era, between Salem and Portland.

Meanwhile, in Vancouver, a fire company was loaded onto the steamboat Oneatta, along with two companies of exhausted Federal troops, late of the Modoc War.
One hour and fifteen minutes later, they were unloading near the fire.

Wooden buildings between Yamhill and Morrison on the east side of Front, likely the Lick House and Kellog’s Hotels.

The flames had advanced northward along the river on the east side of Front to the block between Yamhill and Morrison. There, a major effort was in place to save two hotels, the Lick House and Kellog’s, and in doing so, protect the magnificent St. Charles Hotel across the street.

“The gallant firemen and thousands of citizens bravely fought the advancing flames as they rolled toward onward toward those two structures, for upon the result of their efforts these seemed to depend the fate of a large business portion of the city…”
-The Daily Oregonian, Monday August 4, 1873.

The Willamette Company #1 and Salem’s Capitol #1 companies were deployed in front of the Lick House and Kellogg’s with Columbia Company #3 mounting a rear guard action alongside of the river at the foot of Morrison Street, There they fought the blaze on Carter’s Wharf while knee deep in water.

Nearby, a group of Chinese men had been rounded up by members of the Emmet Guard, part of the local militia, and forcibly impressed into service. The Emmet Guard was largely Irish (Judge Matthew Deady would refer to them as the “Finnian Guard”). Due to long standing competition for labor they were especially prone to the anti-Chinese bias endemic at the time.

The Chinese were placed in a position of great danger behind the burning warehouses with their backs to the river working the pumps that fed the engines. While doing so, they had to be hosed with water from wharf above due to the intense heat.
They were also subject to abuse. A soldier from the Emmett Guard, armed with a bayonet was seen forcing a Chinese man to walk barefoot over a burning boardwalk.

“…one or two of the boys were rummaging the nooks and dark corners of the wharf for fugitive Chinamen. A score or more of these were later captured, and it was mirth provoking to witness the graces with which they followed their bell-weather, who had yielded to Sweeney’s wild objurgations.
-The Daily Oregonian, Monday August 4, 1873.

A different tact was taken by the same paper a day later:

“Too strong language can not be used in condemning the inhumanity that was exercised by some persons toward Chinamen during the fire on Saturday.”
-The Daily Oregonian, Tuesday, August 5, 1873.

The fight to save the two hotels between Yamhill and Morrison was a lost cause. The firemen backed across Front Street to mount a last ditch effort to save the St. Charles Hotel. The heat was such that the hotel’s large glass windows began to crack and shatter.

The struggle, which held the fate of much of downtown, would inspire the purplest prose to describe the day’s events:

“And looking over into that “fiery gilt-edged hell” we saw a gigantic body of fire rising so slowly and with such awful strength that it seemed some Vulcan striving to burn Scamander’s flood, this dying fiend lapping Walamet with his million tongues of fire! For an instant it stood erect like the fervid Noon instinct with a thousand suns, trembles for a moment while all around the air shimmered and shivered like a sensitive thing, and then launched outward, an avalanche of beaten devils, baffled of their prey.
Thus fell the Kellogg House, and with its fall burst forth the involuntary
“Hurrah, it falls; we are saved!”
-The Daily Oregonian, Monday August 4, 1873.

All attention in the area was concentrated now on the St Charles Hotel. From the top of its mansard roof, firemen played water downward. Wet sheets were hung from the windows to minimize burning debris from across the street.

The efforts held.
Eventually the fire east of Front Street burned low. By saving the St. Charles Hotel the fires northward advance was stopped, helped by Block #77, between Morrison and Alder, which had burned the previous December and remained vacant.

The St. Charles Hotel the day after the fire. The two story building with three arches at the far end of the block is the Northrup and Blossum Building. It survives today as the southern half of the Northrup Blossum and Fitch Building.

The site of the St. Charles is now the location of the Four Points Portland hotel. Note the three arches of the Northrup & Blossom Building at the end of the block that also appear in the 1873 view.

The first two floors at the south corner of the Northrup Blossom & Fitch Building was the original Northrup & Blossom Building. It was later expanded.
It is the only that building within that was within the fire zone that survives today.

The site of Block 77 (seen from the Morrison Bridge), where fires northward advance was stopped due to it being vacant since burning the previous December. The “Sea wall” is a 1920s addition.

By late afternoon it was all over.
Nearly one forth of Portland was smoldering ruins. Over twenty two blocks had burned from Yamhill to Clay, bounded by the river and Second Street.

