Two Short Features and a Sequel

A few projects are taking longer to come around than I had hoped. In the mean time, some odds & ends, and a few more movies…

The Big Guy Stays

As the 1950s blended into the early 1960s, both Portland and Seattle invited the world in for a look.

The Oregon Centennial Exposition and International Trade Fair was held in Portland in 1959, the Seattle’s Worlds Fair in 1962.

It has been said that, for better or worse, the two surviving icons of the fairs; Portland’s Paul Bunyon stature and Seattle’s Space Needle tell much about their host cities that true hold even to this day.

Seattle, sleek, flashy, brash, called for the world and reached for the stars.

Portland was more grounded, modest, its international pitch seemingly an afterthought. A city comfortable with itself and frankly, a little weird.

The Oregon Centennial Exposition and International Trade Fair was an odd combination of Tomorrowland and Frontierland, where the future and the past mixed with incongruous results.

Recently it was widely reported that the owner of a national chain of pre-fabricated log cabin homes, infamous for plundering Bunyons for his collection, wanted to acquire Portland’s Paul Bunyon from the corner of Interstate Avenue and Denver in the Kenton neighborhood, where he has dwelled since the fair ended in 1959, “No matter how much money it took.” Assurances were offered that Paul Bunyon would remain at a log cabin outlet storen “somewhere in the state of Oregon.”

The Kenton Neighborhood informed the interested party that Mr. Bunyon was not for sale. There the story happily ends. For if Paul Bunyon for quick cash, it would have said something else about Portland altogether.

The Treasure of Yaquina Bay

If history had turned out differently:
If there had been a few less financial panics, a few more miles of railroad built, a few less steamships vanished beneath the waves; Portland would have had a major rival in Yaquina City.

As the western terminus of the Oregon Pacific Railroad, Yaquina City (five miles east of Newport) was positioned as an alternative shipping point for farmers in the southern half of the WillametteValley, lumber from the Cascade Range and a transcontinental connection with the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad which was building west from Wyoming.

The late 1880s were a time of grand dreams. The Oregon Pacific was one of them. What is amazing is how close it came to being reality. The Coast Range was crossed, a route over the Cascades was well under construction. Oregon Pacific steamships ran from Yaquina Bay to San Francisco and riverboats connected it to Portland at Corvallis. In far eastern Oregon grading was taking place.

But the ships had a tendency to sink. Then the money ran out. Eventually the railroad was sold. Today, what survives is a workday branch line to a paper mill at Toledo.

Yaquina City is forgotten. And Portland never had to contend with the greater Yaquina Metropolitan area.

An Oregon Pacific trestle on the way to Yaquina City, west of Toledo Oregon.

Near the former site of Yaquina City are the Oregon Oyster Farms. Since 1907 it has been the primary source of Oysters for Portland’s iconic seafood restaurant, Dan and Louie’s Oyster bar.

Dan and Louie’s Oyster bar.

For the past fifty years though, Yaquina Bay has been home to a Portland treasure of a very different sort...

In 1956, after numerous disputes with the city, the Portland Traction Company lost its franchise to operate Portland’s transit system. The company’s San Francisco based ownership re-constituted its operating division as the Rose City Transit Company, albeit with much the same leadership, and eventually re-negotiated a new franchise to provide Portland's public transportation.

Rose City Transit held the franchise to operate Portland’s transit system until the formation of Tri-Met in 1969.

But what was to be done with all those obsolete Portland Traction tokens, some dating as far back as 1942?

A Portland Traction token to the left, right, a Rose City Transit token..

There were two and a half tons of them. One million two hundred and fifty thousand tokens with a street value of $208,000 as they were still acceptable tender on Rose City Transit buses.

Unsuccessful attempts were made to melt them for the German silver they contained. Perhaps they could be embedded in a Portland bridge pier? The answer was no.

Then, with the know-how and gumption that can dynamite a whale carcass on the Oregon Coast; in November 1958 someone had an idea...

