An Amazing 'Save' in Alameda

 

von Homeyer residence, facing west

When death and old age finally extracted the eccentric von Homeyer brothers from their lifetime home in Northeast Portland’s Alameda neighborhood, they left behind a daunting mess.

Seven junked cars sat in the back yard.  Years of hoarding left the interior of the 11/2-story home so packed with stuff there was barely room for passage.  Years of deferred maintenance took a toll from attic to basement.

In short, demolition seemed the obvious outcome.  Given city planners’ apparent lust for multifamily buildings, developers would salivate over the unusual trapezoidal lot at NE 24th Ave between Mason and Dunckley Streets.   

Alas, the developers never got the chance.  Nearby neighbors Jaylen and Michael Schmitt bought the property for $500,000, according to city property records, and spent months cleaning up the mess.  Then they worked on plans with MkM Architecture to restore and upgrade the house, built by the von Homeyer brother’s father in 1926.  It was the only home Hans and Karl von Homeyer ever had.

Schmitt said he and his wife had experience making renovations at their own home.  They also were concerned about what a new development would look like.  "We didn't want some monstrous mansion built across the street," he said. 

Alameda neighborhood historian Doug Decker, who has a marvelous grasp of researching city building and property records, found an original drawing of the house and its floorplan, designed by a Swedish immigrant architect, Ragnar Lambert Arnesen.   Decker’s investigations also uncovered many historic photographs and details of the von Homer family history.  You can read details as he uncovered them on Decker’s blog at www.alamedahistory.org.

South and east (rear) facades

Decker also found a building permit for 1959 which led to enclosure of columns on the front porch.  The added interior floor space provided more room for piano instruction offered to many students by Frances von Homeyer, mother of the two sons.  She died in 1990. 

As contemporary construction photographs show, the porch is being returned to its original open-air design.

Schmitt said he hopes to offer the house for sale when renovations are done, but he is not sure he will be able to recapture the investment at once.  If property values suggest he is risking a loss, he might offer the house as a rental until a sale makes financial sense. 

Neighbors taking action to save an interesting vintage home and to prevent construction of an imposing new building that wouldn’t relate to the context its neighborhood could prove to be a valuable, albeit rare, strategy for preservationists.

----Fred Leeson

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Whither Albina?

 

Brent Leggs addresses Albina Preservation Initiative

The leader of a bold national initiative to preserve Black historic sites took a walking tour of Portland’s Albina neighborhood and offered a few tips about big plans to create a new neighborhood on the bare bones of the old Albina.

 Brent Leggs is the executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action fund that is using $150 million in donations to help preserve important Black historical sites nationwide.  The intent of the national campaign is “to add missing chapters of our American history,” Leggs said.

His tour of Albina showed Leggs that “you can literally see how urban renewal erased physical history,” he said.  Nevertheless, “I saw beauty.  I saw community resilience.  It’s exciting to see the reclamation of history.”

 Albina’s physical landscape, amounting to the “downtown” of Portland’s Black retail, dining and entertainment community, was seriously fractured by construction of the Veterans Memorial Coliseum   and by an Emmanuel Hospital urban renewal plan that wiped out several blocks of small businesses.  After the urban renewal plan lost funding in the 1970s, some of the land remains vacant 50 years later.

One attendee at Leggs’ speech noted that plans for the new Albina consist of taller buildings than ever existed, meaning that the neighborhood will have nothing of the urban feel of old Albina.

 Leggs said the important steps are to preserve what is left.  And to work with developers who can be convinced that the new plans should try to save and complement the past.  “The stories of every day matter,” he said, adding that Albina’s community history should be recognized as part of Portland’s history.  Leggs studied marketing and business at the University of Kentucky before becoming involved in historic preservation, giving him an idea of the upsides and downsides of working with developers.

Leggs also urged that donations be made to complete restoration of the Billy Webb Elks Lodge, a building with a century of Black Portland history that was seriously damaged by fire.  The wood-frame building was erected by the YWCA in the 1920s for Black residents when Portland’s downtown YWCA was segregated.  After integration of the downtown YWCA, the building was sold to a Black assemblage of Elks members.  Restore Oregon is leading the renovation [project.

