Salem in 1894

1894 World Events

• Japan invades Korea, beginning the first war between China and Japan.
  
• The International Olympic Committee is established in Paris.
  
• Russian Tsar Nicholas II succeeds his father, Alexander III.
  

In Salem
Dr. Luke Port, pharmacist and speculator, completes his new Queen Anne style home designed by William Knighton, but lived there with his wife Lizzie only 16 months. Perhaps the memories were too sad. The stained glass window over the fireplace in the parlor was dedicated to a teenage son lost at sea while sailing to Europe to study chemistry. It depicts three fully blooming roses representing the living Port family members and a rose bud symbolic of the son that was lost. The house was sold to the Bingham family the next year. Judge George Bingham, his wife Willie lived in the house until their deaths in 1924. Their daughter Alice married Mr. Keith Powell in 1915. Upon the death of her parents, she sold her childhood home to the Brown family ~ Clifford, his wife Alice and their two sons, Chandler and Werner. Mr. Brown died suddenly only three years later in 1927. In 1929, Alice Brown commissioned the new firm of Lord-Schryver, the first female owned landscape architecture firm in the Northwest, to design the gardens. They continued to advise this owner almost forty years. In 1935, Alice Brown named the estate "Deepwood" after a favorite children's book of her sons. The Deepwood Scroll Garden earned the nickname "Lower Wedding Garden" following her 1945 marriage to Keith Powell, Alice Bingham Powell's widower. The couple lived at Deepwood until they moved into a smaller, one-storey home in 1968. Following a community campaign to save the property from demolition, Deepwood became a City of Salem owned park and museum in 1971.

When you visit
The house is located at the southwest corner of Mission and 12th streets, near Pringle Creek. With its Lord & Schryver garden, it is now a premier attraction for local social events and tourists. For more information about this National Register property in the SCAN neighborhood, refer to the Deepwood website. More views of the estate can be found here. It is also on the route of the Pringle Creek self-guided walking tour of this website.

Other Events

• Two Salem religious congregations build in this year: the German Methodist parsonage is erected on Winter Street. In 1944 the church sold the residence to Charles Warren. In 1977 the State of Oregon purchased property on the east side of that block for construction of the North Capitol Mall Office Building. A private builder bought this house and the one next door (the Moon house) and moved them to D Street in the NESCA neighborhood. Both historic homes have been renovated. The Evangelical Church is built on the corner of Chemeketa and 17th Streets and the adjacent parsonage was built the following year. Both are in their original 1894-5 locations, but the function of the church has changed: it is now a private home with a large, ground floor living area and a place for sleeping in the former choir loft. They are in the Court-Chemeketa Historic District of the NEN neighborhood.
• The Gray family constructs another commercial building on Liberty Street adjacent to their own, the mustard-colored building at left above. The new building is seen here with three bays of windows on the second floor. In 1909 it was sold to Eugene Eckerlen who owned a saloon on Commercial Street. He rented this new building to merchants and it was known as the New Eckerlen Building. From 1936 to the 1960s, it housed Bishops' clothing store, a popular establishment for men. A fire in 1999 partially destroyed the building, but it has recently been renovated. It is located on an especially handsome block of historic buildings in the Salem Downtown Historic District.
  
• Dr. W.Carlton Smith, the first attending physician at the Fairview Training Center, builds a residence on Oak Street near Willamette University. As the Salem Hospital expanded in that area, the house was moved to Canon Street in the Morningside neighborhood. Photographs of this Local Landmark in both locations are found here.
  
• In her parents' Court Street parlor, Myra Albert Wiggins lights a fuse, then rushes to join her wedding group for a self-photograph. She had returned to Salem after three years of study at New York's Art Students League. In future years she would choose a professional career as well as being a wife and mother, becoming an internationally recognized photographer.
• In this year bids property was selected by the state for a school for deaf students and the first building erected. Later used as a tuberculosis sanitarium, it is now a part of Corban College.