Four officials of the transit company with two trucks full of tokens were dispatched to Newport. There, they met by Stan Allyn, skipper of the Kingfisher, a charter out of Depot Bay. Sixty seven bags of tokens were loaded onto the boat and taken out into Newport Harbor. The officials dropped them, one by one, over the side of the boat.

In an article in the November 13, 1958 Oregonian, Stan Allyn was quoted as saying “Two tides later and they were buried in silt. Recovering them would be impractical.”

Word to the wise.

Three More Portland Traffic Engineering films from 1939…

A snippet of East Burnside at 10th taken from the roof of today’s Hippo Hardware (one of the “Burnside Arcades”) is followed by chaos on SE 6th and Yamhill, today a transit mall street. Order is brought to the scene by a traffic cop.

A view of SW Sixth and Morrison, unique not so much for what it shows but for its setting, a view from; an upper floor on the north east wing of the legendary Portland Hotel, was torn down in 1951, It is the present location of Pioneer Courthouse Square. Below, the Portland Hotel.

And finally…

A cavalcade of 1930s Portlanders take a try at crossing Burnside at East 32nd in 1939. The film was taken from the corner where Music Millennium is now. The Laurelhurst gate seems strangely absent, but with close observation it can be seen, obscured by ivy.

Portland's Commissioner Clyde and his pal remind you that Tuesday is Election Day!

The Wizard of Oz Moment

1939 was a good year for movies;
“Gone With the Wind,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Stagecoach” and “Ninotchka” all premiered that year.
It was also the year when Dorothy and Toto departed sepia-toned Kansas for the Techicolored Land of Oz in her quest for the Emerald City.

In 1939 the City of Portland was filming as well.

Two years earlier, Portland’s Traffic Engineering Bureau was established under the Commissioner of Public Works. As population and vehicle ownership increased, the streets of Portland were becoming more dangerous to drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians. The Bureau was established to control all matters pertaining to the design and placement of traffic signs, signals and other traffic control devices.

In the fifteen years since 1925, more than 900 persons have died as the result of traffic accidents in Portland. The city experienced one traffic death every five and one-half days in the 1930’s.
-Portland Traffic Safety Commission August 1940.






In addition to the Bureau, the Portland Traffic Safety Commission was established to educate the public on traffic issues. Drawing from traffic engineering, law enforcement, commercial, education, legislative and community sectors, the Traffic Safety Commission published a bi-monthly newsletter promoting safety for all modes of transportation in Portland.








Speed Kills.
-Portland Traffic Safety December 1940.





Bicycle Survey?
- Portland Traffic Safety September-October 1941.

An area of primary concern for both the Portland Traffic Engineering Bureau and the Portland Traffic Safety Commission was the adoption of traffic signals to bring order to the city’s chaotic streets. In 1939 the Traffic Engineering Bureau made a film which combined new and older footage shot at Portland intersections to document the progress made in traffic control.

Below are excerpts from that film:

The first segment features the intersection of Washington and 6th. It dates from Christmas 1936. There does seem to be some form of traffic control in place, however imperfect. The VC streetcar stands for the Vancouver Line, the original light rail connection over the Interstate Bridge. The small WH (Willamette Heights) streetcar is a World War I era Birney “Safety” design that featured a single operator. Note the automobile that uses the streetcar to get through the intersection, only to be held up by a wave of pedestrians. The short view at SW 6th and Alder which follows shows bike riding to be a dicey proposition.






"Things fall apart; the center can not hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"
-William Butler Yeats, in "The Second Coming".

The intersection of Interstate Avenue and East Broadway in 1939. Pandemonium and entropy.
It was listed in the Civic Review of Portland Oregon, 1937 as the city’s most dangerous intersection. Chaos reigned supreme as sheer force of numbers and the will to power ruled the left turn lane.

The buildings on the corner still exist today across the street on Broadway from Memorial Coliseum.
Note: the pedestrian transit islands, accessed by subterranean tunnels near the Broadway Bridge. Both streetcars, old and modern and trolley bus (trolley coach) transit can be seen on the Broadway, Mississippi and St John’s lines circa 1939. Near the end of the clip, the streetcar on the Broadway line loses its connection with the wire and a motorman leaves the safety of his car to reconnect.