The Congregational Church, on Second, between Jefferson and Madison.
–From Harpers Weekly, Saturday September 6 1873.

Instead of fire fighters, the evening trains brought sight-seers.
The streets were filled with the dazed and incredulous while exhausted fire fighters worked on hot spots into the night.
The scope of the destruction was difficult to comprehend. Losses would eventually be calculated at $1,182,325 with only $258,000 insured. To give an idea of the scale of the loss, the Portland City Treasury had closed out the previous year with a balance of $2,247 in the General Fund.

The oldest, poorest and most industrial parts of the city were hurt the worst, while the newer business district on First Street went largely unscathed. Over two hundred dwellings and one hundred stores were lost. Two of the city’s fire houses, five hotels, three foundries and two sash factories were burned down. The Oregon Iron Works were severely damaged.
In a Portland calamity, the store of coffee dealer J.F. Jones and the brewery of Samuel Sykes were destroyed.

No lives were lost, but there were serious injuries.
The Fire Department’s Chief Engineer William O. Bruon’s face was severely blistered. Thomas Lawson, Columbia #3’s Foreman had been injured at Hurgren and Shindler’s at the fires start. Fireman / City Treasurer Ed Backenstos was hurt on the roof of the St. Charles Hotel. Mr. Samuel Lowenstein was wounded by a falling iron hook “a dreadful gash.”

Mopping up hot spots, looking towards the northwest.
–From Harper’s Weekly Saturday September 6 1873.

“It was the work of an incendiary and most likely of some wicked anti-Chinese fanatics.”
-Judge Matthew P. Deady, from “Pharisee among Philistines, the Diary of Judge Matthew P. Deady.”

As the shock wore off, anxiety set in. Investigators found the origin of the fire at Hurgren and Schindler’s suspicious and many noted the fire restarted outside of the fire zone numerous times as the day wore on. There was little doubt it was set on purpose. There was fear the flames would return.

The threatening letters by the “28 Strong Men” from a few weeks past took on ominous significance. Within a week, more letters appeared, slipped to those who employed Chinese workers:

Mrs. Allen, this is to warn you not to hire any more chinamen remember, saturday.
1: of the 28
-A discovered note, quoted verbatim in the Daily Oregonian August 9 1873.

No further arson followed, nor was anyone ever charged with setting the Great Fire.

The fire zone, from the southern boundary at Clay Street, looking north. The street to the right is Water Street, which at one time ran block closer to the river than Front in the area south of Main where the shoreline swung east.
Front Street is on the left. The St. Charles Hotel is in the distance.

Roughly the same place, November 2007.

Advertisements in the Daily Oregonian a week after the fire. Missing: theatrical costumes, a horse and liquor…

The fire zone or “Burnt District” viewed south from Salmon.

“Misfortunes never come singly. The truth of the adage has been has been terribly exemplified in the history of our beautiful little city in the past year.”
–Samuels Directory for Portland Oregon 1874.

“The Burnt District” was Portland’s first urban renewal area.
Rebuilding began almost immediately. Within a week advertisements from business lost in the fire would appear, using the verb “phoenixing” or “phoenixed” to describe their return from the flames.

Meetings “of the sufferers” were held at the courthouse. A “Committee on Plan of Action” was appointed. Offers of aid came locally and abroad. Some landlords ran advertisements offering lodging rent free for as long as it was necessary to recover. Mayor Henry Failing refused outside aid, choosing to rely on Portland’s natural self-sufficiency to guide its recovery.
It was a very controversial decision.

As the city rebuilt, there was a proposal to widen the streets from sixty to eighty feet, but new construction outpaced any impulse to plan.

First Street, looking south to the intersection of First and Yamhill. The last intact building on the left is the Wakefield Glenn Building, which survived into the 1970s. Next to it can be seen the ruins of the Pearne and Poppleton buildings…

Tested by Fire. The Pearne and Poppleton buildings were destroyed in the fire, but not their cast iron fixtures. The buildings larger successors remain to this day on First between Yamhill and Taylor. They incorporate the original columns and pilasters which survived the fire of 1873.

Portland recovered quickly, but the city’s confidence and optimism, the belief that its population would soon double, that business would increase a hundred fold, took longer to return.

By the end of 1873, the entire country was in recession, sparked by the actions of financier Jay Gould. The dream of the Portland, Dalles and Salt Lake Railroad vanished. Portland would not be connected with the national railroad network for another decade.

Also lost was the imminent hope of a bridge across the Willamette. Portland would wait another fourteen years, until the construction of the first Morrison Bridge in 1887, to be connected with the east bank.

