Salem in 1959

World Events 

• The Tibetan government is abolished by China's Zhou Enlai. A puppet ruler replaces the Dalai Lama who granted asylum in India.
•  Fidel Castro's new, revolutionary Communist government in Cuba is recognized by the US and the Soviet Union.
• Alaska and Hawaii  become states this year.
• NASA selects seven military pilots as the first US  astronauts. Two monkeys are first living beings to successfully return to earth from space flight. Explorer 6 sends back first pictures of earth from orbit.
• The St. Lawrence Seaway, linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic,  is opened by President Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II.
• Buddy Holly, the musician considered a creator of  rock-and-roll and who influenced many other pop artists, died in the crash of a chartered plane. 
• Frank Lloyd Wright's eye-catching, cylindrical building, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, opens to the public in NYC.
• Mattel's Barbie doll and the Xerox copier are both introduced.
• "The Twilight Zone" premieres on TV. Academy Awards: "Ben Hur" (US), "Black Orpheus" (France). Prize-winning Books: The Magic Barrel, Bernard Malamud and The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, Robert Lewis Taylor.

In Salem
Mark Hatfield has been elected as governor, but his High Street residence, purchased the year before, has to be renovated before he can move in. [Meanwhile he and family are living at the Royal Court Apartments on Chemeketa Street.] In the photograph above, the view of his property is from Kearney Street looking toward High Street with Bush's Pasture Park in the background.
It is a sign of the times that extensive electronic networks and a bomb shelter must be added in the basement. J. Warren Carkin designed a large kitchen and servants' wing that was added at the rear. The Oregon Centennial of 1959 was celebrated with many social engagements at this house and during the Legislative sessions of the Governor Hatfield's two terms, the governor's wife, Antoinette, held weekly open houses. Thousands of residents and visitors attended these events. Both Governor Hatfield and his wife posed for photographs inside the house. All four of the Hatfield children were born here.

When you visit
This house was built c. 1880 for Virgil Pringle (1804-1887) and was occupied by him until his death in 1887 and by his widow, Pherne, until her death in until 1891. His obituary recalls, "Mr. and Mrs. Pringle lived to a ripe old age and died at their home near Salem where shortly before they had celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary, surrounded by children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This was a happy reunion". The nearby Pringle Creek was named for this Salem pioneer of 1848. Note: Mission Street was the southern border of Salem city limits at the time of his death.
Even after the Mark Hatfield sold the house in 1968, it remained as a private residence. This SCAN neighborhood residence is in the Gaiety Hill/Bush's Pasture Park Historical District. It is featured on the SHINE Gaiety Hill/Bush's Pasture Park Walking Tour.

Other events

• Russell F. Bonesteele is elected mayor. The house associated with Russell and Valerie Bonesteele is at 396 18th Street in the NEN neighborhood. Mr. Bonestelle's family was in the automobile business. He served on the hospital board and the Salem City Council before his election as mayor.
• The Thomas Kay Woolen Mill announces it will close. The advent of synthetic fabrics and advances in manufacturing technology left the traditional methods of the Kay Wooden Mill unable to compete. The property has served as a non-profit entity since then. Originally known as Mission Mill Museum, it is now Willamette Heritage Center. Four pioneer structures have been moved onto the property and the institution is preserving the city's history as well as providing tours of the former mill.

Vice President Nixon and Oregon dignitaries at Centennial Celebration in Salem

• In February, the Vice President of the United States, Richard Nixon, attends the Oregon Centennial Celebration at the Capitol. From a second floor balcony, the dignitaries listen as the Portland Symphony concert opens the ceremonies. The governor was still living at the Royal Court Apartments that February and the Vice President visited the Hatfields there. In this year, less security is required for our Vice President: the tenants, aware that Mr. Nixon would be visiting, lined the railings of the lobby balcony and applauded when he entered.
• On June 9, the Capital Journal publishes a 116-page issue, entitled Oregon Centennial. Four special sections feature the 100-year history of the Willamette Valley. It is edited by William Mainwaring, son of the late publisher, Bernard Mainwaring, and is his first "major assignment" since returning from military service.
• The much-debated use of a bequest by Carroll Moores, is finally resolved with a 12-foot statuary group entitled "Guidance of Youth". An earlier suggestion that a Renoir nude be purchased with the $34,000 had been met with indignant local protest. Avard Fairbanks of Salt Lake City created a more suitable statue that was accepted by Salem public vote. It presents a pioneer father with a hoe, a pioneer mother properly attired with skirt sweeping the ground and a pioneer youth. This group statue is sited in Bush Park’s southeast corner overlooking a playing field to the east.

