Salem in 1909

World Events

• China gives Japan railway concessions in Manchuria. Ito Hirofumi, four times Prime Minister in Japan and Resident General of Korea, is assassinated in the Harbin Railway Station in Manchuria.
• Albert I succeeded his father, Leopold II, as ruler of Belgium. He would prove to be a far different ruler than his father: sincerely religious, brave in defending his people in the WW I German invasion, promoting universal suffrage and education.
• British explorer Ernest Shackleton with his Nimrod Expedition reaches near the South Pole, but must turn back due to dwindling supplies.
• Robert Peary, Matthew Henson and four Inuit guides come close to North Pole. Henson actually came closest and planted the flag.
• Republican William Henry Taft is elected 27th. President of the U.S. after serving as Governor of the Philippines, U.S. Attorney General and Secretary of War.
• General Motors is founded by William C. Durant in Detroit, selling various assembled automobiles under different brand names.
• The NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is founded.
• New American Books: Exultations, Ezra Pound. Girl of the Limberlost, Gene Stratton-Porter, and Three Lives, Gertrude Stein.

In Salem

 Garfield School, designed by Fred Legg, is constructed at 528 Cottage Street following the American Renaissance style typical of schools built at that time. By 1959 it was the oldest school building in the district: Superintendent Schmidt suggested it be closed because of fire dangers. However, parent protests against closing this neighborhood school kept it open until 1973.

When you Visit

At that time, a zone change by the Planning Commission allowed it to be renovated and used as an office building. It was listed on the National Register in 1981.The school has retained its original appearance, and thanks to its being designated on the National Register of Historic Places, it may be shared the demolition that has doomed other buildings of that time. Its interior has been completely renovated, abolishing the classrooms, and is used for offices.
During the summer, many Salem residents enjoy shopping at the Saturday Market, just to the east, and park in the lot that once served the school itself.

Other Events

1915 Salem Police Department

• In 1909, Salem's Police Department lost it only officer killed in the line of duty.  Thomas M. Eckhart was 45 years old and the father of 5 children when he arrested George Meyers who had stolen a horse. While being led away to jail, Mr. Meyers pulled out a gun and shot Officer Eckhart. The Meyers conviction for murder was overturned and there is no evidence of any further incarceration at the state penitentiary. Neither our Police Department nor his family has any photograph of Officer Eckhart, although possible the men in the photograph above probably served with him. Mr. Eckhart had previously served Chief of the Salem Fire Department, resigning in 1901. He is buried in Pioneer Cemetery beside his wife Rose. More information from that website is here. His name is inscribed at National Law Enforcement Memorial in Washington, D.C. Here is enlargement of his name.
• Recent additional information from Brian Goforth, Thomas Eckhart's great-grandson: "Following the second trial, Meyers was sentenced to the Oregon State Prison.  He was sentenced in 1911 (that's how long it took for the two trials to play out) and served about two years.  According to the newspaper articles, he apparently was a model prisoner and was given privileges such as work releases.  He was pardoned by the then-governor Oregon governor Oswald West in 1913.  The newspaper reported that Meyers went to Seattle and lived there for a time.  In 1915, again as reported in the newspaper, Meyers stopped in Salem to visit family and friends on his way to San Francisco.  He told people that he was going to San Francisco to get married.  According to the newspaper, when he arrived in San Francisco, he found that the woman he was to marry had married someone else.  He shot and killed her, then took his own life!  How's that for a twist of events?"

There have been no other "on duty" fatalities among our police for the 101 years since this event.
189 sworn police officers and 109 civilian employees currently staff our police department. It subscribes to the Community Oriented Policing model to bring police and citizens together to better fight crime. The Citizen Police Academy is a 13-week class, limited to 20 citizens, to inform and educate citizens in police practices.