A casualty of the recession was Ben Holladay. His Oregon and California Railroad would remain stalled in Roseburg for another decade. He managed to hold on to 1876, when he was replaced by the railroads German investors by Henry Villard. Before that, he was able to back loyal a loyal minion Dr. James A Chapman, in the 1875 race for Mayor of Portland.
Chapman was elected by six votes over incumbent, (and outside aid refusing) Henry Failing.

Despite the hopes of the “28 Strong Men,” anti-Chinese sentiment in the city suffered a set back. It was soon replaced by alcohol as the issue main issue of the day. Within a year, Portland women, such as Abigail Scott Duniway, would be facing down the owner of the Webfoot Saloon (which had survived the fire) in protest.

It would lead to stronger stuff. Once Portland’s women organized, the idea of the right to vote was not far behind.

Willamette Engine Company #1 in 1875 in front of their fire house on Morrison between First and Second. It was one of three companies that did not loose their home in the fire. The St. Charles Hotel, which they were instrumental in saving, is the large building a block away on the right.

First book on the list of new arrivals from the Portland Library, August 16 1873:

“Protection Against Fire and the Best Means of putting out fires in Cities, Towns and Villages, with practical suggestions for the security of life and property”
by Joseph Bird.

This edition of Café Unknown is brought to you by:

EAST PORTLAND BOOK STORE
M. R. Martin
Fourth Street (Lane’s Block) East Portland
Will Keep on hand or furnished to order
SCHOOL BOOKS
BLANK BOOKS
JUVINILE & TOY BOOKS,
STATIONARY &
FANCY GOODS,
NEWSPAPERS,
PERIODICALS,
CHEAP PUBLICATIONS,
ETC. ETC.
Subscriptions received for all Eastern and California Publications

FRANCO-AMERICAN RESTAURANT
Formerly Delmonico’s
94 First Street Portland
The undersigned having bought out the above Restaurant, beg leave to announce to the public and his friends in general, that he has opened this Restaurant on a first class style. The Proprietor having engaged a first-class cook from California, and entirely renovated the place, respectfully ask for a share of the public patronage, and will always endeavor to satisfy his patrons. He will always have on hand, day and night, the best the market can afford. Private Saloons for small parties, and dinners and suppers served on short notice. Separate entrance for the ladies.
-Joe Watson

FABRE & BARNE COFFEE STAND
Central Market
“The only place in town to get a genuine cup of Pure Mocha Coffee for one bit”

SORENSEN & TALOR
Dealers in All Kinds of Fire Wood
At the Pioneer Wood yard, foot of Washington Street.
“Having a steam engine attached to our saw, we are prepared to saw wood to any required length in very short order.”

“Time is the fire in which we burn” –Delmore Schwartz.

Sources:
Charter of the City of Portland 1872.
The Daily Oregonian, July and August 1873.
The Democratic Herald, East Portland April 11 1872.
“The Early History of Transportation in Oregon” by Henry Villard.
“Fares Please! Those Portland Trolley Years” by John T. Labbe.
The Graphic, October 18 1873.
“The Grand Era of Cast-Iron Architecture in Portland” by William John Hawkins III.
Harper’s Weekly Saturday September 6 1873.
“Merchants, Money and Power” by E. Kimbark MacColl.
“Pharisee among Philistines”, the Diary of Judge Matthew P. Deady edited by Malcolm Clark Jr.
“Portland Fire and Rescue” by Brian K. Johnson and Don Porth.
Samuels Directory for Portland Oregon 1873.
Samuels Directory for Portland Oregon 1874.
“The Shaping of a City” by E. Kimbark MacColl.
“Skidmore’s Portland” by Eugene Snyder.
“Uphill Downhill Yamhill” by John M. Tess.
“War on the Webfoot Saloon” by Malcolm Clark Jr.

Next time, something not so epic…

In Search of Lost Time…

Two years ago I began Café Unknown, a series of articles on Portland, it place, its history and its past in the present.

Actually, I had no idea what it would be about. Advances in spell-check technology encouraged me to revisit my moribund writing. I knew that Portland and history would be major themes, but initially I pictured alternating between Portland and elsewhere to build upon contrasts to define what was unique to our city.
There may still be articles about “everything else” in the future, but they will be separate, linked to Café Unknown rather of part of it. The Portland and history formula on the site is pretty well established.

On this, the second anniversary of Café Unknown, I decided to update some of the earlier stories where new information or pictures have become available.

