Category Archives: History

By Doug Decker | Historian

The question: We live on 35th and Ainsworth in a home built in 1941 and – like the rest of our neighbors between 33rd and 37th circling the blocks of Ainsworth and Simpson – we all have lots 50 by 230 feet. Why do you suppose the lots on this block were platted so long?
– Rose and John Yandell

The historian reports: The long, narrow configuration of this block stems from decisions made more than 100 years ago by John D. Kennedy. He once owned much of the property between Killingsworth and Ainsworth streets, and 33rd and 42nd avenues, and Kennedy School was named for him.

The Irishman immigrated to Oregon in 1866, found his way to Baker City and worked in and then owned a dry goods store.

After coming to Portland about 1881, Kennedy bought this property, originally part of the 1855 Isaac Rennison Donation Land Claim. It was outside the city limits and far from any developments.

Kennedy was ahead of his time in the market. Northeast Portland’s ripeness for real estate didn’t take place until the years after the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition, when it seemed anyone who could was buying property or building houses.

But Kennedy had platted these lands as the Kennedy Addition back in 1890, a grid of 15 square blocks with more than 200 lots. Two years later, he platted Kennedy’s Second Addition, adjacent to the east, with room for another 120 homes.

Several other nearby plats were filed about that time, but they were also just lines on paper. There was no market yet for residential development. So, in 1906, city council approved his petition to “vacate” five of the blocks in his addition. That officially eliminated platted streets, even if they didn’t yet exist – like all of the north-south streets in the block between Ainsworth and Simpson, from 33rd east to 37th.

Kennedy’s stated rationale was to sell the larger chunk of land as acreage for farm fields.

As urbanization spread in the years that followed, neighborhoods were built to the north, south and west, but the 12-acre parcel – with no north-south through streets – stayed as one big block in farm use.

Kennedy died in December 1936. In 1938 the property was controlled by Ward D. Cook, a Portland insurance and real estate agent, who designated 80 lots on the long block ready for construction.

After World War II the market truly picked up. Most of the houses were built and sold between 1940 and 1950.

So there you have it. In the original Kennedy’s Addition plat, that one long block was going to be five blocks. But then Kennedy did away with the blocks to better sell the property, which he never did.

The market came and went and came back again. Then another speculator saw opportunity and turned the island of farm into the more than 50 lots there today, most of them a very long and narrow quarter-acre each. Read more and check out maps and historic aerial photos on this topic at AlamedaHistory.org.

Ask the historian is a CNews standing feature that encourages readers to ask questions about the history of the neighborhood and its buildings. Is there something you’ve wondered about? Drop a line to CNewsEditor@ConcordiaPDX. org and ask Doug Decker to do some digging.

By Doug Decker | Historian

Last month, we reported on Vernon School in anticipation of its 111th anniversary. Speaking of Vernon, doesn’t Vernon Avenue sound like a street that you should know its location – especially since Portland has an entire neighborhood named Vernon?

That street name is just an echo today because the actual Vernon Avenue was silenced Sept. 2, 1931. That’s when city council passed Ordinance 61325 readdressing all of Portland’s streets and calling for multiple street name changes.

Before the renumbering ordinance, there was no predictable and systematic addressing system, which left everyone confused, including police, fire and the U.S. Postal Service. The great readdressing of Portland’s streets in 1931 was long overdue and helpful. But losing the name of your street, that one really stung.

That street name is just an echo today because the actual Vernon Avenue was silenced Sept. 2, 1931.

One of the 1931 rules aimed at orderliness required that streets between any consecutively numbered street – in our case between 14th and 15th avenues, which is where Vernon Avenue existed – had to be renamed with a number and given the designation “Place.”

As a result, the six-block Vernon Avenue went extinct and became today’s 14th Place, running between Prescott and Killingsworth streets.

In January 1933, neighbors along Vernon Avenue – angry about the change and still using their original addresses in resistance – presented a petition to city council protesting the switch. But city council denied the petition, saying an exception could not be made.

We haven’t yet come across anything on the record about how neighbors responded to that denial. Eventually the passage of time dulled the loss as Vernon Avenue families grew old, grew up and moved on. But it’s worth noting that stories in The Oregonian, well into the 1940s, referred to addresses on Vernon Avenue when reporting births, marriages, deaths and social occasions.

Long live Vernon Avenue!

Doug Decker initiated his blog AlamedaHistory.org in 2007 to collect and share knowledge about the life of old houses, buildings and neighborhoods in northeast Portland. His basic notion is that insight to the past adds new meaning to the present. If you have a question for him to answer in CNews, send it to CNewsEditor@ConcordiaPDX. com.

