Eulogies for Eugene: The Eckerlen Building & its Owner

While we wait for the new grocery store - or whatever it is that's going to go in at 145 Liberty - we should remember Eugene Eckerlen. With Seraphin Beck and Maurice Klinger, he was also part of a cluster of Alsatians who came to Salem and were instrumental in its beer culture.¹

Eckerlen (also Eugene Eckerlin) has appeared several times here at CT. He has appeared in stories about the burial of Seraphin Beck in 1899 near the site of Mary Eckerlen, about the 1903 sale of the Capital Brewery and formation of the Salem Brewing Association parnership, and the 1908 Saloon Ordinance. He'll likely appear in more!

I have no idea what Eckerlen was like as a person. Evidence for his personality is scant; most of his biography and personality remains opaque.

But what his clear is that he faced no small amount of trial and sorrow. Over his life he lost three great things: His first wife, a son, and a career.

Coincidentally, like its namesake, the Eckerlen building is also hidden. Like many of the downtown buildings, it has undergone a curvy moderne update in the 1940s. You wouldn't know how old it is from the outside. In this photo from 1939, the Bishop's sign is on the front of the Eckerlen building, which sits between the Gray building on the corner and the Montgomery Ward building. (Virginia Green's walking tour shows the Eckerlen Building as you're going the other way, and a straight-on shot of its front elevation.)

The Nomination Form for the Salem Downtown Historic District gives much of its history. Mostly it's pretty good, but we'll see a couple of instances where it's misleading.

The Eckerlen Building was built in 1894, and added to in the 1910s...the building is associated with the Gray and, primarily, the Eckerlen families, who played an important role in the transportation and commercial history of Salem in the late 1800s and 1900s.

The Gray family evidently had this two-story constructed in 1894, just three years after the completion of the larger Gray block of shops immediately to the south. In 1895 both floors of the Eckerlen building housed agricultural implements and machinery. The Gray brothers, Charles A., George B., and William T., contributed to the turn-of the-century up-building of Salem. In the late 1880s, Charles A. Gray was the superintendent of the Salem Street Railway Company. The Polk Salem directory listed George B. and William T. Gray as a realtor and a capitalist, respectively. By the early 1900s, William and George Gray worked as a general contractor. All three Gray brothers left Salem around 1907.

Gertrude G. Lownsdale owned this building briefly from 1907-1909. Eugene Eckerlen bought the property in May 1909.

One of the persistent problems in researching Salem history is City Ordinance 436, the address change enacted on October 10, 1904. Along this stretch of Commercial, the numbering of addresses lost a hundred or so. Failing to note the change adequately leads the researcher in the next passage to an ambiguity that reads more like a mistake: The Eckerlen saloon did not move. From 1889-1905, Polk directories list his Saloon at 260 Commercial, but afterwards at 152 North Commercial. Though it looks like a move, because of the city-wide change in addressing, these addresses identified the same building.

Eckerlen's Saloon was in the building whose footprint is now a parking lot between the Bike Peddler and Alessandro's. You can see historic photos of the 200-block of Commercial here and here. These show a continuous line of buildings, before the void created by demolition and the parking lot.²

For many years, Eugene Eckerlen operated a saloon in the 200-block of Commercial Street and, later, in the 100-block of Commercial in what became known as the Eckerlen Building. After Eckerlen purchased the building at 145-147 Liberty Street in 1909 it became known as the "New Eckerlen Building." Eckerlen, however, did not move his saloon into the building and, instead, rented out space to other Salem merchants.

The next oddity about the research is the silence on prohibition. There should be no mystery why the Eckerlen's "no longer operated a saloon"! The voters of Salem made their occupation illegal and forced them out of business. This formula is disingenuous and mystifies a significant social movement and change. (Details of Eckerlen shot glass here)

By the early 1920s, Eugene and Alice Eckerlen no longer operated a saloon on Commercial Street; they pursued farming until Eugene Eckerlen's death in 1933. The [New] Eckerlen Building on Liberty Street passed to Eugene Eckerlen, Jr., and his wife, Virginia Eckerlen.