In “The Wreck of the Marquam Grand” http://cafeunkown.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html
told he story of Portland’s first skyscraper and the spectacular collapse of its south east side in 1912 . Recently I obtained this picture of the interior of the theater (which was located to the rear of the main building).

Click on images to expand.

From the same month was “Off Line Too Soon,” about Portland’s electric bus or “trolley coach” network, which ran from 1937 to 1958.

Since the article, Vancouver BC has received their latest order of trolley buses, their first for the twenty first century. Had Portland’s network survived, the look of the Portland’s inner bus routes today might be similar.

For close-in corridor streets without need (or the desire) of higher density re-development (Hawthorne? Belmont? Twenty Third?) the trolley bus could still have a place, as a much less expensive version of the Portland Streetcar, with all the same clean, quiet and green attributes.

“Hung Over on Burnside”
http://cafeunkown.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html

told the story of the “Arcades” those buildings on East Burnside which hang over the sidewalk, due to a late 1920s era street widening project.
I opined that, as a unique local architectural vernacular, perhaps new arcaded buildings could be built on East Burnside.

Behold, “ The Rocket” at 1111 East Burnside!
It was designed and developed by architect Kevin Cavenaugh. As much as I would have liked have had a part in the reviving of the arcades, the ground already had been broken on building when “Hung Over” was written.
Portland Architecture has an article about this great addition to the streetscape.
http://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/2007/07/climbing-aboard.html

Arcades, archaic and moderne.

Also from August 2006 was "1901 Café Redux"
While researching the history old sign from the 1950s era "1901 Cafe" on N. Killingsworth that reappeared during a remodel, I stumbled on a sadder, more significant story; that of George T. and Kayo Mita. They operated the Fairview Market in the building from 1937 to 1942, after which they were taken to the Minidok Internment Camp, near Hunt Idaho along with thousands of other Japanese Americans.
Kayo Mita died there shortly after arrival.

The Fairview Market as it looks today.


A picture taken in 1942, at Portland Oregon, of Japanese Americans on board a train.
As a regular traveler on Amtrak’s Cascades between Portland and Seattle, I am struck by familiar flurry of activity before departure, the baggage above the chairs, and especially the guy in the University of Washington t-shirt, who looks as if he could step out of time and into today. The same elements can be seen hourly at Union Station.
Only these people are being forcibly removed to an internment camp.

“Portland Romanesque”
http://cafeunkown.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

was a survey of Portland’s Richardson Romanesque inspired architecture, weighted towards surviving buildings (it also omitted one of the most impressive lost examples for a possible future article).
One of my favorite buildings covered is the brooding Ancient Order of United Workmen’s Temple (1892) at SW Second and Taylor.

I recently obtained this 1895 view of the same building, with different upper arches (similar to the nearby Auditorium Building) on the fifth floor, and a cornice. Does it reflect changes or artistic license?

In a post that shall remain nameless, I speculated on the nature of sports team curses. In sincere hope of being passed over, let us speak no more of these things.

Elsewhere in sports- Mad Props (in the parlance of Jim Rome) to the Portland Beavers for their recent decision to keep their name which reaches back to 1905, the Pacific Coast League and the ballpark on Vaughn Street!
Speaking of the Portland Beavers: Is there a better place anywhere to have a beer and watch baseball than the Widmer beer garden just beyond the foul line in right field at PGE Park?
Safeco Field has nothing on it.

One of my frustrations writing “Dreamland”, about Council Crest http://cafeunkown.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html

was that I had no photograph of the Observatory at its height, with two levels. Below, from the back of a 1906 Portland Consolidated Railway Company map, is the tower in all its glory. It even had a restaurant on the lower level.

At the end of “Dreamland”, I asked if there were any more of the “Pretty girls, Pretty girls everywhere. But the Portland Belles are claimed most fair” postcards that promoted local sights, besides those for Council Crest, the Portland and Multnomah Hotels and Lewis and Clark Exposition Forestry Building.

Add to that list the Broadway Bridge, the Multnomah County Courthouse and the corner of Washington and Broadway streets as well as this variant (below) that sings praises of the “Portland Rosebuds” and Mt Hood.

“Lost and Found”
http://cafeunkown.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html

told the story of the Ladd and Tilton Bank that once stood on the corner of First and Stark, and how years after its demolition, its cast iron façade was appended to its near sister building, the Ladd and Bush Bank in Salem. Since then I have found two more pictures of the building, one from the 1890s in its original configuration and one from the 1930s when it housed the Oregon Leather Company.

