Revisiting the Rayworth House

 

It is almost eight years since Roy and Kim Fox, hosting a wine party with kindred preservation spirits, first heard about a vacant 1890 house in the Boise neighborhood that a developer wanted to tear down.

It was one of many in a rash of teardowns of smaller, older houses that is continuing to this day.  “You guys should save the Rayworth house,” someone said.

 Kim Fox went first.  “It’s kind of cute,” she told her husband.  It was a small Victorian cottage, probably like hundreds that once graced Portland.  Given time and changes in housing sizes, few like it  remain today.  Once the home of Edwin Rayworth, a professional wallpaper hanger, the house was in poor condition inside and out.

 For a while, a Boise resident planned to move the house and save it, but that plan fell through.  The clock was ticking, allowed only by the patience of the prospective developer.  Four months after they had looked it, Roy and Kim Fox were next in line.

Moving a house in Portland is difficult because there are few available vacant lots.  The longer the trip, the greater the cost.  The Foxes found a property owner who had one house on a double lot who was willing to sell the empty yard.  

 As a result, they succeeded in moving the house two miles north to the Piedmont neighborhood but not until they prevailed in the Great Tree Fight.  The city’s urban forestry manager wanted to deny the move on grounds that the move would damage some tree canopy along the way.  In time, it took insistence from Mayor Charlie Hales to allow the move.

 “Ninety-five percent of the city staff really busted their butts for us,” Roy says.  He compliments the Portland Bureau of Transportation which had to approve the route and the Bureau of Development Services, which allowed permits for an oversized lot that was being halved. 

In its original location

Given the construction boom at the time, the house sat on a lattice of timbers for most of a year until a foundation could be poured for a daylight basement.  The basement became an accessory dwelling below the old house.  The first tenant moved in in 2015, and since then the rest of the repair work has been funded by rent from the lower unit. 

 Today, work continues on the upper portion of the house.  Much of the work and painting has been done by volunteers recruited from websites that trade temporary housing for temporary help.  So far, Roy says more than 100 people have helped out, one way or another.  “Some of them know all about a table saw, and some know almost nothing,” he says.  “But everyone has contributed something.  We just love doing this. That is really the new story of the Rayworth house.” The result is a network of lasting friendships for the Foxes, with people from as far away as Australia and Ireland.

Roy says woodwork details will duplicate what’s missing in the house, and that vintage lighting has been acquired.  But though the Foxes are experienced ion exacting preservation work, they are not planning to replicate an historical 1890s kitchen or bathroom.  Of course, all plumbing and wiring has been replaced.

 One of the next projects is to work through layers of wallpaper to see to what extent any of them were historic and, if so, could be replicated.  Roy hypothesizes that the paper layers may well have come leftovers from Edwin Rayworth’s professional work, but there is no way of knowing for sure.

 Roy says the plan is to make the entry to the house look as original as possible with the woodwork, lighting and wallpaper.

Looking ahead, Roy says, “I can’t imagine selling the house.  We’ve put so much into it.”  When the right time comes, he said the next owner likely will be one of his two sons.

Today the Rayworth house sits proudly in a neighborhood composed mostly of 1920s bungalows.  Its distinctive architectural presence tells a story in itself.  Not as much, however, than if the building could actually talk.

 

What followed Rayworth in Boise