By Carrie Wenninger, CNews Media Team

You Are Confined Only By The Walls You Build Yourself

Mural Location: Aladdin Finishers Inc., 2127 N.E. Alberta St.

Artist: Blaine Fontana with special thanks to the Furious Six of Fontana Studios.

Representation/age: A follow-up inspirational message to the 2013 mural on the opposite side of the building, the artwork was painted as a part of Forest for the Trees’ annual mural event in 2014. The quote is from author Andrew Murphy. FFTT is a nonprofit project dedicated to the creation of contemporary public art in Portland.

Business owner: Steffen Bettger is the fourth generation proprietor of Aladdin Finishers, established in 1948. The master craftsmen have worked on Liberace’s touring piano, restored a cobbler’s bench owned by Ben Franklin, and are presently restoring 130 chairs and Victorian era sofas belonging to the Columbia Queen steamboat.

Fun Fact: Now in its fourth year, Forest for the Trees’ annual mural painting event brings together artists from all over the world, and is putting Portland on the map as a city known for its street art!

By Nancy Varekamp, CNews Editor

OSS celebrates centennial

They aren’t full-time residents, but many Portland members of the Oregon Stamp Society devote untold hours in Concordia. They’ve spent 56 of the organization’s 100 years based at the former fire station on 33rd Avenue at Alberta Court, and this year they invited visitors from around the world to visit.

“The stability of having our own clubhouse and library promotes a vibrant philatelic community,” pointed out Eric Hummel, president.

You’ll find him at the clubhouse several days a week – frequently with other members –maintaining the building and the stamp collections and displays.

When OSS bought the retired fire station in 1960, it was unusual for a stamp club to own a building. Now several do, but Hummel believes OSS’ is the most unusual, despite the fact American Philatelic Society’s clubhouse is a converted match factory in Pennsylvania.

OSS activities include two meetings per month, an annual auction, the Rose City and Collectors Corner monthly stamp fairs and the PIPEX annual national stamp show. The centennial prompted a few more gatherings this year.

The 220 members – in Oregon, throughout the United States and Canada – hosted a summer exhibition at the Multnomah County Central Library, a clubhouse reception in July and an August weekend-long open house, complete with building tours, exhibits of members’ stamp collections and a display depicting the group’s history.

Sheryll Ruecker, OSS archivist, reported on the summer celebrations in the journal Federated Philatelist. They included installing a time capsule on clubhouse grounds. Filling it are club memorabilia, old and new philatelic souvenirs and U.S. Forever stamps.

“I wonder what those members who open it up 100 years from now will make of them,” she said. “Will Forever stamps actually last forever?”

When OSS purchased the clubhouse, it added initiation fees to its membership dues to help pay off the $13,500 city loan. Renting the space to other groups helped pay the mortgage – in less than 10 years – and continues to help support building maintenance.

After 56 years, Hummel said, members continue to feel welcome in Concordia and they return the favor.

“We are in a residential neighborhood,” he pointed out. “We and all who use the building make an effort to be good neighbors.

By Doug Decker

Prescott Street jogs at its intersections with 37th and 33rd avenues for reasons steeped in time, technology and development strategies.

The Question: Why does Prescott Street jog between 33rd and 37th avenues? There must be a reason. – Dave Lynch, 35th Place

The Historian Reports: In this case there is no one single reason. There are multiple reasons related to changes in surveying proficiency, the passage of time, the helter-skelter nature of development and developers operating at the edge of the city limits in1900, and a complete absence of planning in our turn-of-the-last-century city.

Let’s look at the basic ingredients.

The grid
Back in 1850, surveyors used a grid to map Oregon and to organize our landscape into big boxes and small boxes, known as townships, ranges and sections. In Northeast Portland, our main east-west streets are organized on section or half-section lines. Prescott – all but the four-block stretch we’re talking about here – rests on a half section line.

The plats
Portland has more than 900 of these, basically plans that divide the land into lots and streets. Developers were in charge of their own plats, and they gave them unique names – some of which are pretty interesting, but that’s a subject for a future column. A plat called Willamette Addition, drawn and filed in 1888, contains the area from Skidmore to Killingsworth streets and from 33rd to 37th avenues. Of particular note, running along the bottom of that plat, is our mystery stretch of Prescott between 33rd and 37th.

So here’s what happened
The Willamette Addition was anchored on the south boundary to what in 1888 was thought to be the half-section line, the future Prescott. Actual development of the Willamette Addition didn’t happen until the 1920s and, inmany cases, much later.

Both Alameda Park (the neighboring plat to the west) and Wilshire (the neighboring plat to the east) were laid out in 1909 and 1921 respectively, by different developers using different survey technology. And guess what? The location of the real Prescott (in alignment with the more-recently-surveyed half-section line) moved about 75 feet to the north.

Meanwhile, the Willamette Addition was still just a drawing and the raw land was owned by different developers. Its four-block southern boundary, referred to as Columbia Street, was stuck on the grid of 1888 and quickly became irrelevant.

The developers of Alameda and Wilshire weren’t in control of the Willamette Addition, but they had to build streets around it and needed to tie their new neighborhoods into the actual half-section-line-based street we knowtoday as Prescott. So, build they did, marooning this yet-to-be developed four-block stretch of what they called Columbia Street 75 feet to the south, and necessitating eventual construction of the s-curves we know today when development of the Willamette Addition finally followed years later.

Thanks for asking!

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

National Night Out was a hit again this year.

More than 30 children, adults and dogs started the Aug. 2 evening at Dekum Court. They barbecued, watched Dragon Theater’s Snow Queen and her Sister, indulged in balloons and bubble machines, and decorated their vehicles.

They traversed the 1½ miles to Fernhill Park – escorted by motorcycle police officers – astride their bikes, trikes, wagons, skates, scooters and skate boards. At the park, they were greeted by Collage’s art activities, a balloon artist, a henna artist, more than 600 additional neighbors, and the Wanderlust Circus accompanied by the band Three for Silver.

Thanks to National Night Out sponsors New Seasons, Safeway and Umpqua Bank, and partners Home Forward Dekum Court Community and Trash for Peace. Thanks for another successful series of five Concerts in the Park go to the Fernhill Concert Committee: Robert Bowles, Jim & Robin Johnson, Chris Lopez, Anne Rothert and Katie Ugolini.