The Eckerlen's farming seems to have preceded prohibition. They lived in the 600 block of Liberty NE, between Union and Division, just south of Boon's and on the edge of the city. They were part of a national association breeding pure-bred swine, the Poland-China breed, documented in 1900 and 1905.

Being forced out of business wasn't their only loss. In fact, Eugene Eckerlen faced other profound losses.

Eugene's first wife, Mary, died on November 16th, 1890. Her obituary says that she had been ill for five weeks from "inflammation of the bowels" and had left three children. She was 31. (Her grave marker in St. Barbara's cemetery gives the date of the obituary, not the date the obituary gives of her death.)

Nearly 30 years later, Eugene lost his son Ernest Theodore in World War I. Ernest's name is inscribed on the Doughboy memorial outside of the Veteran's Affairs Building. According to one source, he was a private in the 6th Machine Gun Battalion, 2nd Division, and perished just before Armistice Day, on 5 November 1918. He is buried in the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery.

In March, 1921 Eugene's brother Theodore died in Alsace.

Eugene died on 16 September 1933. According to his obituary he was 76. He was born in Housen, near Colmar, Alsace-Lorraine, on 20 August 1857. He came to the United States in the 1870s. He was survived by his second wife, Alice (the obituaries did not mention first wife, Mary), son Eugene, Jr., daughters Leondine, Matilda, Mary, and Bertha, a sister Leontine, and a grandson by Leondine, Eugene.

His death just preceded the repeal of Prohibition, and the obituary didn't talk much about his role in Salem brewing. If in 1899 Seraphin Beck was still a big deal in town, by 1933 Eckerlen was much smaller fry. Salem and its economic base were much larger, more diversified, and a little gentrified. The genteel retailing of Bishop's and woolens, and not the Eckerlens and drinking, were getting the attention.

The walk of St. Barbara's Cemetery gives Eugene (Sr.), first wife Mary, second wife Alice, and daughter Mary as buried together. I was not able to find the other Eckerlens obviously nearby (though my search was cursory and hasty). However, I was able to confirm that Seraphin Beck is buried in the plot immediately adjoining, and that several Klingers, including Maurice Klinger, were also buried nearby. The neighborliness of their graves suggests they were also neighborly in life.

¹The history of these Alsatians, who appear mainly to have looked to Catholic France (though others might look to Germany), and of other Germans like Samuel Adolph and the Breyman family, appears to be an important part of Salem history, little known and rarely told. It is more than we can do right now, but perhaps we can piece it together and add to the ethnic histories of Salem.

²Here's an annotated 1895 Sanborn for the old Eckerlen building. (Click through for a much larger image!) It shows the east side of Commercial street between State and Court. Before the 1904 address change it was the 200-block, and afterwards it was the 100-block. The Breyman Bros. block was also known as the White Corner. Note all the saloons and gambling establishments! The YMCA building is the current home to Alessandro's. The buildings demolished for the parking lot are also indicated.

A Toast to the Dead

Ernest T. Eckerlen was a private in the 6th Machine Gun Battalion, 2nd Division, and perished just before Armistice Day, on 5 November 1918. He is buried in the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery.

The Doughboy memorial to the dead of World War I used to be in front of the Marion County Courthouse. Virginia Green has written about it with pictures of it in 1934 and 1941.

Its current site is on a park behind the Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs. The park holds memorials to dead from the major wars, starting with the Spanish-American war of 1898.

Ernest was the son of Eugene Eckerlen, an important owner of saloons and breweries in fin-de-siecle Salem.

Eckerlen's name is inscribed on the Doughboy pedestal among the others who died in World War I.

Ernest's father, Eugene, Eugene's second wife, Alice, and Eugene's daughter, Mary, are buried together in St. Barbara's Cemetery.

Eugene's first wife, Mary, is also buried in St. Barbara's, but she is on the other side of the cemetery from Eugene's grave. Mary's grave is next to those of the Beck and Klinger families, a cluster of Alsiatian immigrants who were important in early Salem.

We also remember non-war dead, especially those who met untimely ends, like Pauline Phillips.

