Lost on the Oregon Electric: Between the Masonic Building and the Grand Theater

With the Oregon Electric tracks in the news, it seemed like a good time to visit another empty lot in Salem.

Between the Masonic building and the Grand Theater, is a void formed by two lots. The buildings whose footprints are empty were never as distinguished as those on the corners of the block face, but they represented commerce, culture, and a more lively street.

Unfortunately, good photos have been hard to find, as attention has been on the corners rather than middle of the block.

But the discovery of tracks offered a different route to imagery. Thanks to a tweet from KandN, we realized that searching on the Oregon Electric would turn up a few images!

High Street, University of Washington Special Collections

High Street, PDXHistory.com
showing tops of two lost buildings
and void where hotel is today

High Street, Al Jones copy, Nomination Photos
of Grand Theater to National Register

The two-bay lot today
with hotel on right

1926 Sanborn Map showing block face
on High between State and Court

The "Central Stage Terminal and Hotel" doesn't get much attention these days (subsumed into the Grand as the "annex") but its story is interesting. From the Nomination to the National Register for the downtown historic district:

This addition to the Odd Fellows Hall (see 195 High Street NE), designed by Morris H. Whitehouse, was completed in 1921. Whitehouse was born in Portland, graduated from MIT in 1906, and entered into several partnerships. This building dates from a period when he had no partners, however. The Mediterranean style he utilized in the design of this building include round arched windows and roofing tiles. In 1935-1937 and in 1951, Frank H. Strubble made revisions to this building and the building to the north. James L. Payne made further revisions in 1952.

The Odd Fellows were responsible for having this building constructed. The Odd Fellows was one of the most successful of over 200 fraternal orders found in nineteenth-century America. The IOOF contributed, socially, to Salem by providing benefits to its members for the cost of illness and funerals, administrative training, and an array of community services (including the founding of a cemetery for all and a public reading room).

The Central Stage Terminal and Hotel company was incorporated September 10, 1921 by J.E. Lewis, L.R. Applegate, and John H. Carson. By 1925 W.W. Chadwick was president and Richard Shepard of Eugene was secretary/treasurer of the company. Transportation was a big part of the history of this building. Buses from surrounding communities and larger cities drove down the alley to the west and received and discharged passengers at the back of this building. The Central Stage Terminal and Hotel Company leased the facility for $650, and sub-leased space to auxiliary businesses, including a barber shop, a coffee shop and a cigar shop. In 1928 Chadwick moved the business across the street to the northwest corner of High and Court (the Senator Hotel), and from then on Chemeketa Lodge utilized the Hotel which remained the principle business upon which service industries depended.

The first floor of this building was used as a restaurant, a hotel bus depot entrance, and a store. The second floor contained rooms for a manager and an office, with rooms with baths and closets for hotel accommodations, lit by skylights, off a central hall in the back. The third floor was used by the Odd Fellows for a billiard room and library.

One of the lost buildings, the south one of wood, was the Fashion Stables (and later garage), some of which can be seen here. About the brick building we haven't learned much, but the Sanborn suggests it was for auto sales. Just one block north between Chemeketa and Center, at mid-century there was a cluster of car dealerships.

Perhaps there will be more to say at another time.

In any event, it is good to remember a time with a more lively downtown, and the tracks and buildings were an important part of it.

Lost: Buster Brown Shoe Store, Knighton Neighbor

A friendly correspondent shared with us notes from Tuesday's talk on W.C. Knighton held at Deepwood.

The architecture started, as it must, with the Capital National Bank.

Plenty has been written about that building and its relation to a model in Philadelphia.* But what about the building next door?

At top is a detail from an image at the State Library. We haven't found much yet about the "Buster Brown" store, but it's gone now. It would have fit it with the other brick two-story storefronts along Commercial and State streets.

Today, it's gutted, a drive-through window for a bank and a surface parking lot in back.

(For more on W. C. Knighton see our notes here.)