 The appearance by Leggs was sponsored by the Oregon Black Pioneers, Moreland Resource Consulting and Restore Oregon.  Leggs, who also is a senior vice president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, ticked off several recent preservation victories for Black historic sites.  They include the Washington, D.C., home of Frederick Douglass; the boxing gym of Joe Frazier in Philadelphia; the A.G. Gaston Motel, a civil rights venue in Birmingham, Alabama; the Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza in Akron, Ohio; and Nina Simone’s childhood home in Tryon, N.C.

In the 1980s, Cathy Galbraith, then executive director of the Architectural Heritage Center, undertook an extensive history of significant Black properties in Northeast and North Portland.  The “Cornerstones of Community” volume could prove to be a useful reference in rebuilding the “new” Albina.

 ----Fred Leeson

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Welcome to the 'New' Benson Polytechnic High School

 

It would be wonderful to think that the hundreds of people who lined up to tour the renovated Benson Polytechnic High School were all dedicated preservationists.

 More accurately, the visitors were mostly Benson grads from many decades who returned “home,” so to speak, to see what was new and what remained of the school they once attended.  Indeed, there was plenty of old AND new as the public got its first look at the sixth Portland high school to undergo thorough renovation.

For sure, the costly renovation was a preservation victory that will allow the building completed in 1916 to achieve many more years of vocational and pre-college education.  The most historic parts of the building – the foyer, west wing, gymnasium and auditorium -- retain their historic look and feel. 

Benson foyer

Several ancillary buildings that were added periodically over the years on the eastern side of the main hall were removed and replaced by new facilities including an attractive outdoor plaza between the historic wing and the new additions.

 “They did take out a lot of history,” said one alum who graduated in 2,000.  Regardless, she was pleased that the historic wing was carefully restored and reinforced for earthquake protection.

 

Benson auditorium

It is a lesson that preservationists wish the Portland School Board would apply at the historic Cleveland High School in Southeast Portland.  The school board has voted to demolish Cleveland and replace it with a new building.  A better model is the sort careful preservation/renovation projects already carried out Benson and at Grant, Roosevelt, Franklin, and McDaniel High Schools.

School district voters have yet to consider a bond measure that would pay for the Cleveland project.   In the meantime, preservation advocates hope there is still a chance for the school board to change its mind, especially if a preservation/renovation plan comes in with a better price tag.

In the meantime, take a careful look at Benson the next time you drive buy.  The building has been a valued piece of East Portland history for 108 years, and well worth keeping for its bygone architectural style and the countless memories created within it. 

New plaza looking east

----Fred Leeson

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'Historic Enlightenment' in Portland Parks

 

New light and pole, Irving Park

The Portland Bureau of Parks and Recreation is nearing the end of a project to replace 250 light poles in 12 city parks, using new poles and lights that substantially replicate the design of predecessors that ranged up to 100 years old.

 The scope of the project ranges from 88 lights in Mt. Tabor Park and 65 in Irving Park, down to four in Ladd Circle.  While the new lights look like the old ones, they are lit with LED lights that a said to be 66 percent more efficient and bear sensors that automatically turn them on at dusk and off at dawn.  Most of the poles have been installed already; the remainder are scheduled to be finished by year’s end.

 In addition, the fixtures are designed to be “dark sky friendly,” meaning that the lights are restricted from sending light into the sky or bothering nearby residences.  While some LED lights can be glaringly white, the new installations offer a warmer, creamier nighttime glow.

Historic fixture at Architectural Heritage Center 

Trouble with the old light poles became an issue in June, 2022, when a babysitter and a young boy were resting in a hammock they had attached to a tree and a light pole, causing the pole to topple.  A city investigation concluded that dozens of the old poles were inadequately secured near the ground.  (It should be noted that attaching anything to a park light pole is a violation of the Portland City Code.)

 While nothing required the city to seek new poles and fixtures that looked comparable to the old ones, the decision carries an implicit suggestion that our parks have been important public spaces for decades.  The welcome historical symbolism suggests that the parks have been vital places for public recreation and respite for a long time – and should remain so for many decades to come. 

----Fred Leeson

 
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