The dreaded intersection of E. Burnside, Sandy and 12th was already a formidable nemesis in 1939.
Above; the Portland Traffic Commission's plan to tame it with traffic signals.




The intersection of Burnside, 12th and Sandy in 1939. Six seconds pass, then without warning, The Wizard of Oz moment! Pre-World War II Portland changes from black and white to color! Note Portland’s electric buses (trolley coaches) in both 1937 (green) and 1939 (cream and red) paint schemes. Clean, quiet and green!.





SW Morrison and 18th near Civic Stadium (PGE Park). Note the green streetcar in Portland Traction’s paint scheme adopted in 1925, at the suggestion of Portland school children. Approximately one third of Portland’s streetcars were repainted from their original dark red and cream paint (also seen in this clip) before reverting to a lighter shade of red in 1939. By the time color photography was common in the later 1940s; the green streetcars had been repainted or retired. Color views are extremely rare. It is only in this film that have I seen them.

6th & Morrison, pre-bus mall era, shot from in front of the Portland Hotel and the Pioneer Courthouse. The traffic cop’s circle-spot could not have been comfortable.

West Burnside and 18th in 1939, looking east towards where I-405 was not yet dug. The green bus is a gasoline powered “stinkbus” (as the diesel bus precursors were known).
The next views are from 19th looking north toward Burnside. Firefighter David Campbell’s memorial park can be seen to the side.

Sandy Blvd at 28th, followed by 33rd, (west then east, check out the action at the flashing yellow light) then at 24th and 20th.

Provenance:

Some of Portland’s more thorough historians dedicated themselves to preserving the memory of the streetcar system. Departed masters such as John Labbe, Bill Hayes and David L. Stearns sought to capture the Portland’s street railway era as it vanished (there is some irony here).

It was through surviving cohorts of that fraternity where I first heard of this legendary film which was reportably retrieved from a city dumpster in the late 1950s (the music is almost certainly a later addition).
Eventually, through a shadowy world of relic hunters and Portland historians, I was able to obtain a VHS copy, which I converted to DVD and excerpted for this post.

The Portland – Seattle Traffic Safety Challenge Cup.
Portland won it in 1940 for having the fewer traffic fatalities. Does anyone know which city won for other years? Or where the cup is now?

At the Pig and Whistle

Portland in wartime, 1943.

The city was energized with round the clock activity as it strained to meet the war effort. In less than one year’s time, Portland had been transformed into one of the country’s primary shipbuilding centers. Above the shipyards at Swan Island, St Johns and Vancouver was the all night glow of klieg lights atop metal towers that illuminated the activities of the workers below. The sounds of construction never ceased.

Henry Kaiser’s Oregon Shipbuilding yards at St Johns.
(click on images to expand)

The city was massively overcrowded.

Portland’s population jumped from 305,000 to 359,000, Vancouver’s from 50,000 to 99,000. Households took in boarders to help with the overload. Downtown some theaters never closed. Movies were scheduled at three in the morning to keep roofs over the heads of transient workers. Twenty-four hour restaurants were commonplace. Eventually a whole new city, Vanport, and a large development on Guilds Lake were built to meet the housing crisis.

Portland was awash with arrivals and departures from all over.
News would come from the war zones of Europe, the Pacific and Northern Africa. On the home front, Portlanders bought War Bonds, grew their own vegetables and dealt with rationing.

Ration stamps issued to Ruth Holliday age 36, “housewife and clerk” who lived at 3835 N. Mississippi Avenue.

From downtown taverns and bars the sounds of records by Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, the Andrews Sisters and Sinatra spilled into the streets, along with Vera Lynn- a favorite to the hundreds of homesick British sailors who temporally called Portland home.

For, along with building ships for the U.S. Navy and Merchant Marine, Portland was building aircraft carriers for Great Britain.

The White Ensign of the Royal Navy.

Portland and Great Britain’s ties go back a long time.