* Apparently there was some thought that the attribution of the general facade plan to Frank Furness was uncertain.  But as far back as 1960, writing in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Lee Nelson compared the two designs and concluded C.S. McNally "appropriated the design" from Furness.  (JSAH, Vol. 19, No. 2 [May, 1960], pp. 57-61).

Decorations Displace Historical Marker at Conference Center - and Snow!

Remember the historical marker and interpretive panel on the stair landing in the Salem Conference Center, overlooking the intersection of Ferry and Commercial?

It commemorated the Holman and Nesmith Buildings, currently where the parking garage and Umpqua Bank are. The Territorial and early State governments met in the Holman and Nesmith buildings, and you can see the heading "Statehood began here" at the top of the panel.

But the panel is gone, replaced by glittery holiday decorations!

We wonder what happened. We'll let you know if we find out!

The snow and glitter makes us think of this picture: Joseph Holman's house is also gone, leveled or burned in the early 1900s for Max Buren's house (and here).

The Holman and Buren houses were located on Court Street, between Cottage and Winter, where now is a surface parking lot for First Presbyterian Church. Virginia Green has a series of slides on the houses in the Piety Hill neighborhood moved or demolished for State office buildings in the Capitol Mall. The first slide in the series talks about First Presbyterian's move from where the Labor building is now, and the houses the Sanctuary's new location displaced.

And since snow is also top of mind, here's two skating scenes from 1911 and 1914.

Can you imagine a sustained cold spell long enough to freeze over the river and slough?! It's getting warmer here for sure.

Historic images from Salem Public Library Historic Photograph Collections:
Joseph Holman House
Skaters 1911
Skaters 1914

For more on Joseph Holman, a pioneer of 1839, see the Peoria Party, and biographies in the Oregon Historical Quarterly and the Salem Pioneer Cemetery, where he is buried.

Lost Glories: Old City Hall - Knighton Perfects, Pugh Struggles with Concrete

With news about the Police Station's growth and the seismic instability of New City Hall, maybe it's time to revisit Old City Hall.

Sue Bell writes:

Nothing remains now to mark its presence but a stone shaft and plaque on the southwest corner of Chemeketa and High Streets. Erected in 1989, the monument was installed 17 years after demolition of the original City Hall building when the Civic Center Complex was completed in 1972....

The remaining salvageable material was carted off by wrecking contractor E.S. Ritter to dispose of as he saw fit.

Though the property is now bank parking lot, in a corner which stands the easily overlooked stone shaft commemorating Old City Hall, there are still bits and pieces of the venerable municipal structure scattered throughout the City. In these traces, the memory lives on.

It's a little lonely here.


Not long after it was built it looked like this. Chemeketa is not yet paved here.

Bell continues:

On the 19th of January, 1893, Mayor Gatch and the City Council received recommendations from the Committee on Fire and Water to begin the process of acquiring new City Hall property in order to consolidate all the municipal offices in one central area. An amendment to the City Charter was called for to allow bonding to float a $10,000 indebtedness to the City, which would be added to the $20,000 proceeds from sales of current City property. By April, the Building Committee had completed specifications on the City Hall and were ready to entertain bids on the new construction.

The plans for a "High Victorian Gothic" edifice submitted by Walter D. Pugh were accepted by the Council on April 20th. Pugh's compensation was to be 4% of the contract price for the construction. However, one change in the specifications was recommended at the Council meeting: the clock tower would be 136 feet high, rather than the 156 feet in Pugh's plan.

Here's a much larger image from more recent times, complete with parking meters - be sure to click to enlarge!


One detail that seems have been lost to history is the role William C. Knighton had in the design. According to an article from 1894, just before he was finishing up the Deepwood project (though it didn't get that name until well into the 20th century), Knighton's

first work was to perfect a set for plans for the Salem City hall now under construction.

It would be interesting to know just what this "perfecting" involved! Was it detail work a draftsman might undertake? Was it structural engineering, perhaps for the tower? Was it what we'd today call "value engineering"?

In February 1895, a list of warrants shows that Knighton was still working with C. S. McNally and that Charles Burggraf also had his fingers in the cookie jar!