Note that in the 1930s photograph, the finials that served as chimney caps had been removed (they must have been something to see in the winter). Also missing is the parapet with Neptune and Mercury on the roof above the entrance, which sheds some light on the mystery of their disappearance. Whatever happened to the parapet, it was gone long before the building was demolished in 1954 when the remaining fixtures were saved by Eric Ladd.

Totem poles, Victoria BC.

At the conclusion of “A Spinster on the Trail” http://cafeunkown.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html

I asked what had happened to the collection of totem poles displayed at the Lewis & Clark Exposition in 1905. Nick Stewart wrote that they survive in Totem Hall at the Sitka National Historic Park visitor center in Alaska.

http://www.nps.gov/sitk/historyculture/totem-poles.htm

All well and good.
But by then, I had found another group of totem poles, this time from the 1959 Oregon Centennial in North Portland. They too were missing.
Again Nick Stewart was again able to trace two of the group; one carved by Chief Lelooska is now at New Zealand’s Christchurch International. Another was carved by noted Tlingit artist Amos Wallace. That pole and the others in the group’s locations are yet to be found. Can anyone help Nick and I?

For all the totem poles passing through Portland it is a shame none of them seem to take root. Northwest Oregon was outside the traditional totem pole carving area, but within the cultural and artistic traditions of the Native American’s of the Northwest Coast area. Other than the instillation near Ockley Green Middle School on the Yellow Max Line, there is little in the way of larger scale Native American public art in Portland.

My favorite totem pole, from a recent visit to Victoria British Columbia’s Thunderbird Park.
It tells the tale of an Old Sea Chief.
At night his eyes would drop from his sockets and hang down to his waist.
At meal times his friends would put his eyes back into the sockets and hold them there so that he could see to eat. The Old Sea Chief would eat seals whole, because he had no teeth. Then, after several hours, he would spit the bones out with great force.
H.P. Lovecraft was not the first practitioner of the genre!

In “A Good Ruin is Hard to Find” http://cafeunkown.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html
the history and restoration of the Bickel Block (1883) as part of the University of Oregon’s White Stag Building complex was covered.

The Bickel Block, in high Victorian garb, nears completion.

And finally, an article that never was would have told the story of the vandalism suffered by the Shemanski Fountain (“Rebecca at the Well”) in the South Park Blocks. The fountain, a gift from Polish immigrant Joseph Shemanski in 1926 was extensively damaged and the statue nearly torn off (It was removed for repairs, I thought it had been lost). No matter how I framed it, the article was too depressing. I had to give it up.

Last month“Rebecca” returned to her home. http://www.portlandonline.com/water/index.cfm?a=bgjgbj&c=djghi

Perhaps a security camera might be in order.

Thanks everyone who has read, supported, spread the word or commented in this endeavor over the last two years, and especially to Jill, mon amour extraordinaire, who lives with my obscure obsessions every day.

There are plenty more ideas and associated projects lining up, some of them a bit ambitious. Stay tuned…

Apologies, Monsieur Proust.

Interstate

This blog, Café Unknown, is not so much about history as it is about place.
Perhaps the difference is merely semantic, as for me the two are closely intertwined.
Without continuity of place, a city loses its identity, it becomes a merely a collection of buildings, pipes and wires.
For a person as historically minded as myself, this is self evident: Like that kid in “The Sixth Sense,” I see dead people -the ghosts of Portlanders past- all the time.
Places, stories (and ghosts) all need continuity and context to survive (which is why so few new subdivisions are haunted).

Portland’s character as a place is under constant siege.
From high rise condominiums and row houses encroaching on historic residential neighborhoods, to the adolescent scrawl of the tagger or the Darwinian laws of business, the elements which make Portland are constantly being removed, altered or defaced.

Music Millennium on Twenty Third Avenue, the Lovejoy Ramp, Quality Pie, Henry Ford’s Restaurant and the Church of Elvis are relatively recent additions to a long list which includes most of the cast iron fronted downtown, the jazz clubs and neighborhoods along Williams in Albina and the large portion of downtown slicked off in the 1960s for the South Auditorium urban renewal project.

Keeping Portland weird was difficult enough.
It is hard now just to keep Portland …Portland.

Prescott’s going, why can’t Alberta?
(An old mnemonic doggerel, dating at least from the 1930’s listing the order of Prescott, Going, Wygant and Alberta Streets in North and North East Portland.)

There is an effort now before the City Council to rename Interstate Avenue in North Portland to Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard.