• Due to the unhealthy drinking water, the City Council authorizes the purchase of the Salem Water Company. Citizens for a Mountain Water Company gain enough votes to secure a bond issue of $400,000.
• The Salem Fruit Union plant is operating on Trade Street (on the site of today's Pringle Park).
• US National Bank is constructed at Commercial and State Streets. (This is now Pioneer Trust.)
• Fred Legg designs a new Oregon School for the Deaf at its present location on Locust Street. The former school building on Turner Road becomes the Oregon Tuberculosis Hospital.
• Eaton Hall is built at Willamette University.
• The Korb family builds a home on 5th. Street in the present Grant neighborhood. The house is now rebuilt after a renovation project caused its collapse.
• Jefferson Pooler constructs three Court Street houses associated with the Spaulding and Griffith families. Charles K. Spaulding purchases these Craftsman house as wedding presents for his three adult children: Mrs. Roy (Beulah) Mills, Mrs. Lewis (Ila) Griffith and Walter, who married Nettie Miller. Dr. John Griffith, son of Lewis and Ila, still lives in his parents' former home. Another Pooler design is the Abrams House with Mill Creek directly at the back of the house: a bridge leads to the back lawn. The Pooler houses are all featured in the SHINE Court-Chemeketa Walking Tour.
• Daniel Fry, a Commercial Street druggist, purchases the house at 606 High Street, built in 1859 by Showalter Smith. This is now known as the Smith-Fry House. The Fry property included all of Rattlesnake Hill, which became known as Fry's Hill. Mr. Fry built houses around the base of the hill on High, Leslie and Church Streets as homes for his two adult children and as rentals for his employees. In later years (perhaps in the 1920s?), this neighborhood bordered by Church, Mission, Liberty and Pringle Creek gained a new name, Gaiety Hill. That designation is now given to this section of the Gaiety Hill/Bush's Pasture Park National Register Residential Historic District. These historic houses can be viewed on the SHINE Gaiety Hill/Bush's Pasture Park Walking Tour,
• The building that had previously been Alvin Waller's 1853 Methodist Church was photographed this year. By this time it had been moved to a Liberty Street location was serving as Olmstead's Steam Laundry.
• George Chamberlain resigns as governor when he elected this year as a United States senator.

From the Capitol Journal:

• Oregon's House of Representatives, meeting in Salem, voted to abolish the murderous hatpin of over 10 inches in length. Milliners protested, saying the law would affect the sale of Merry Widow hats and ruin some milliners.
• Ye Liberty Theater advertised: "Educational and comic pictures only ~ we guarantee nothing sensational will be shown."
• Meyer and Belle Land Company offered a fine, five room house with bath, electric lights, water and a 66 by 50 foot lot for $1,150; cash down, $650.
• The stern-wheeler Pomona arrived at Salem with 100 hop pickers and their enormous load of baggage. The steamer had difficulty getting over the Willamette River shoal and put her donkey engine to work hauling over shallows with the aid of stilts.

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

Salem in 1895

World Events

• Between 1894 and 1896, the Hamidian Massacres of Christian Armenians resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths as the Sultan Abdul Hamid II reasserted Islam as the state ideology. Targeting all ages, the murders were especially brutal. The telegraph spread news of these crimes around the world and the massacres were condemned in Western Europe and America.
• The Kiel Canal, connecting the North Sea to the Baltic across the base of the Jutland peninsula in Germany, is completed.
• Wilhelm Roentgen discovers a type of radiation that will be known as X-rays. Sigmund Freud publishes his theories on mental illness.
• The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty s registered in England. This is the fore-runner of our National Register and regional projects to preserve historical properties.
• The Chicago Times-Herald sponsors the first American auto race and Rudolf Diesel patents his engine in Germany. Mintonette (volleyball) is created in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
• Gillette invents the safety razor.
•  The author of "Casey at the Bat" is identified when Ernest Thayer recites it at a Harvard reunion. This baseball poem has become one of the best-known in American literature,

In Salem 
The new City Hall, splendid in High Victorian Gothic architecture, is completed after two years of complications: both a national economic recession and local problems with construction contracts and bond funding. The structure would serve to house all the City offices, including the police department (with jail in the basement), until 1972 when the current Civic Center was built on Liberty Street. More photographs and facts are found in the Salemhistory website.

When you visit 

The site of the former City Hall is now a quarter-block parking lot on the southwest corner of Chemeketa and High Streets. An interpretive plaque commemorates this historic location. Standing here, looking west toward Liberty Street, you see the rear of the 1947 First National Bank (later the Wells Fargo Bank) designed by Pietro Belluschi. The parking lot and that former bank building constitute a half block area that is proposed for a future mixed-use development. Since the structure is a contributing property in the Salem Downtown Historic District, permission for demolition was requested and obtained from the city's Historic Landmarks Commission. No date for the project has been set.