In any case, in the same report as the list of warrants there was apparent confusion in authority between the superintending architect Pugh and construction superintendent Harrild, and within a few months it had blossomed into a full reprimand over - wait for it! - concrete and masonry:

The report listed several problems with structural concrete, masonry, and iron, and concluded

Architect Pugh has exceeded his authority and has violated the spirit of his contract with the city and laid himself open to just criticism and reprimand by the council.

Maybe it's no wonder the tower on the Grand Theater collapsed in a snow storm! (A correspondent has mentioned another problem tower associated with Pugh, but we couldn't find the reference - we'll update if we can.)

Today the early 70s brutalism of New City Hall probably looks ugly and useless in the same way the chunky Romanesque Gothic of Old City Hall looked in 1972. So that's a cautionary tale about the vagaries of fashion and about probable folly in rushing to vacate and demolish the Civic Center. It's also a little alarming that Salem seems to have a problem with public buildings and their concrete!

But more than anything, it's sad that nothing better than a parking lot has replaced the Old City Hall. That's real ugliness.

(Images: Old City Hall late 1890s and Old City Hall with Parking Meters from Salem Public Library Historic Photograph Collection. It has lots of other images in the collection.)

Holiday Shopping and the Empty Lots - Argo Hotel, Busick Market, Eldridge Block

Since big box shopping season is upon us, along with the crazy hunt for a parking spot, here are a couple of lost buildings - and the big box car parking that replaced them. The lost aren't necessarily "glories," especially the Busick Market, but you have to admit they're more attractive than what is currently there. (The angles and scales on the modern shots are pretty close to those of the old.)

(Argo Hotel, Salem Public Library Oregon Historic Photo Collection)

This isn't exactly an empty lot - we'll call it a series of stacked lots over a retail cavern - but it's not put to very good use, either. On the north side of Chemeketa street between Liberty and Commercial you can see the corner of the alley in each photo. On the alley today are Carl's Cuisine, the elevator, and J.C. Penny. Presumably the Argo was demolished when the parking garage went up (but we haven't confirmed this).

On the south side of Chemeketa, the parking garage wiped out the Eldridge Block. The very south-most portion remains today as the home of Greenbaum's, but before the garage the block was three times as big, and extended to the corner where the shoe shop is today. You can see it here and here. And here is one a little later in 1954 that shows the whole Eldridge block with Greenbaum's.

(Eldridge Block, Salem Public Library Oregon Historic Photo Collection)

Another of the empty lots is the one behind TJ Maxx and Rite-Aid downtown. Next to TJ Maxx is a curious building, a gabled garage with two mostly parabolic-y arches on the side facing Marion Street. You can just see it behind the man's head in the first image.

(Orignal photo, badly identified, Salem Public Library Oregon Historic Photo Collection)

There's not a whole lot written and easily accessible on the Busick Market in this location, but the name remains in the Busick Court restaurant on Court Street. There was more than one Busick Market location, and we don't know the relation between them all.

So here are three ways the old downtown used to have a lot more character. We drink a toast to lost charm and buildings lost!

Lost Glories: Bootlegger Bligh and August Schreiber

Oh, the stories long gone hotels would tell!

After Oregon had gone dry, but before Prohibition went Constitutional, theater owner T.G. Bligh was busted for booze. In February 1917 agents confiscated seven cases of beer from his home, his hotel, and his theater.

Today we remember Bligh mainly as the man behind the recently demolished Capitol Theater.

But in the late Vaudeville and early movie eras, Bligh was an emperor of entertainment, and had a large chain of Salem theaters. It cannot surprise us he was might be involved in illicit beer! And it wasn't the only time the hotel was associated with Salem's seedy side.

Empty lots, unfortunately, commemorate most of the theaters today.

Facing State Street between Liberty and High, on either side of the alley running between the McGilchrist block and the Masonic building, are two parking lots.

In mid-century Salem, however, State Street offered a continuous line of buildings and a lively streetscape.