CT toasts the dead and recommends that you find someone whose history you find interesting, especially someone not already famous or a relative, and go visit their grave. Tell and renew as much of their story as you can.

Robbery and Intolerance at Eckerlen's, 1905

Racism and intolerance has a long Oregon history, alas.

Tomorrow at Mission Mill Museum, Ted Cox will lecture on "The Toledo Incident of 1925: Three Days that Made History." It's part of the Winter/Spring lecture series, "Bipartisanship and Intolerance in Oregon Politics."

Ted Cox shares The Toledo Incident of 1925: Three Days that Made History in Toledo disseminating how an angry mob in Toledo, Oregon, expelled Japanese resident workers. Cox sheds light on what happened in the days leading to the incident, and the resulting precedent-setting civil rights suit brought by the Japanese resident workers.

The episode was hardly isolated. In January of this year, as part of MKL observations, Willamette University and the Salem Public Library showed the film, The Ku Klux Klan in Oregon, 1920-1923.

A little over a century before, in January 1903 the City demolished most of "old" Chinatown, along Liberty street. What remained of Chinatown was centered on High street.

As the lecture and documentary suggest, the ugliness persisted.

An example from 1905, remarkable for its banality rather than for any exceptionalism, shows some of the ways intolerance was part of the daily background noise in Salem, something assumed and "par for the course."

This account of a robbery may not be wholly factual. It's difficult not to read the hard-boiled sensationalism without wondering how much is fabricated. Still, the derision for the "celestials" is clear, and the presumed readership was an audience that clearly shared the biases of the writer. There was no attempt at persuasion; indeed, it assumes and appeals to shared community values. The piece also uses the narrative more for entertainment than for moral outrage or analysis.

CHINK STEALS WHISKEY

From Eckerlen's but is Caught in the Act by Paul Marnach

Lou Wah, a Chinese ex-convict, who was formerly employed as cook in the Elite Cafe, was this morning caught in the act of stealing 25 bottles of whiskey and a box of cigars from Eckerlen's wholesale house.

Paul Marnach, Eugene's head mixer, had been suspicious of the chink for some time, as he had been seen hanging around the rear of the establishment several times. Paul cautioned the waiters to be on the lookout for him, and if they saw anything suspicous to let him know.

This morning, shortly after 6 o'clock, one of the waiters came to Paul and told him that Lou was hangning around near the back door of the wholesale house, and, from his actions, intended to steal something. Paul, after arming himself with a young cannon, which he calls a revolver, hurried to the back door, arriving just in time to see the celestial come out of the other department carrying a case of Cyrus Noble whiskey, which he placed on the ground, returning to the base of supplies for something else, which proved this time to be a case of Commodore Royal; not satisfied yet he returned once more, and came forth bearing a single bottle of whiskey and a box of cigars. It must have been tha he had confederates near, for it would be impossible for him to escape with all his plunder in one trip, and if more than one trip was to have been made, he would hardly have brought all the goods outside. When Paul observed that he had carried all out that he intended to he concluded that it was his move, so he sprang out from his concealment, confronting the burglar with the question, "what are you doing?" Seeing that he was discovered, the chink attempted to strike his captor, but was forestalled by Paul, who flashed his Gatling under his nose with the request that he "elevate his lunch grabbers over his block," to which gentle hint Lou Wah complied, but with very poor grace, and was reprimanded by a gentle poke with the gun, after which his hands were raised to the fullest extent. Paul then started to march his captive into the saloon, but, when passing through the door, the chink, in a vindictive mood, slammed the door, striking Paul on teh side of the head, and leaving a slight discoloration around the eye, but his attempt at escape was unavailable, and he was quickly taken on the inside, where Paul, with the assistance of his trusty ally, Herr Ignatz Steiner, searched their prisoner, but there were no weapons disclosed. Paul then took up the line of march to the police station where he landed his man without much trouble, with the exception of an attempt to escape up the dark stairway near the telephone office.

The prisoner, who is a "hop head," has already served one term of three years in the penitentiary and it was probably only the incentive of the vision of a happy Chinese New Year that induced him to jeopardize his liberty.