At the start of the 1840s, “the Clearing,” as the future site of Portland was called, was a rest stop half way between Britain’s Hudson Bay Company’s outpost on the Columbia at Vancouver and the American settlement at Oregon City. The British enterprise was by far the regions largest employer, the center of a fur trading empire which stretched from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific and Alaska to California.

In fact, for the first three years of Portland’s existence, it was on land claimed both by the Great Britain and the United States. Only after the Oregon Treaty of 1846 was Portland sundered from Her Britannic Majesty, Victoria’s protection.

Twenty four years after the peaceful settlement of the “Oregon Question” the British were back in Portland with a consulate, established due to the huge amount of goods leaving Portland's harbor to England and Empire.

Aircraft carrier themed ration stamps issued to William Holliday, age 40, “Pipe Forman” at 3835 N. Mississippi Ave.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Lend Lease program was implemented in March 1941 to help Great Britain in its lonely fight against Nazi Germany by trading war material for military bases. After December 7, it became a full fledged partnership.
As “the Arsenal for Democracy” the United States focused its industrial strength to provide ships, airplanes and munitions for the entire Allied war effort, regardless of nation.

It was an order to build fifteen freighters for Great Britain that brought industrialist Henry Kaiser to Portland to establish Oregon Shipbuilding in the first place. A similar order provided twenty “liberty ship” freighters to the Soviet Union.
Russian crews, often captained by women, attracted much attention in Portland while they waited for their vessels to be completed. After launching, the ships, some named for scions of old local families, were handed over to the Soviets and renamed.

Thus, the Elijah P. Lovejoy became the Alexander Suvorer, the Henry L. Pittock became the Ashkold and the Henry L. Corbett the Alexander Minsky.

The H.M.S. Tracker on the Columbia.
-From “Good Fellows All” by Ann Grace Chapple.

In 1943, eight escort carriers were built in Portland for the Royal Navy: the H.M.S. Tracker, H.M.S. Ravager, H.M.S. Searcher, H.M.S. Slinger, H.M.S. Trumpeter, H.M.S. Premier, H.M.S. Rajah and the H.M.S. Trouncer.

The ships, essentially flight decks mounted on freighter hulls, were identical to US escort carriers built at the same time at Portland and Vancouver. They were launched as US ships before being handed over to the Royal Navy. In each case, a C3 Freighter hull built at the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Company yard in Tacoma was towed Portland to be completed as an aircraft carrier by the Commercial Iron Works or Willamette Iron and Steel.

Program for the commissioning of the H.M.S. Slinger, Portland Oregon, August 11, 1943.
-from www.royalnavyresearcharchive.org.uk

Order of Ceremony; the ship (the U.S.S. Chathem) was handed over by the Vice President of Willamette Iron and Steel to the US Navy. The National Anthem was played. The ship was then presented to the Royal Navy. Colours were hoisted and God Save the King was played. The H.M.S. Slinger was commissioned.

The crews were a long way from home.
Jack Hill of the H.M.S. Slinger recalled (on royalnavyresearch.org) leaving the Devonport Naval Barracks at Plymouth in south western England, not knowing where they were bound for. Only after boarding the Queen Mary did the sailors know they were going to the United States. A week later they arrived at Newark, New Jersey. After a three week layover on Staten Island they were taken from New York’s Grand Central Station by train across the continent.

When they got to Portland, there was a reception waiting.

The corner of SW Park and SW Morrison. -From “Good Fellows All” by Ann Grace Chapple.

To give the sailors a taste of home while in Portland, the White Ensign Club (named for the banner of the Royal Navy) was established on the second floor of the building on the southwest corner of Park and Morrison. Ann Grace Chapple, Secretary of the British War Relief’s Portland branch, herself a British “war bride” of World War I, organized the effort and worked with the Portland Federation of Women’s Clubs and other community organizations to bring it about.

Ann Grace Chapple.

The White Ensign Club opened on December 22 1942 with piping by the Clan Macleay Pipe Band and a live broadcast by KOIN radio. The club took up the second floor of #721 SE Park in a space in space provided by the Zell Brothers rent-free which had been last used by The Shanghai Café, a Chinese Restaurant that closed in 1937.