By Doug Decker | Historian

The question:
What’s the history of 602 N.E. Prescott St., and when did Portland Playhouse take it over and begin producing plays there? — Karen Wells

The historian reports:
We love it when readers write with a question about a specific building that’s had a long and interesting journey like this old church. We know it today as the Portland Playhouse – and it’s recently undergone a major overhaul inside – but it started out life as the Highland Congregational Church Jan. 3, 1904.

A news story in The Oregonian from the next day reported on its construction:

“The Rev. D.B. Gray reported the cost of the building was $4,709.15 and the 100 x 100 lot had cost $800. The community raised $600 and the Oregon Missionary Society provided the rest.

“The Sunday school associated with the church had 150 children. Plans for the church were furnished by L.B. Volk of Los Angeles, California, and Peter Wiser was the builder. The building is modeled after the Mizpah Church at East Thirteenth and Powell streets.”

The story went on to say why the new church was so symbolic for the surrounding community:

“The dedication signalizes strikingly the wonderful growth of the city to the northeast as fully 500 homes have been built in the Highland District in the last two years, besides a schoolhouse now occupied by 500 students.”

From the mid-1920s until the early 1950s, the building was referred to as Grace and Truth Hall. Its most recent faith community was the Mt. Sinai Baptist Church, from the mid-1960s to 2005.

The building was vacant for several years and, like many older area churches, was sinking under abandonment and deferred maintenance. It was bought by a private owner who lived in the old church for several years prior to its current incarnation as Portland Playhouse, a theater company.

The first play in the church was in 2008 and, since then, Portland Playhouse has built a solid reputation for high quality and well-produced shows, and a loyal following.

Michael Weaver, playhouse managing director, explained the church has recently undergone a $2.4 million interior upgrade to better function as a theater. It also expands the theater company’s offices into the former fellowship hall in the basement and the former Shining Star Daycare, which was attached at the back of the church. While much has changed inside, the upgrade kept the bell tower, stained glass windows and much of the original flooring.

“We wanted to honor the history of the building,” Weaver said.

The play “Fences” shows there through June 10 with rave reviews.

Doug Decker initiated his blog AlamedaHistory.org in 2007 to collect and share knowledge about the life of old houses, buildings and neighborhoods in northeast Portland. His basic notion is that insight to the past adds new meaning to the present. If you have a question for him to answer in CNews, send it to CNewseditor@ConcordiaPDX.com.

By Doug Decker | Historian

The question: OK, I know this might seem obvious, but is it really? Where does our name Concordia come from and what were we called before that? – Dan Werle

The historian reports: No surprises here, Dan. Ye s , t h e neighborhood we think of today as Concordia takes it s na me f rom Concordia University.

Opened in 1905 on six acres of land that was then at the edge of Portland city limits, Concordia College was a simple two-story wood frame building that was home to the Oregon and Washington District of the Synod of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Operating primarily as a high school program for young men until the 1950s, Concordia gradually evolved into a junior college, added a co-ed mission and additional facilities in the 1950s, and became a full-fledged four-year college in 1977.

Along the way as Concordia’s physical presence began to expand, the adjacent neighborhood took on its name, as in “We live over near Concordia.” The first official reference we could find either in reporting or city reference to the Concordia neighborhood is the mid1970s. But here’s where it gets interesting. Before being known as Concordia, our area had several names, all stemming from the titles of the survey plats filed by real estate developers.

These names are lost to history today, but back then you probably would have told someone you lived in Irvington Park (not to be confused with Irvington), or in the Town of Creighton, or the Heidelberg Addition, or maybe the Foxchase Addition.

All four are underlying plat names filed by developers who built the streets, alleys and houses in what we think of as Concordia today.

In those days – whatever you called it – our neighborhood was nearly off the radar screen, at the far end of the streetcar line, beyond the sewer and water system.

Here’s how the July 23, 1911, issue of The Oregonian described the early neighborhood: “Extensive improvements are being made in that portion of Irvington Park near the Concordia College building. This part is out in the open ground. Here the streets are being graded and cement sidewalks are being laid.

“Twelve cottages, costing on an average of $2,000 each, have already been built in this new part of Irvington Park. Last week an eight-inch water main was laid on East Thirtieth street north nearly to the Concordia College building, which will greatly increase the water supply of that territory.”