Other Events

• As the century of beautifully crafted Victorian homes ended, a few more were being built in Salem. Driving north along 13th. Street, a former residence at 901 (above) is an outstanding example of the houses being built in Salem for the prominent citizens of that time. This Victorian Queen Anne residence was designed by architect Charles Henry Burggraf as his own home. It was later the residence of Judge Daniel Webster, Justice of the Peace in Salem 1905-1918. The third owner was Julia Webster, the Judge’s daughter. It was also the home of Thomas P. Burt, a railroad engineer. This National Register property is an example of a historic home being converted into an office without altering its integrity.
• Two other Victorian, Queen Anne style houses built this year, both homes of teachers, have been preserved. The Barquist House was originally on Mission Street where, from 1927 to 1967, it was the home of Carmelita Barquist, a popular high school biology teacher. In 1989 it was moved to Court Street. (See it in the SHINE Court-Chemeketa Walking Tour.)  The Hurd House is still in its original location on Marion Street. Originally a rental property, it was purchased by the Hurd family in 1921. Confred Hurd was a teacher at Washington School. These houses are still private residences.
• More typical of the Colonial Revival or Craftsman style homes to be built at the turn of the century are two Court-Chemeketa Historic District homes. The John and Kate Griffith house is on Court Street, across from a residence owned by their son Lewis and daughter-in-law, Ila Spaulding Griffith.  Her sister and brother also owned homes in this neighborhood (See Spaulding 1909). A grandson, Dr. John Griffith, has lived in his parents home all of his life. A beautiful Japanese maple, designated a Heritage tree in 1982, stands in front of the John Griffith house. The Weller-Schramm House on 17th Street was built in this year on the site of the Supreme Court Building on Waverly Place. It was moved in 1916 for the new owners, the Weller family. In 1944, Pietro Belluschi remodeled the house for Alfred and Lucille Schramm. These are also seen on the SHINE Court-Chemeketa Walking Tour.

From the Capitol Journal:

Rev. G. W. Grannis, in a discourse for men only held at the Salem YMCA, said that lust was the sin of Eden, that 999 persons out of 1,000 in the race of mankind were products of lust. He denounced the existing condition of matrimony as little better than legalized licentiousness.

A new town hall for West Salem with a seating capacity for 300 and costing $500 was dedicated. West Salem people in attendance were told by their speaker that if they behaved themselves and continued to improve morally, then they would someday be annexed.

These prices prevailed at Strong's restaurant: hot cakes 5 cents, ham sandwich 5 cents, three doughnuts 5 cents, pigs feet 5 cents, fried mush 10 cents, Swiss cheese sandwich 10 cents, eggs any style 10 cents.

In women's fashions, the newspaper stated: "The refined woman is one who avoids exceedingly bright colors for any garment worn on the street. Her gowns are characterized by texture. Indeed, one of the requisites of all her belongings is that they be of as fine as quality as her own nature."

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

The Fall of the House of Dalrymple

The Dalrymple House was built by James J. and Mary Evans Dalrymple on Marion Street in about 1862. The family had three daughters: Jess Albert, Lizzie Krause and Kate Griffith. After the family sold the house, it was owned for many years by Ola Clark, a well-remembered math teacher at the high school. It was later rented and had been abandoned when the photograph above was taken. Kate's grandson, Dr. John Griffith, remembers the interior window shutters, curving stairway, woodwork and hardware were still original in the 1960s.

On May 10, 1972, a crane lifted a detached portion of the second floor in order to place it on the moving platform for the move to a new location. The first floor of the house is still in place and the Garfield School is seen in the background. A local newspaper reporter was there to photograph the action.


Moments later, with with a photographer looking on, the crane slipped as it was lifting the second story onto the moving platform. This was probably the most spectacular house move in Salem history. A parking lot on the northwest corner of Marion and Winter Streets is the site where this elegant Italianate residence once housed the Dalrymple family.

These three photographs are from the Oregon Historical Photograph Collections, Salem Public Library, Salem, Oregon

Below is a series of 12 historic Salem buildings that were more successfully moved to new locations.