Salem in 1989

World Events

• East Berlin opens checkpoints in the Wall, which is demolished. The entire leadership of the East German Socialist Party resigns.
• The Dalai Lama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
• Hirohito dies and Akihito becomes the 125th Emperor of Japan.
• Students stage a protest in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. An unknown young "Tank Man" defies the military as seen on TV around the world.
• The US invades Panama, with "Operation Just Cause", in an attempt to overthrow dictator Manuel Noriega, accused of drug trafficking.
• English scientist Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web with a commercial dial-up connection via the internet.
• Jerry Falwell announces Moral Majority, Inc. will be dissolved. He states that that "the religious right is solidly in place." 
• The "Keating Five" create a savings and loan industry financial crisis that cost many their life savings. Charles Keating goes to prison.
• Florida executes Ted Bundy for the murders of 30 young women.
• Alaska's Prince William Sound is contaminated by 240,000 barrels of oil after the Exxon Valdez goes aground.
• Academy Awards: "Driving Miss Daisy" (US),"Cinema Paradiso (Italy) Prize-winning Books: Spartina, John Casey and Breathing Lessons, Anne Tyler.

In Salem

The photograph above was taken in 1988 just before this Mill Street industrial property was donated to Willamette University and these cannery buildings demolished. The California Packing Company, developer of a Blue Lake type bean, opened a plant in Salem in 1963. They were the first to shift their entire bean production to these bush beans and they were delivered in bulk, eliminating the need for tote bins. Their Del Monte brand and shield was used after 1967. By 1970 the Salem Plant had grown to be the largest green bean cannery in the world. The company continued to grow and in 1979 merged with R. J. Reynolds, Inc. However, in the early 1980s, the company's bean production was moved to their production to their more centrally located Wisconsin plants.

A city council zoning change made it possible for Tokyo International University of America (TIUA), after a 20-year exchange student and faculty association with WU, to build a Salem dormitory on these six acres. The grand opening ceremony of TIUA (Tokyo International University America) was September 8, 1989 with Mike Mansfield, former Ambassador to Japan, Oregon's Governor Goldschmidt, Salem's Mayor Neilsen, Willamette University President Hudson and other dignitaries in attendance. Sixty Japanese students and two professors participated in that year's American Studies program. This cultural experience, now over 40 years in operation, is designed to educate students in being global citizens. By living for a year in another country, as these foreign students do, they get a resident's view of the host country. Many former TIUA students have gone on to careers not only in America, but also in countries around the world. They carry with them the values of "Vision, Courage, Intelligence" that have been promoted within this educational experience.

When You Visit

This site on Mill Street, directly south of the Willamette Heritage Center's Mission Mill property, is now the campus for students of Tokyo International University who attend classes at TIUA and Willamette University. Students use the sky bridge over 12th Street to reach the campus. The TIUA building is open weekdays and the public is free to eat at the Kaneko cafe'. The original residence hall and cafeteria have been remodeled which doubled the capacity. It is a LEED Gold certificate building. For tour information, call 503-373-3330.