Here you can see (L to R) the clock in front of Pomeroy building, the Gray building, the gap for Liberty, the McGilchrist block, the Bligh Hotel, the State Hotel, the Masonic Building, and the Capitol dome in the distance. Notice the two-way traffic on State Street! (Centering the word "Bligh" over the "t" in "Hotel" makes the sign read "Blight" - funny!)

The Bligh Block started construction in 1910. On November 29th, a small news item noted that Bligh had placed a $20 gold piece among the bricks by the cornerstone. A thief had vandalized the bricks and taken the gold.

A 1927 account describes the many theaters of T.G. Bligh and says he

in 1908 opened the Star Theater in Salem. This was the first ten-cent show house in the city and had a seating capacity of one hundred and ninety-seven. In 1912* he established the Bligh Hotel, provided with sixty guest rooms, and in the same year opened the Bligh Theater, which contained five hundred seats. It was closed in 1927 and the Star Theater was sold in 1912. He also owned the Mascot Theater, with seating accommodations for two hundred and fifty persons, and the Bligh, formerly known as the Klinger** Grand Theater, provided with three hundred and fifty seats. He added the Liberty to his chain of theaters, and for six years was the owner of the house, which had five hundred seats. He was one of the foremost business men of the city and left the deep impress of his individuality upon the history of its development. In November, 1925, when fifty-four years of age, he was fatally injured in an automobile accident. His widow still makes her home in Salem.

It notes that the Capitol theater was originally known as the "New Bligh Capitol Theater."

According to the downtown historic district nomination form,

Following the death of T. G. Bligh, Frank D. Bligh took over the family hotel and theater business. In 1926 he built the Bligh Building [site of the restaurant La Capitale] and the adjoining (to the east) Capitol Theater of reinforced concrete.

Across the alley from the Bligh Block was another hotel in the Schreiber Block.

Information on it is harder to find. At the top of the building are the words "Schreiber, 1902" and we recall a 1908 note about a Schreiber saloon on State Street. The void is also two separate tax lots, and the photo of the fire (below) appears to show two buildings.

The Polk directories show August Schreiber operating a saloon from at least 1889, and on State Street from 1891. In the 1905 directory, when the Schreiber block appears for the first time, he also has a saloon in the building. It seems likely that August had been a successful operator and was able to finance his own building.

As for the hotels, details are few. Around 1905 "The Keith" Hotel appears next to the Schreiber block. We were not able to determine if it had a separate name for the building and it will take more digging to learn about this building. Ads for the Keith called out "furnished rooms" and a "European plan."

The State Hotel dates from much later than this period.

One online note suggests the Schreiber Building may have burned on December 6, 1966 - but the newspaper of the 7th and 8th doesn't seem to have an article on it, and we cannot confirm it.

The fire in the Bligh Hotel was front page news. It burned on Saturday, June 8, 1975. According to the June 9th Statesman, the first alarm was called in at 12:19am and not long after it was a full three-alarm blaze. Like many old hotels in Salem and elsewhere, the Bligh operated as a boarding house (or SRO) with 40 rental units. The rooms rented for about $2.75 a night. About 58 residents, whom the paper called "the transients or winos of Salem," escaped, but two died, Arnold "Smokey" Stover, age 48, and August "Auggie" Cico, age 49. Both were farm laborers and had lived there for several years.

The paper quoted another resident, "Okie," about his night:

I had beans and cornbread for supper Saturday after working in the broccoli fields all day. Then I went to bed about 8pm because I was tired. Didn't get drunk last night. Friday, but not last night.

Other businesses in the block were Transamerica Title Insurance, Steimonts Studio, and The Jewel Box jewelry store.

Within the week, investigators determined arson was the likely cause.

Today, all three lots remain vacant, generating fees from auto parking. After both fires, it was apparently not profitable to rebuild.

The arched flying "buttress" that appears behind the Roth Building (old Jonathan's space) cannot be part of the original Bligh Theater or sit in its old footprint as a faux-vestigial proscenium. On the north side of the Masonic Building, and across the alley from the Roth Building, the 1926 Sanborn shows a large second-hand furniture and appliance store constructed with "wood posts," and it is possible the buttress was actually to stabilize that building. Anyone know what it really is?