Editor’s note: If you have a question for the neighborhood historian, send it to NewsEditor@ConcordiaPDX.org, for Doug to do some digging. Check out his blog for more on local history at AlamedaHistory.org. If you enter the search term “plat,” you’ll learn more about the obscure names that once defined this area.

By Doug Decker, Historian

The question:

I’ve heard there was an old school just south of Alberta Street at 22nd Avenue. What’s the story?
– Luke Griffin

The historian reports:

Yes indeed. You probably k now the vicinity of the old Vernon school south of Alberta Street. But you pr obably ne ver knew it was there, occupying all of the block bounded by 22nd and 23rd avenues between Going and Wygant streets.

Old Vernon was a giant, imposing four-story wood frame building that commanded the center of the block with its main doors facing north. Periodic construction added space over the years, eventually filled out at 17 classrooms in the main building, and several outbuildings for shop, cooking and a play shed. It was a big place.

Old Vernon opened Sept. 15, 1908, with 324 students, many of whom were exports from Highland School (today’s Martin Luther King Jr. School at 6th Avenue and Wygant Street), which had overflowed with more than 700 students.

By 1909, The Oregonian reported Vernon itself was already crowded and plans were being made to add a covered play shed, three portables and a manual training (shop) building.

By 1914 the block was a small campus of four buildings, bulging at the seams with new students. Enrollment ballooned to more than 800 students by the late teens. Meanwhile, plans were being made to build other nearby schools to take the pressure off and create closer-to-home options for local youngsters. Kennedy School on 33rd Avenue was opened in 1915 as part of this push.

By the mid 1920s, trends in school construction, safety and changing demographics were shaping the next generation of area schools. Disastrous school fires in other cities had galvanized the national building codes community – and Portland mayor Harry Lane – into calling for “fireproof” buildings.

In 1926, the Portland School Board voted to close Old Vernon and build a new school on the site we know today at 20th Avenue and Killingsworth Street. This was not a popular move in the community, and required the school board to acquire and raze more than two dozen houses at the new site.

The cornerstone on the new building was set June 6, 1932. A week later, when school ended for the year, Old Vernon closed for the last time.

A few weeks later, Aug. 14, an arsonist set fire to the old school building, lighting up the sky for miles around and bringing the building’s life to an end. The site was cleared and sold to developers who began building houses on the block in the early 1940s.

You’ll notice how house styles on that block are all later than those across the street. Now you know why.

For more information and photos of Old Vernon and several of the nearby houses that were part of the school operation, check out Doug’s website at AlamedaHistory.org and search for “Old Vernon.”

Do you have a question for the neighborhood historian? We love solving mysteries. Contact CNewsEditor@ConcordiaPDX.org with your question, and we’ll ask Doug Decker to do some sleuthing.

By Doug Decker, historian

The question: The building with a flagpole on the east side of 33rd near Alberta looks kind of out of place for a house, but too residential to have been a commercial building. What’s the story there? – Bianca Karjalainen, 32nd Avenue

The historian reports: Good eye. The building in question – 4828 NE 33rd Ave. – is the current home of the Oregon Stamp Society (OSS) but was originally constructed as a fire station, home of Engine Company 34, built in 1928.

The station was opened and dedicated Nov. 1, 1928, with Captain Dan Shaw in charge and R. Mitchell as junior captain. Over the years, the station also served the neighborhood as a polling place, toy drop-off during holiday charity drives, and the focus of summer community barbecues and open houses.

During the teens and 1920s, a series of similar small fire stations – that each typically housed just one engine and were known as “three-man stations” – were constructed in the heart of Portland’s residential neighborhoods. They were designed to fit in. Have a look at similar stations at 2200 N.E. 24th Ave. and at Southeast 13th Avenue and Tenino Street which, incidentally were also decommissioned in the late 1950s.

Portland Fire Chief Lee Holden (1925- 1927), who was also an amateur architect, designed these stations. Holden’s attention to details – the choice of red brick, the wide and inviting gables and exterior columns, the operating multi-pane casement windows, the interior boxed-beam ceilings and classic interior wood trim –all speak to popular residential design elements of the period.

Much of the original station interior on 33rd Avenue has been remodeled to serve the needs of the stamp club, but there are clues to its earlier life:

• The original fire station kitchen in the basement, with a bank of lockers to hold firefighters’ food
• The entry and waiting area (including fireplace, mantel and built-in inglenook bench)
• The captain’s office
• The roof dormer, which was once the top end of a tower for drying wet fire hose

Mechanical systems, according to OSS president Eric Hummel, have been replaced several times since the society acquired the building in 1960.