Other events

Memorial at the site of our former City Hall

• Adjacent to the sidewalk at the southwest corner of Chemeketa and High streets, a shaft with plaque and picture of the old structure, is erected as a memorial to the 1896 City Hall that had been demolished 17 years before. Salem voters didn't want to pay the cost of saving the old city hall, preferring to build a new civic center. Ironically, Dr. Vern Miller, the former Salem mayor for whom the replacement city hall was later named, was unsuccessful in his recommendation for keeping the old city hall alive as a museum. Sue Bell, writing for Salemhistory website, gave us a history of our former city administration buildings, "At the beginning of Salem's municipal government history, the City officers were housed in the Rector Building located on the lower west side of Commercial Street between Trade and Ferry. The two-story frame building had been erected by William H. Rector in 1851 specifically for the purpose of a Town Hall. (Briefly, both before and after the 1855 burning of the original Capitol Building, the State government shared the premises.). As the wooden structure deteriorated, quarters for the town's officials were found in various other commercial buildings in town - - the Patton Block, built in 1869, was one of these. Later, the Recorder's Office was located at 236 Liberty and, by the early 1890s, unofficially City Hall was on Liberty Street, the southeast corner of State (present site of Key Bank)"The statuary eagle is on the ground, ready to be placed on the rocks atop the Hatfield Fountain at the Bellevue Street entrance at Willamette University. At the base of the fountain there is a plaque explaining the symbolism of the eagle's nest.
• Large national retailers such as Costco, Shopko, Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot recognize Salem's market potential and are opening outlets in suburban Salem, especially in the Lancaster Drive area.
• Salem's roots in the lumber and textile industries are gradually giving way to high technology. In this year, Siltec, a computer chip manufacturer, establishes a facility here.
• On May 27th, the YWCA in conjunction with Willamette University holds the first Cultural Diversity Conference on the Willamette campus to help raise awareness and promote sensitivity about equality, racial justice, violence against women, hate crimes, and affirmative action
• The body of James Michael Francke, Director of the Oregon Department of Corrections, is discovered on the floor of the north portico of the Dome Building on January 18 and an autopsy determined he had been murdered. A local petty criminal was eventually tried and convicted for the crime, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, the convicted killer maintains his innocence, and several conspiracy theories have been advocated. A 1995 film, Without Evidence, was written by Gil Dennis and Phil Stanford, an Oregon columnist who has investigated the case extensively. It is also based on subsequent investigations by Kevin Francke, Michael's brother.
• Willamette University football and country singer/actress Dolly Parton may not seem like a natural fit, but somehow the Country Music Hall of Fame found herself leading cheers for the Bearcats alumni football team in September. She attended the game as a friend of her business-associate Heine Fountain, a Willamette alumni who was coaching the alums. "I just love this part of the country," she told a reporter. "It’s always beautiful, and the people are always nice."

Salem in 1908

World Events

• Japanese emigration to U.S. is forbidden under terms of the "Gentlemen's Agreement" by administration officials of Japan and United States, easing the fear that a legal treaty against Japanese might cause hostilities
• Sentiment against Chinese labor in America grows as part of the fear that cheap Asian labor was taking America jobs.
• Young Turk Committee of Union and Progress issues ultimatum to Sultan Hamid II to restore the Ottoman Constitution of 1876: it is done the next day.
• Tunguska Event (or Russian Explosion) in Siberia is believed to be caused by air burst of meteorite or comet 3 miles above the earth surface.
• Grand Canyon National Monument was established due to Roosevelt's enthusiasm for preserving America's natural assets.
• Henry Ford introduces the Model T, the first affordable automobile.
• Related inventions: Fountain pens become popular after Walter Schaffer patents a vacuum ink filler. The Hoover Company acquires manufacturing rights to an upright portable vacuum cleaner.
• New Books: The Circular Staircase, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame and Room with a View, E.M. Forster.

In Salem
The Oregon Electric Railway runs between Portland and Salem with a terminus at the Hubbard Building on the corner of High and State Streets (as seen above) in the hub of our city. A block to the north is the City Hall. The Grand Hotel, the Grand Theater and the Marion County Courthouse are just steps away. One block to the east is the First Methodist Church and the Post Office. Beyond that are Willson Park, the State House and Willamette University. Truly, this is the center of the city. There are 35 daily trips, each taking an hour and a half and costing twenty-five cents.

When you visit
The building remains, painted a light color. The Grand Hotel Annex and Theater are still there. Gone are the City Hall, the classic Courthouse, the Post Office and the State House of those years. The trains and even the rails are also gone: victims of the Depression years and the growing convenience of the automobile. The trains stopped running in 1935 and the rails were gradually removed. In 1972, the final Trade Street rails were dug out for the new Civic Center and improvements to Willamette University campus.