The Bligh family members are buried in City View cemetery. The monument reproduces Bligh's signature, presumably, and is one of our favorites.

The Schreibers are mostly buried in St. Barbara's cemetery.

Photo credits:
Empty Lots: Personal CT "Archives"
Down State Street, 1941: Salem Public Library Historic Photograph Collections
Bligh Block, 1940s: Salem Public Library Historic Photograph Collections (zoom in!)
TG Bligh: Oregon State Library
State Hotel: Marion Dean Ross, University of Oregon
Firefighting, 1966: Salem Public Library Historic Photograph Collections

* The 1911 Polk directory has an ad for the Bligh Hotel and several listings for businesses in the Bligh Block. It seems possible that the 1912 date of completion is errant, a year late.

** This may be a reference to a different business operated by Maurice Klinger or one of his children! Bits on Klinger here and here.

Lost Glories: Frank Lloyd Wright's Design for the Capital Journal

The Statesman-Journal is celebrating some 160 years this week, and CT will join in the fun.



One of the most notable empty lots in town is mid-block on Chemeketa between Liberty and High. You can see the alleyway in both images.

It was the site of the Art Deco-y building for the Capital Journal. You can see similar (but plainer, and much less glazed) buildings at 14th and State, the site of the Capital Market and an early Safeway Store, and the north side of Court Street between Front and Commercial.

Here's a view from the street corner looking east, towards High Street. That's the old city hall in the background.

The view appears to show digging out the foundation for Pietro Belluschi's First National Bank building.

But Belluschi wasn't the first distinguished architect for the block!

Salem almost had a Frank Lloyd Wright!

In his article about the project,* Donald Leslie Johnson writes that in the spring of 1931

Wright was invited by John Clifford, president of the Salem Arts League, to give a talk in Salem and meet politicians, including the new governor, Julius Meier. A major inducement had been the prospect of a commission that was described as a "new capitol building group." At dinner before his talk, Wright met the respected editor [George Putnam], known as a crusader for reform.

...

Within days Wright received the retainer with a cover letter outlining the proposed building's program. Putnam cautioned that it would be "some years" before the building would be required, that was, at least until a current lease expired. The flat site west of City Hall, on the corner of Chemeketa and Liberty streets "just off the business district," was given as square (165 by 166 feet). It therefore occupied the (northwest) quarter of a city block.

With the retainer in hand, Wright made some drawings, but apparently Putnam didn't like them. One of the elements likely problematic was the early approach to columns that ultimately informed those in the Johnson Wax Building. There was also disagreement over some apartments, a roof-top garden, and other elements.

So here's a double toast. One to an historic near-miss! And a toast to the Art Deco Capital Journal building that was torn down and is now a parking lot.

* 'Frank Lloyd Wright's Design for the "Capital Journal," Salem, Oregon (1932),' by Donald Leslie Johnson, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 58-65

For the one built Frank Lloyd Wright around here, see the Gordon House in Silverton.

The Salem photos are from the Salem Public Library Historic Photos Collection here and here. The captions are inconsistent: One says the building was finished in 1924, the other 1946. The later date is plainly wrong; if the date of the image (not the building completion) is correct, it shows work for the Belluschi bank building on the corner. If it is dated incorrectly, it might be from the early 1930s, after the Wright commission was declined and the corner lot occupied by a new filling station. The Sanborn maps don't help much: The 1926/27 map shows a home on the corner, and the 1950 update shows the printing plant and offices. Either way, the CJ building appears to date from several years before 1946.

#Salemia at the Blind School

With the demolition at the Blind School, it seemed like a good time to remember it.

Here's the view in 1892 from the front of Bush House looking north across Mission Street. You can see the stone wall that's still on the edge of Bush Park in front of Bush House at the intersection with Church Street. If you click on the image to see an enlargement, you can see the dome of the old Capitol in the distance on the left.

There are few trees, and most of them you see today were planted. The construction is wood, though replaced by brick and concrete in the early 20th century, and now demolished again, this time for a parking lot.