Beck's Bock Boosts Brewery in 1901

Just as today, in April and May a century ago, beer lovers eagerly awaited their bock beer! And in the spring of 1901, the Capital Brewery had special reason to promote it.

Pre-Prohibition brewing was a lot more like contemporary craft brewing than you'd think. Mid-century brewing habituated us to watered-down industrial lager. But as we saw with the prospect of Westacott's strong ale that workers on Minto's property found in 1909, early brewers made a range of beers. Bock beers were a springtime seasonal, often originally made by monks as carb-rich "liquid bread" that powered them through Lenten austerities.

Here's an ad for Klinger & Beck's bock in 1901.

BOCK BEER

The Capital Brewery's Famous Bock will be on draught in all Salem and country saloons on and after

APRIL 6, 1901

Try it and be happy. It's the best ever turned out. We also put up our Bock Beer in bottles.

KLINGER & BECK

Inheritance and estate transfer at the turn of the last century was no easier then than today.

Two years before the ad appeared, on April 25th, 1899, Seraphin Beck died. Settling his estate appears to have taken at least two years and came at the cost of dissolving the Klinger & Beck partnership

SALEM BREWER DEAD
Seraphim Beck, of the Capital Brewery, Passes Away

After being more or less incapacitated for transaction of business for several years Seraphim Beck, a full partner in the Salem brewing firm of Klinger & Beck, died at his home on South Twenty-fifth street at 7 o'clock Thursday evening, aged 48 years.

Deceased was born in Alsace-Lorraine in 1851. When 21 years of age he came to the United State, locating in Chicago. After a two year's residence at Denver, he came to Oregon in 1875. In August, 1877, he associated himself with Mr. Klinger, in the brewing of beer, in which he has since engaged.

He married in January, 1878, to Miss Maggie Neibert, who survives him. He leaves two children a son and a daughter, viz. Joseph aged 16 years and Leona, aged 7 years.

The deceased was an industrious business man, of a quiet and unassuming disposition. He was a man of the highest integrity.

The funeral will be held in St. Joseph's Catholic church Thursday at 10 o'clock. Burial will take place in the Catholic cemetery, south of this city. The funeral cortege leaves the house soon after 9 o'clock.

Deceased leaves quite a large property to his wife and children by will.

The Catholic cemetery is St. Barbara's on Liberty Road and Missouri in south Salem. (Beck's headstone here and detail here.) Interestingly, a partial survey of the graves suggests a cluster of Germanic brewers in Salem. The list shows Beck buried near a Mrs. Mary Eckerlen. Mrs. Eckerlen was also from Alsace-Lorraine, and perhaps the family knew the Becks. Further, there was an Eckerlin Saloon, and E. Eckerlin was one of the partners in the 1903 Salem Brewery Association. Even with the vowel switch (easily explained in the unstable orthography), just how many Eckerlins could there be in Salem? More research to come!

Two years after the death, the brewery advertised the bock beer. It turns out this was just a month before putting up the brewery for sale.¹

In May, 1901, Beck's widow bought the brewery and cashed out Klinger.

CAPITAL BREWERY SOLD BY REFEREES

At 2 o'clock this afternoon, Tilmon Ford and B. F. Bonham, referees, sold the Capital Brewery plant and other property of the Klinger & Beck partnership, in order that the settlement of the business in the interest of the heir of S. Beck deceased, might be effected. The sale included the brewery plant, fixtures, etc, lots 3, 4, 5 and a portion of lot 6 of block 35, Salem; the north 1/2 of lot 5, block 36 Gervais, and two promessory notes of $800 and $425 respectively.
The bidding began with an offer of $17,000 by M. Klinger, and at 3 o'clock was bid in by Mrs. Margaret Beck for $30,000. M. Klinger bought the Gervais property at $325.

Another account references the sale as having occurred in Dallas, with some Dallas property also in the estate and sold.

Here's a photo of Maurice Klinger from the Oregon State Library collection. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a photo of Beck.

Whether the bock continued to be brewed I don't know. I'll try to find out that as well. But here is at least one instance of a specialty seasonal brewed and advertised almost as they are today!