The original garage door for the fire engine was on the front right of the station, but a casement window from the south side was put in its place when the opening was bricked over in the early 1960s.

The station was functional until August 1959, when fire operations for the area shifted to the new station at 19th and Killingsworth (more on that in a moment), and Engine Company 34 was sent to serve the St. Johns neighborhood.

The closure was the result of a reorganization of the Portland Fire Bureau by city commissioner Stanley W. Earl and a $3 million bond measure passed by voters in 1957 to build seven new stations across the city.

The OSS purchased the decommissioned building in 1960 for $13,500. Reportedly, a church was vying to acquire the building as well.

The neighborhood mounted a major protest in 1959 when city council chose the site across from Vernon School as the location of the new fire station. Any CNews readers remember that uproar? We’re also looking for any photos of the old station during its years of operation. Stay tuned for details in a future column.

Have a question for the neighborhood historian? We love solving mysteries. Send your question to CNewsEditor@ConcordiaPDX.org and we’ll ask Doug Decker to do some digging.

By Doug Decker

The Question:
When I moved into our house in March 1962, there was a Joe Bernard Realty office in the building where Doggie Business is now. Joe said this area was part of the Bernardo family farm and there were chestnut trees from 42nd Avenue to 33rd.
My question: were there chestnut trees all along Alberta Court?
— Bob Walters, Alberta Court

The Historian Reports:
We really like questions like this, which require us to do some genealogy, some geography and some general asking around.

Joe Bernard was actually Joe Bennard, who was born in 1901 as Joe Bennardo. Joe ran a real estate company based in an office, now gone, that he built facing Alberta Court directly behind today’s Doggie Business. Joe built the Doggie Business building in 1937, originally a tavern and restaurant. Joe and his brothers – the brothers kept the original family name Bennardo – lived in the neighborhood, and one brother built the house three doors north on the west side of 42ndAvenue. But we weren’t able to verify if the Bennardos actually owned a farm, or what extent it may have covered.

The American chestnut (Castanea dentate) was a common tree in all American cities, but suffered a major disease outbreak that drastically reduced its numbers by the mid-1930s. It seems unlikely that enough of these great old trees would have been left mid-century to have lined Alberta Court. And of course it was called Alberta Street then and traveled along through open fields and forest stands.

And here’s an interesting note: Alberta Street was renamed to Alberta Court after a vote of residents on the street in summer 1940 and a city ordinance passed Aug. 28, 1940. On Aug. 11, 1940, The Oregonian reported, “Multnomah County suggested the city change the name of the street within the city limits to avoid confusion, and a survey of sentiment of the property owners was taken. Most of them approve the change to avoid confusion.”

We pulled up a series of aerial photos from the 1920s and 1930s that show the western stretch of the street, and we don’t see a line of trees in this area. We did connect with a former paperboy who delivered newspapers along Alberta Court in the late 1940s and, although he remembered homeless camps there along what was the city limits, he didn’t recall seeing any orchard or line of chestnuts.

This doesn’t mean there weren’t chestnuts along Alberta Court, just that evidence is scarce. In fact, it does appear there is a lone survivor of what Joe was remembering. You can find a beautiful old chestnut tree today at the northeast corner of 41st Avenue and Alberta Court, reminding us they were, indeed, in the neighborhood. We’ll keep digging on this and welcome any information from CNEWS readers.

Thanks for asking!

We love solving mysteries, so if you have a question for the neighborhood historian, email it to CNewsEditor@ConcordiaPDX.org and we’ll ask Doug Decker to do some digging.

By Doug Decker, Historian

Development of the streetcar line changed everything about the landscape that eventually became our neighborhood. It takes lots of imagination to conjure up a picture of what our neighborhood might have looked like 100 years ago. The fields and forests of today’s Alberta district, Vernon, and Concordia were way out in the country, beyond the far edge of Portland. But one key development changed all that: the Alberta Streetcar.

First constructed in 1903, the line left downtown at SW 2nd and Alder, crossed the old Steel Bridge and ran north up Union (today’s Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.), where it turned east on Alberta to NE 25th. A few years later it was extended five blocks east on Alberta to NE 30th, and then a few years later north on NE 30th to Ainsworth, which became the end of the line.

Wherever the streetcar went, so did development. Initially just two rails in the mud through brush and open fields, by the heyday of Portland’s streetcars in the teens and 1920s, the Alberta streetcar had attracted scores of business owners and thousands of residents to this new developing part of the city. Its impact on the shape and feel of the neighborhood can’t be overstated.