Streets lend a city continuity.
Of colonial Nieuw Amsterdam nothing exists, except the warren of streets on Lower Manhattan. Just as important are street names. New York’s Wall Street is named for the city wall stood once stood upon it.
Long after the personages whose names grace Portland’s alphabet grid (Everett, Flanders, Glisan, Kearney etc) have been largely forgotten (and in some cases miss-pronounced), their names have become part of our common topography.

Beyond geographic functions, people live work and play along streets for decades, if not generations. Two blocks “off Interstate,” my new next door neighbor is a woman in her mid-eighties who recently moved back to the Overlook area to be near her son; he lives directly across the street in a house that she once owned in the 1940s. Much has changed in North Portland since then, but not the streets. They are part of a landscape of memory, both individual and shared.

(Click on photos to expand)
Broadway and Interstate circa 1940.
When Interstate Avenue opened in 1917, it started at Broadway, on the east side of the Broadway Bridge, and ran north through old Albina bordering neighborhoods of railroad workers; those of the Volga Germans in “Little Russia” and the Polish neighborhood, further up the bluff along the east side of Interstate near the St. Stanislaus Church. Directly across the street ,on the west side of the Interstate, was a largely Scandinavian neighborhood, many of whom which also worked for the railroad.

By the time the above photo was taken, the area around Broadway and Interstate was one of Portland’s earliest African American neighborhoods.
The Portland Van Storage Building in the picture still exists. The neighborhood does not. It was demolished by the redevelopment for Memorial Coliseum in the early 1960s.

Note the subway access to the pedestrian transit island in the middle of Broadway. The electric bus (trolley coach) is on Interstate Avenue (Interstate was lowered and brought closer to the river then extend south during the Memorial Coliseum redevelopment. The old alignment in now part of Larabee Avenue). The MA sign on the streetcar stands for the Mississippi Avenue line.

Street re-naming in Portland is nothing new. With the consolidation of Portland, East Portland and Albina in 1891 many streets were renamed to avoid duplication. Interstate Avenue was created by connecting a series of streets between Lower Albina and Kenton in 1917 to provide a route to the new Intestate Bridge.
Many German names were removed during World War I. The street re-numbering plan of the early 1930s (which divided Portland in to North, Northeast, Northwest, South West and South East sectors and added the convention that streets ran east to west and avenues north to south) brought another wave of re-naming.

Changing names of long established streets to honor admired personages however is a relatively recent phenomenon.
In 1989 Union Avenue was re-named for Martin Luther King Jr.
In 1996, in a staggering outbreak of historical amnesia, Front Avenue, the very street where Portland was born, was renamed Naito Parkway to honor businessman Bill Naito.
Last year, Portland Boulevard was changed to Rosa Parks Way.

To fight these strictly elective alterations to Portland’s character is difficult, if not impossible.
It requires the willingness to go up against an organized opposition with motivations that in themselves are honorable. It requires playing catch-up in a shadowy process whose rules are altered at the whim of City Councilors.

Who has the time and energy to mount opposition, especially when examination of the process that lead to Rosa Parks Way concludes that the fix was in from the moment Commissioner Dan Saltzman decided that it was to be?

And finally, who would want to take on Rosa Parks?

By 1940, Interstate Avenue hosted a portion of US Highway 99W. The photograph above is looking north, where Interstate Avenue climbs the bluff. “Stringtown” the houses along east side of Greeley, next to the Albina rail yards, is to the left.

It is the perception that opposition to the renaming a street is the same as opposition to honoring a person, which is the biggest obstacle to those not in favor of re-naming.

Allow me to state, in the clearest most concise terms possible; I have no argument against honoring King, Naito, Parks or Chavez.

In the case of Rosa Parks, the demolition of the “Bill Roberts Transit Mall” (a.k.a. the bus mall) was a sufficient break in continuity to have allowed the new transit mall that replaced it to be named for her, with poetry that hardly needs to be stated. It was a opportunity mind-boggling to have been missed.

A like suggestion by John Wylder, in the Oregonian’s Commentary page from September 8 2007; that a new farmers market for Portland be named for Cesar Chavez, has similar eloquence.

Both ideas are additions to the character of Portland, without subtraction.
But if street re-naming is the only way to honor a personage, perhaps a solution, where a numbered street is appended with a name, such as with New York’s Sixth Avenue also being the “Avenue of Americas" could work.
Once again, it is addition without subtraction.
For make no mistake about it, when a street named is changed through political means, something is being taken away from somebody.