¹I haven't verified that the advertising occurred yearly; it's possible this was a one-off in order to boost cash-flow for the brewery's sale. But I believe it's most likely the beer was a yearly seasonal and that the advertising would be similarly seasonal. It is "famous" and the "best ever," both of which suggest repetition and expectation. Maybe this is untrue advertising hype, but I just don't think so. While it's possible one of the partners sought to boost sales artificially, that would seem likely to interfere with an orderly process of cashing out. I will confirm.

Beer Poetry: Eckerlen's Bad Santa and Auden on the Post-Christmas Lull

Was your Santa, like this one in an ad from 1903, an ol' booze hound?

It's hard to imagine today seeing an image of Santa like that, except in a "bad Santa" meme. (But we know about Santa's little helper.)

Hopefully you drank well and often over the holidays!

And now the pause.

In "For the Time Being," a Christmas Oratorio, written but too long for Benjamin Britten to set to music, W.H. Auden captures the hung-over flavor of the post-holiday lull:

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off....

...In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance.

(Santa from a 1903 Eckerlen Saloon and liquors ad)

Wilfred Owen, Leonidas Willis, and unmild Thoughts of War

Our Veterans Day ruminations took some odd swerves into byways of uncertain patriotism, and it seemed best to postpone them for a few days.

The best straight-up memorial was surely at the Oregon State Hospital Museum blog. If you haven't visited, go read about Robert Riggle, who fought in France at the end of World War I, and who was later committed to the State Hospital. He killed himself on June 4th, 1920. It is good to retell as best we can these stories and lives.

The Brits seem to have found the best beery honor: The Lodden Brewery makes Wilfred's Mild to honor Wilfred Owen, the celebrated poet of World War I:

We are donating 10 pence of every pint of Wilfred's Mild sold to the Church where Wilfred Owen worked. All Saints church in Dunsden is located in the field directly in front of the brewery.

Owen was killed on November 4th, 1918, just a few days before the armistice, November 11th. A color image of the label would show the red poppies in the background behind him.

In his War Requiem, composed for the rededication of the 14th century Coventry Cathedral in 1962, after it was bombed in 1940, Benjamin Britten juxtaposed Owen's poetry with the Latin text of the Requiem Mass.

Out there, we've walked quite friendly up to Death:
Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland,-
Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.
We've sniffed the green thick odour of his breath,-
Our eyes wept, but our courage didn't writhe.
He's spat at us with bullets and he's coughed
Shrapnel. We chorused when he sang aloft;
We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.
Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against his powers.
We laughed, knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars; when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death - for Life; not men - for flags.

Earnest Eckerlen, son of saloon owner and brewery officer Eugene, is named on the doughboy monument, you may recall.

Slightly less reverently, we also observe a different kind of veteran. Apparently there are a few Confederate veterans buried in Salem.

These burials and the lives behind them are something ambiguous and about which we are uncertain and ambivalent. It is to enter an alternate universe where the Civil War is the War of Northern Aggression.

This is an unverified portrait of Lt. Colonel Leonidas Willis, who is buried in the Salem Pioneer Cemetery. The cemetery records cite his obituary on 14 April 1899:

When the civil war broke out in 1861, his sympathies naturally being with the South, Mr. Willis enlisted in the service of the Confederacy and ere the close of the war saw much active service, his field of operation being principally in Arkansas and Mississippi. He was colonel of a battalion of cavalry and under command of General Forrest.

Deceased came to Oregon in 1871 settling in Salem...

The deceased was in no sense of the word an office-seeker, being content with the lot of a private citizen, although while in Texas he served his county faithfully as district clerk for several years.

Forrest had led a feared and powerful cavalry, was accused of war crimes for a massacre of Union prisoners, and was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

The obituary hesitates for a moment, protective, even defensive, about the possibility of Willis seeking patronage.

You might recall this ad from Fourth of July celebrations in 1910, which appears to show a Union and Confederate veteran reconciling in friendship. Mending fences was important, and many would make choices not to dwell too much on the past in order to live together in the present. It seems likely that in the obituary we see a similar reticence.

(A family researcher has put together a history of Willis' battalion of the Texas Cavalry.)

To the dead, and to the living, we tip our pint.