It was a place to relax and catch up reading the Illustrated London News, the Liverpool Daily Post, Newcastle’s Sunday Sun, the Cardiff Weekly Mail and the Glasgow Daily Record.
It was where native cuisine; scones, hard boiled eggs, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and especially tea could be had.
Through British War Relief, housing was arraigned and local activities set up. Darts, pool and ping-pong played. Dances were held with local hostesses and an all female orchestra called the Mountain Jennies. Over 600 books, donated by Portlanders filled the library.

American Football proved a big hit, with the White Ensign Club playing the Albina Roughnecks to a tie at least three times in West Moreland. American potato salad was not so popular.

In the back of the club was a pub, the Pig & Whistle, perhaps Portland’s first self-consciously English styled pub. The “Peg 'n Wassail” was immensely popular, but for variety there was plenty of competition with the New Virginia Café, the Nob Hill and the Knotty Pine beer parlors on the same block.

Pool at the Pig & Whistle. Note the map of Oregon in the background.
-From “Good Fellows All” by Ann Grace Chapple.

Fifth and Stark Street. Note the Portland Traction “trolley coach” electric bus, and gasoline powered bus (also known as a “stinkbus").

The crews stayed in Portland as their ships reached completion and through the ships trails on the Willamette and Columbia. Then they would then depart for Vancouver BC’s Burrard Shipyard for further work to meet Admiralty specifications. From there it was either to the British Pacific Feet or through the Panama Canal to the North Atlantic.

Happily, all eight of the British escort carriers survived the war. Like many of their kind, they were reconverted to freighters and sold to shipping companies around the world. By the mid 1970s all had been scrapped.

The White Ensign Club closed in 1945, after taking care of a group of sixty eight members of the Royal New Zealand Air Force from bases in Canada on the way to the South Pacific.

The building that held the White Ensign club at SW Park and Morrison was built in 1917, designed by architect John V. Bennes. It still exists.

But not for long. The building was remodeled for the Zell Brothers in 1949 by architectural firm of Dougan, Himes and Cain. It is set to be demolished for the building of the new 410 foot tall Moyer Tower.

A block and a half away, on Broadway between Morrison an Alder, the Broadway Building, built in 1917 and also designed by John V. Bennes recalls the flavor of the original Zell Brothers building.

After the closure of the club and the publication of “Good Fellows All” by Anne Grace Chapple in 1945, the White Ensign Club faded from Portland’s memory.
It probably lingered longer with the British sailors looking back from half a world away.

Or, as Don Woodman of the H.M.S. Tracker wrote in his poem “To Portland”

City of Roses, City of Rain
No one supposes I’ll come again.
Yet ere my way I’m wending,
Friendship is mine unending…

So fellow Portlanders,

May I suggest the next time,
At the Horsebrass, the Moon and Sixpence
or the Rose and Thistle,
We raise a glass to the Pig and Whistle!

Coffee ration stamps issued to Pauline Clark Peterson at #1725 S.E. 51st Ave.

Sources:

“Good Fellows All, the Story of the White Ensign Club” by Ann Grace Chapple.

“Architectural Guidebook to Portland” by Bart King.

“Fleeting Opportunities: Women Shipyard Workers in Portland and Vancouver During World War II and Reconversion” by Amy Kesselman

“The Growth of a City” by E. Kimbark MacColl.

“Henry J. Kaiser, Builder of the American West” by Mark S. Foster.

“Vanport” by Manly Maben.

“The Western Shore” Edited by Thomas Vaughan.

www.royalnavyresearcharchive.org.uk

Nick's Famous Coney Island

Nick’s Famous Coney Island doesn’t need an introduction and it doesn't need another goodbye (especially since it never closed, which seemed imminent at the time of this post's original writing on the occaison of  Frank Nudo's retirment).   

“I make the best there is. I have the gift. Even my dumbest customers will tell you that. I can’t explain it, but I just happen to have it inside me to make great coneys.”
-Frank Nudo, owner of Nick’s in the Oregon Journal, April 24, 1976.