Other events

• Local boy, A. C. Gilbert, wins an Olympic Gold medal. He qualified for the 1908 Olympics in London, but his victory there was disappointing. After a controversy with the judges about his use of a pole of his own invention, he used the same pole as his rival, E. T. Cooke - and still won. However, the judges ruled that Cooke had reached the same height in the preliminaries, and that the two should share the medal. Cooke graciously let Gilbert have the medal which was presented to him by Queen Alexandria of England.

The Chinese float in the annual Cherry City Parade

• The local Chinese community, active in Salem life, enter a float in the annual Cherry Festival Parade.
• Eaton Hall is built on the Willamette University Campus. This classroom building was built with a $50,000 grant from Mr. A.E. Eaton, the owner of Union Woolen Mills.

The Gottlob and Wilhelmina Pade House

• On 15th Street, the Pade House is built by Gottlob and Wilhelmena Pade, recent immigrants. This was also home for their son, Bernhardt, a partner in Simon and Pade grocery store. He operated Pade’s Market until retirement 1965. After his death in 1975, his widow, Leona, lived here until 1985. She was well known for her garden of rare plants. This Local Landmark is also in the NEN neighborhood.

Walter and Grace Gerth House in West Salem

• Another 1908 house to become a Local Landmark is the Gerth House. Walter and Grace Gerth operated their Edgewater Street store for 35 years, from 1911 to 1946. During this time he served several terms as mayor of West Salem, built the first two-story commercial building in West Salem, started the first grocery delivery and loaned the city money to pay its bills.
• An ornamental concrete block house is built at 1724 Chemeketa Street using Sears Modern Home Plan #52. This year the Sears catalog had 8 pages advertising machines that could stamp out blocks that were "cheap, quick and practical" building materials. This house was probably built by C. B. Stone, who had purchased the lot in 1907 and was listed in the City Directory of 1909-10 as a "cement worker" with a next-door address as his residence. See it in the Court-Chemeketa Walking Tour.
• The Oregon State Institution for the Feeble Minded opens in December. Renamed as Fairview Training Center, it continued as a Salem institution until its closing in 2000. A 1920s photograph shows the LeBreton Cottage (the 1908 administration building), the 1919 Hoff Cottage and the 1910 Chamberlain Cottage. All were, despite their names, sizable buildings resembling hospitals.

From the Capitol Journal:

• Spectators pronounced the fistfight witnessed on State Street in front of the Spa as "one of the finest". Even the street car stopped to allow combatants, who were slugging it out in the mud along the tracks, to continue their battle.
• W. B. Gibson, who had operated a barber shop at 147 Commercial Street for the past three years, moved to a larger and more elegant quarters at 364 State Street. His new shop would be one of the largest outside Portland with 11 chairs, two suites of bathrooms and club and card rooms in the basement.
• This newspaper advertized for a carrier boy on a route that required he own and ride a pony.

(See Ben Maxwell's Salem, Oregon, edited by Scott McArthur, 2006)

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Moving Salem History #2 of 12

The Josiah L. Parrish House was a 1860s two-story wood frame house built out in the country on what became 745 Capitol Street. In this 1978 Bob Koval photograph from the Salem Public Library Oregon Historic Photograph Collections, the tall and narrow sash windows, capped by a wooden cornice, suggest an Italian architecture style that was added later, circa 1910. For the expansion of the North Capitol Mall and the new Oregon Archives Building in 1990, the house was purchased from the state by the City of Salem and moved to its present location at A. C. Gilbert Discovery Village. The workers faced a challenge when the house became temporarily trapped under the Marion Street Bridge.

Moving Salem History #1 of 12

Trover Photograph, Courtesy Oregon State Library

In 1883 this historic house was built by the C. S. Rockenfeld on Court Street, across from the Capitol. In 1937 the state purchased the property (as seen here in 1930s photograph), then owned by Henry Bean, Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, and moved it to 755 Capitol Street to make room for state buildings you see along Court Street today. In 1991, during the further expansion of the Capitol Mall, it was purchased by the City of Salem and moved to its present location. In 1992 it was opened to the public as part of A.C. Gilbert’s Discovery Village.