Someone really needs to take down the sign! (Though if they did, we might forget we live in #Salemia...)

(Here's the same view before the rubble.)

Lost Glories: McMahans Furniture Site and the Griswold Block

One of the downtown empty lots is in the news today. Writing in the Statesman, Michael Rose says that a bank wants to buy the lot and erect a new building.

Columbia Bank intends to buy the lot at 260 State St. and construct a building on the property, said Mark Shipman, a Salem attorney who represents Columbia. The bank wants to open a branch in the proposed building, which also would have space for other office and retail tenants, Shipman said.

The lot at present is a gravel wasteland, the sole residue after the 2006 fire that destroyed the McMahan's furniture store. (The SJ story has more on that, as well as Robert West's historical page - scroll down to item 9)

Before the building operated as McMahon's it was a Hogg Brother's furniture store.

But even that was a second or third round of redevelopment. In 1940, the earlier building had been demolished.

The history on the first and second set of buildings is not entirely certain and in the interest of time we haven't verified the online accounts.

According to West, the Griswold Block was one of very first brick commercial buildings in Salem, originally built in 1858. It was enlarged to 3 stories in 1862, and survived a fire in 1865.

In the early 1900s, architect Fred Legg seems to have had an office in the building, by then called the Murphy Block. During the snowstorm of January 1937, someone took a photo from the sidewalk near Alessandro's site, looking across to the Pioneer Trust building and the hotel. (For a better scan and detail see here.)

The new building in 1940 was then also called the Murphy building.

The corner of Commercial and State was hopping at one time. We saw some of the activity in the images of the parking lot next to Alessandro's. It is one of the prime corners in Salem, and it should be hopping again. This section of State Street can be lovely, and full of activity.

Hopefully the bank's desire for a parking lot and a drive-through window can be tempered. Downtown doesn't need more parking lots! It needs lovely buildings and inviting storefronts!

(Top image here, all historical images from Salem Public Library Historic Photograph Collections.)

Lost Glories: The Buildings of Alessandro's Parking Lot

That Alessandro's will be closing is sad news.

It is good to see a replacement business lined up, though. The Old Spaghetti Warehouse will be an apt replacement, though it represents a "cheezy" historicity rather than something more authentic and perhaps more interesting. In the 90s, about the same time Thompson's opened, the Willamette Brew Pub operated in the space, but for whatever reasons it did not succeed.

About the Alessandro's building, the Salem Downtown Register of Historic Places Nomination Form (7mb) is dismissive and calls it a missed opportunity:

This is a two-story commercial building. The date of construction may have been as early as 1870. The Sanborn maps show that Durbin's Livery was at this location in 1884; Minto & Lowe Livery in 1888; a hardware and stove shop in 1890; YMCA Rooms in 1895; and an electric painting company and photo shop in 1926. [Here's a photo of the front when Buren & Hamilton was there, in the very early 1900s, long before the remodeled facade; the caption misidentifies this building, in part because of the address change of 1904] Substantial changes have occurred to the building and the latest remodeling appears to have occurred in the 1990s. The current facade has brick veneer on the first one-and-one-half stories and is stucco covered above. Windows are arched and fixed. The building does not contribute to the character of the district in its current condition.

More interesting than the building, therefore, is the huge void just to the north of it.

Yup. One of Salem's beautiful surface parking lots.

Here's what used to be there. This is a composite of photos from the 1938 opening of the new State Capitol. The fellows in white and boaters are Cherrians - much like Portland's Rosarians, whom we still see during the Rose Festival.

The parking lot sits on the footprint of three buildings. (Click to enlarge photo with notes.) The two Breyman buildings (here's the oldest one, the "White Corner") on the corner of Court and Commercial happily remain, though much remodeled.

We've been thinking about other buildings leveled for surface parking, and this may become a series of toasts to other lost glories.

A tip of the pint to Alessandro's and to the lost glories of downtown Salem.

(Photo composite: Here, and here. For another view of the lost buildings, which includes Alessandro's building, see here. All historic photos from the Salem Public Library Historic Photograph Collections. Streetview from Google.)