Nick’s is unique: a temple to the Ducks, to the Yankees (it is known by some as “Yankee Stadium West”) and to coney island hot dogs.
Frank Nudo who has owned it since 1960 holds court daily, giving running commentary on whatever game plays above the bar.
Baseball is the best.

It is not a time capsule.
There are plenty of anachronisms like the Nike designed U of O football helmet on top of the large color TV, to remind you that it is not 1949 or 1961 or 1972.

Everything is just right though; the mural of sports illustrated covers, the photographs, the counter, the bar stools. A movie set piece for a production about Mickey Mantle could be more exact but would never capture the soul of Nick's. Like Joe Jost’s in Long Beach California or Philippe’s in Los Angeles, Nick’s Famous Coney Island is timeless.

Italian born Domenick “Nick” Carlacio opened “Nick’s Coney Island” in 1935 across the street (and the Hawthorne streetcar line) from its present location (which now houses the front portion of Powell’s on Hawthorne). Nick's remained there until 1943, when it moved to the other side of the street

Nick Carlacio sold the restaurant to Frank Nudo (with “nothing down”) in 1960. He has ran it ever since.

“Nothing like coming here after a hard day of work with a loaded double and a small pitcher of beer.”
-A regular at the counter, recently overheard.

And then there is the food: classic in its simplicity. A damn good coney island.

The entire menu:

Single Coney
Double
Triple
Hamburger
Cheeseburger
Chiliburger
Macaroni Salad (which is inexplicably addictive)
Tuna Fish Sandwich
Chili Bowl
and…The Nicks Home Run (4 dogs / 2 buns)
Beer: Budweiser.

There is the food, the banter and the straight-up questions:
“What do you want to drink?” “What do you want to eat?”
There was Kenny Kell “The Wing Commander,” who passed away last year.
There is the memorabilia and the crew (Professionals, one and all).
It only begins to describe Nick’s Famous Coney Island, whose intricate recipe is greater than the sum of its parts.

The Portland tradition of eponymous long lived coney island shops stretches far back, even further than Nick’s Famous.

In 1921 Greek born Lois J. Gellos moved to Portland and opened “The Coney Island Sandwich Shop” on Washington between Eleventh and Twelfth (the location is now a surface parking lot) across the street from the Portland Telegram Building, then under construction. There he began to serve the popular Midwestern chili dog confection (despite its name, the "coney island" chili dog is not native to New York, where a sparser frankfurter sandwich has reigned supreme since the 1860s).

By the later 1920s there were two other locations, one on Sixth and one on Second, but as the as the 1930s began a retrenchment had taken place with only the Washington shop surviving.
In 1937, perhaps in reaction to an upstart east-side operation on Hawthorne, the appellation “Original” was added to the restaurant's name.

A menu from the “Original Coney Island Sandwich Shop” on Washington near Eleventh. “We Never Close” might indicate a World War II vintage.
(Click on images to expand).

Coast to Coast at the Original Coney Island Sandwich Shop, from Coney Island to Hollywood. Bottled beers: Blitz Weinhard, Schlitz, Blue Ribbon. Olympia on tap.

Louis Gellos died in 1942. His widow, Bertha took over the restaurant. She passed it to her son, Louis Gellos Jr in 1959. The Original Coney Island Sandwich Shop was sold in the late 1960s to a Robert Smith. It closed in 1969.

Portland Coney Island Box Score with ownership streaks:

Nick’s “Famous” 73 years:
Dominick “Nick” Carlacio 25 years.
Frank Nudo 48 years.

Coney Island Sandwich Shop “The Original” 48 years:
Louis J Gellos 21 years.
Bertha M. Gellos 17 years.
Louis J Gellos Jr. 9 years.
Robert Smith 1 year.

Godspeed and thank you Frank Nudo.

(Note- When this post was written in 2008, the closure of Nick's seemed a done deal.  Happily it was not the case and Nick's Famous Coney Island is alive and well, under the loving care of Carrie Hogrefe.  This post has minor revisions to reflect this happy turn of events.  DH 2015.