The December 28, 1913 edition of The Oregonian reported: “The streetcars are now operated to East Thirtieth street and Ainsworth avenue. The line runs double cars in order to take care of the traffic and even then the cars morning and evening are overcrowded.”

The fact that autos were not the primary mode of transport in those days meant streetcars—and lots of foot traffic—fueled growth of the business district along Alberta. It was a thriving place of activity and commerce, not unlike today. But by the 1940s, with automobiles dominating the transportation picture and Union Avenue no longer the main north-south travel corridor (travel had shifted to Interstate Avenue), the Alberta streetcar became disused and was eventually replaced by a bus. By then, Portland had turned its back on its once robust streetcar system. The last day for the line was August 1, 1948.

As if to silence the era of the Alberta streetcar once and for all, in September 1949 The Oregonian reported that the City of Portland authorized a $75,000 paving contract that took 11 days to erase all evidence of the tracks:

“A total of 110,748 yards of materials went into the project to bury the old Alberta streetcar tracks. Paving tonnage amounted to 8,407 tons of blacktop.”

Today, there aren’t many specific clues other than the hundreds of streetcar-era buildings that would not have developed without the line. When you’re out for a walk along our neighborhood’s path of the old streetcar line (1.8 miles along Alberta between MLK and 30th; then 30th Avenue between Alberta and Ainsworth), see what evidence you can find.

Check out Northeast Portland neighborhood historian Doug Decker’s blog www.alamedahistory.org for more on local lore, including the history of the nearby Broadway Streetcar line.

ASK the Historian: Have a history question that needs to be solved? Drop us a note and we’ll put Doug Decker on it. Email CNewsEditor@ConcordiaPDX.org.

The life and times of a neighborhood store and its people

by Doug Decker, historian

This is the third of a four-part series about the early days of the Alberta business district, written by Northeast Portland neighborhood historian Doug Decker. To read more of Doug’s research and writing— or to read the full text of the early news stories mentioned here—visit his blog

Picking up where we left off, one of our favorite momand-pop grocery stores, at the northwest corner of NE 27th and Going, had risen from a vacant lot in the midst of the Alberta District’s 1909 muddy streets, to a men’s clothing store in 1911, to a vibrant neighborhood grocery run by a local family from 1921 to 1943. The photo featured in the April edition of Concordia News showed proprietor Agnes Coulter out front of the store—Alameda Park Grocery—in its prime.

But during the war years, like so many things, shopping patterns were changing.

In 1943, Isabelle Coulter sold her pride and joy to Charles and Vera Fiebke who held it for just a year before selling it to Henry and Ruth Rieckers, who owned the business until 1953. During this decade, the business was referred to as “Rieckers” and as “Rieckers Grocery.” A classified advertisement in The Oregonian on March 3, 1953 indicated the Rieckers were retiring and putting the business up for sale, asking $6,500.

On June 24, 1953, the property was purchased from the Rieckers by John Henry Moad and his wife Lucy Jane Moad. They operated the store—as Moad’s Grocery—from 1953 to 1961 when it was sold to Robert A. and Louise M. Klatke, who changed the name to Bob’s Quik Stop Market. But the Klatkes didn’t hang on for long.

An article in The Oregonian on June 29, 1962 reports a robbery at Bob’s Quick Stop. Klatke, age 56, was robbed with a knife to his throat. A few months later, he and Louise put the store back on the market, selling it to Agnes Martin on November 2, 1962. Then, sometime during the mid-1960s, the building ceased functioning as a store.

By that time, mom and pop neighborhood grocery stores were having a hard time hanging on. The whole retail grocery business was changing and local grocery stores were quickly becoming convenience rather than primary shopping locations. (To read more about local shops that once served the neighborhood, check out www.alamedahistory.org and click on the story When Mom and Pop Stores Ruled.)

The Martin family owned the property for the next six years and at least one reference to the building shows it as the Mt. Zion Church of God in Christ. The Polk City Directory for 1965 shows the building as vacant, and in 1967, it is listed simply as L.S. Martin. On September 17, 1968, the Martins sold the property to Carl E. Bass (son) and Viola Matheson (mother). Bass, who was a potter, turned the space into an artist’s studio and lived in the property until his death in April 2001 at the age of 73.

The property was purchased from the Bass estate by investor/developers George and Isabelle Zitcak, who held it for just four months before selling it in April 2002 to Chad Crouch and Sheryl Eckrich. This is where the story gets interesting, which will be the subject of our final installment in the next edition of Concordia News.