The issue goes beyond Interstate Avenue.
It is reasonable to assume that other groups will have their own heroes they would like to see honored.
For what it is worth, the city code states that the City Council is allowed to change a streets name only to correct errors and eliminate confusion. A similarly ignored portion of the code allows street name changes only with a citizen based process that includes a petition and a panel of historians.

Interstate Avenue in the mid-1970s, looking east from Overlook Park. Much of this area is now part of the Kaiser complex. The sign for the Alibi is visible in the distance to the right.

With the city code arbitrarily disregarded, who decides that one group’s hero has more merit than another?
Is there any reason to believe that re-naming will be restricted only to civil rights heroes?
If honoring minority viewpoints and voices is truly paramount in Portland, then a Ronald Reagan Boulevard is an inevitability.

Meanwhile Portlander’s cynicism with process will grow.

And what other long established Portland street names will be lost?

The Marco Polo Motel, circa the 1960s on the corner of Interstate Avenue and Shaver, when Interstate Avenue hosted a portion of US Highway 99W.

The “Marco Polo” today.

Another view, circa 1939, of the area around Interstate Avenue and Greeley. Interstate veers to the left as it climbs up the bluff. The street to the right is a long vanished segment of North Michigan Ave now buried beneath the earthworks that support the I-5 approach to the Freemont Bridge. The (double) wires for the Interstate trolley bus (trolley coach) line are clearly visible. Greeley and "Stringtown" is to the far left of the billboard, just out of the picture.
Courtesy of the Salem Public Library.

The Crown Motel (here in the 1950s) on Intestate Avenue still exists today, but not for long. The Portland Development Commission’s “Crown Motel Redevelopment Project” is slated to bring more affordable housing near the Interstate Max Line. Could the King Arthur inspired sign be saved and incorporated into the new project? The “motel” letters would be problematic, but they could be replaced with the word “Crown.”

A Portland Landmark? No problem, just plant a tree in front of it.
It is not like its going to grow or anything.

The next post will be entirely non-issue driven.

I promise.

To Eugene Snyder, author of "Portland Names and Neighborhoods".

A Spinster on the Trail

In the 1890s it was said that the trio of great cities on the west coast; San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, were as three sisters, a debutante, a tart and a spinster.

San Francisco, wealthy with decades of mining, shipping and railroad fortunes was the debutante. Seattle, the jump-off point to the Klondike gold rush, exploding from a boomtown into a city with raucous unrestrained energy, was the tart. Portland, with its staid, frugal New England mercantile origins and aspirations was the spinster.

There was perhaps some truth to it, at least in how each city saw itself.
There might be some truth to it still.
But if Portland was a spinster, she was one with a wild side.

From Nancy Boggs’s gaudy pleasure barge anchored in the middle of the Willamette River in the 1880s (conveniently outside the jurisdictions of the cities of Portland and East Portland) to today’s shopping center at NE Killingsworth and Highway 30,
which gives new meaning to the term strip mall, Portland has always been home to risqué commerce.

On the old North End, on Fourth above Burnside, brothels once operated openly in buildings owned by the city’s Trinity Church-going elite. For all of its tree-lined respectability, Portland was still a port city, with all the free form debauchery that implied. What is surprising is how close under the surface it sometimes rested...

The Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905, on the shores of long vanished Guilds Lake. "The Trail," the fairs midway, can be seen to the left, leading to the "Bridge of Nations" and the US Government Building on the island. (Click on pictures to expand.)
-"The Souvenir View Book of the Lewis & Clark Exposition and Oriental Fair." 1905.

Portland put her best foot forward with the 1905 "Lewis & Clark Centennial and American Pacific Exposition and Oriental Fair Exposition", a celebration of the settlement of the west and a the approach of a trans-Pacific future.

An ephemeral gleaming white city arose on the banks of Guilds Lake northwest of downtown. Row upon row of pavilions in the “Spanish Renaissance” style promoted the latest advancements of industry and agriculture as well as marvels from Europe and Asia. States such as New York, Massachusetts, California, Washington and Oregon had their own buildings. Forestry was represented by the world’s largest log cabin, while on an island in the middle of the lake, accessible by the Bridge of Nations stood the U. S. Government building.

And then there was The Trail…

A map of the west end of the Exposition, and The Trail, from "The Great Extravaganza, Portland and the Lewis & Clark Exposition" by Carl Abbott.

The Trail was the Expositions midway...

“Where everything that is amusing and grotesque, hilarious, foolish novel and absurd is foisted and intoned, where all that ingenuity can devise, skill project or daring accomplish is brought for the diversion of a summers day”
-Richard Barry, in "The Souvenir View Book of the Lewis & Clark Exposition and Oriental Fair" from 1905.

On the Trail, attractions such as “The Temple of Mirth,” “Gay Paree,” “A Trip to Siberia,” “Trixie the Educated Horse,” “The Haunted Swing,” “The Land of the Midnight Sun,” and “The Entrance to Cairo” fronted a boardwalk where...

“…Umatilla Indians, Turks and Orientals with the vast crowds which throng the busy Trail. Arabs resplendent in their eastern costumes, bull fighters and dancing girls recall the merry days of the original Midway.”
-From “Glimpses of the Lewis & Clark Exposition and the Golden West” 1905.

The "Temple of Mirth" on The Trail might look vaguely familiar to anyone who has attended a show at the Crystal Ballroom.

Barkers, “Ballyhoos” (street performers) and “Speilers” competed for the attention of the fairgoers, as did numerous restaurants.

“The boisterous noise of brass music makes a trip through the Trail a succession of discordant crashes which distract attention from many a less presuming attraction behind high walls. Scenic and electrical amusements abound, trained animals there are, wonderful things displayed and frightful happenings enacted, but the dances are engrossing things that are offered and most engage the attention of visitors.”
-The Souvenir View Book of the Lewis & Clark Exposition and Oriental Fair from 1905.

“A dainty souvenir package of the choicest tea will be given free to every patron.” is stated in this postcard from the Formosa Oolong Tea Parlors “On the trail”
The card is post marked Portland Oregon 1905, and is sent to a Dr. George Bral in Alnwick, Northhumberland, England.

For one summer, the Trail was the Exposition's and Portland’s carnival of wonders. Then it was gone.

But the discovery of six old postcards from the Exposition implies that there were more than dainty packages of Oolong Tea available on the Trail…

“You aught to be with me if you have nothing on tonight” – Exposition Souvenir 1905 Portland.

They are somewhat cryptic, but have strong implications. One gets the impression that they said even more to those conversant in the argot of the 1905 player…

"Why the (devil ?) don’t you (lobster ?) come to Portland and visit the Trail?”

“It is on The Trail where it can be seen and…(?)”

“How he envies that flea. Poor man.” -Sight Seeing on the Trail.

“Don’t you wish you had my job pal? Its real..” declares this Alfred E Newmanesque scamp.


No smoking regulations were strictly enforced.

“It is impossible to check the books on the bars and bawdy houses after three-quarters of a century, but we can assess the overall impact of the Lewis and Clark Fair on the Portland economy.”
-“The Great Extravaganza, Portland and the Lewis and Clark Exposition” by Carl Abbott.

With 540,000 visitors from Portland, 640,000 from the rest of Oregon and Washington and 408,000 from the rest of the United States and Canada (the figures are from -“The Great Extravaganza, Portland and the Lewis and Clark Exposition” by Carl Abbott.) it is easy to surmise that things were lively on the old North End.
The six postcards suggest however that some form bawdy commerce was going on in the gleaming white city itself.

The contradiction, between the ideal and the profane, might be as familiar to Portlanders of today as it was in 1905.

The Trail (buildings to the left, leading to the Bridge of Nations and US Government building, on the island) at night. A postcard mailed from Portland, September 24, 1905.


"Trixie the Educated Horse" (!)


The "Haunted Castle" on The Trail.



The map on page 22 of "The Great Extravaganza, Portland and the Lewis & Clark Exposition" by Carl Abbot, and some help from Google Earth makes it possible to find where The Trail began. North from the intersection of NW Twenty Ninth, NW Nicolai Street (then part of St. Helens Road) and NW Wardway Street, The Trail ran at an angle from the right of the Handy Foodmart entrance, diverging north and west from NW Twenty Ninth.


NW 30th and NW Industrial, August 2007.

Approximately the same location, on The Trail, in 1905.

Thanks to:

David Parry- who after defeating me in a bruising battle on ebay for the Trail postcards, still allowed me to scan them for this post.

Chet Orloff- for the anecdote about the Three Sisters in his great Portland History class at Portland State University, which I took a few years ago. It started me on the trail to Portland’s past.

Exposition Mystery

In “Glimpses of the Lewis and Clark Exposition and the Golden West” these totem poles are described as “The finest collection in existence, arranged in semi-circle in front of the Alaskan wing of Government Building. Made by Indians from the Prince of Wales Island… Very rare and valuable curiosities.”

So, what happened to them? If anyone knows the story, contact me at cafeunknown@comcast.net