Lancaster Area of Salem

State Street as "Four Corners"

• An aerial photograph of the Four Corners area of Salem (State and Lancaster intersection) taken this year shows a residential suburb of homes on generous lots surrounding this business corner. The street level view shows the small businesses on the unpaved State Street in this unincorporated section of Salem.

Capitol Funeral of Douglas McKay

• The funeral of former governor Douglas McKay, later US Secretary of the Interior, is held in the Capitol. It had been the intention of the family to hold the funeral in his church, First Presbyterian, but that structure was in the middle of Winter Street, still on its journey to its new location. Governor Hatfield led the procession out of the Capitol.

Salem in 1953

World Events 

• The CIA helps restore Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power in Iran, overthrowing the democratically elected  Mohammad Mossadegh. Vice President Nixon visits Iran causing riots (now an annual commemoration).
• On TV the world watches the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the Eisenhower inauguration, Lucy giving birth on "I Love Lucy". (Color TV sets go on sale for $1,175.)
• The Korean Armistice Agreement establishes the DMZ between communist North and capitalist south.
• George C. Marshall is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (in part) as the originator of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after WW II.
• Lung cancer first attributed to cigarette smoking, Jonas Salk announces a  polio vaccine. James Watson and Francis Crick discover the structure of DNA molecule.
• Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norway are first men to reach summit of Mount Everest. Mickey Mantle hits baseball's longest home run (565-feet).
• "Mad", "Playboy" (with Marilyn Monroe as centerfold) and 'TV Guide" are popular new magazines. The Academy Award went to "From Here to Eternity"(1954). National Book Award: Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison. Pulitzer Prize: Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway.

In Salem
Returning servicemen, who had only known the Depression as they were growing up, had their first home-owning experience in these look-alike "track houses". Although standing among others like small green tokens in a Monopoly game played on a vast, empty board, they were highly prized. Purchased with a GI loan, a few hundred dollars in a down payment, and small monthly payments, they represented a future of independence and prosperity. This house at 2116 Park Avenue was in one of the first housing developments in the Lansing neighborhood. Then outside the city limit, around it were open fields of the former farmland. Water was provided by privately owned 70 foot deep well which supplied the immediate area of houses. A young teacher was the first owner of this house, followed by Olga and Hilda Ask, sisters who had retired from farming. In 2010 it was still in possession of the third owners.

When you visit
It is difficult to find one of these homes that has not been substantially altered. In the case of this house, there is additional front room window, one in the kitchen has been modified and there is a wheelchair ramp. On a quiet suburban street, now with sheltering trees, it has an attractive and welcoming appearance and is testimony to the enduring value of these 60 year-old homes. It is in the Lansing neighborhood, north of Market Street.
Although it is now common to see large tracts of homes being built by developers (West Salem, for example), and even modified "row houses" (Grant neighborhood), these were limited concepts in Salem until the post-World War II era. An architect might use a similar design for several houses (Jefferson Pooler on Court Street in 1909-11), but the earliest "mass produced" houses were probably the Sears Catalog Home (1908-1940), which a private builder could order by mail (1724 Chemeketa is a local example). Many of these have retained their original exterior appearance and are designated as Local Landmarks or are qualified for the National Register. Professionals in historic preservation are now applying the same standards to 1940-50s "tract houses" that have retained their integrity of design. They are equally worthy of respect and preservation.

Other Events

• This is the last year for the Salem High School that is about to be razed for the construction of Meier & Frank Department Store, now Macy's. It was located on Marion Street, between High and Church streets.

Portland NAACP delegation, Senator Hitchcock and Representative Mark Hatfield.

• Oregon Assembly Representative, Mark Hatfield, is photographed (above) in a celebration for the Public Accommodations Act, signed this year. He had never forgotten that as a student at Willamette University, his task was to drive Paul Robeson to Portland after a singing engagement at the university. There was no place in Salem for the nationally recognized singer, actor and political activist to sleep that night. The photograph now hangs in the Capitol.
• Detroit Dam is completed by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers on the Santiam River between Linn and Marion County in the Cascade Mountains. It was authorized for flood control. power generation, navigation and irrigation. Other uses include fishery, water quality and recreation. It created a 400-foot deep Detroit Lake more than 9 miles long with 32 miles of shoreline. Nearly 200 residents of the town of Detroit were moved; Highway #22 and the Santiam River were realigned.
• In 1938, Carroll Moores left his lifetime savings of $25,000 as an annuity for a friend and to create a memorial to Oregon pioneers. By this year, the invested sum had reached $34,000. Two art professionals making the selection decided Salem already had enough traditional statuary and suggested Renoir's Venus Victorieuse currently on sale in New York. The citizen uproar that followed was taken up by rival opinions in the newspapers. The Capital Journal newspaper called her "fat and naked". Women’s clubs thought it was undignified. Art teachers tried to get in a few words; so did ex-Governor Sprague. But the uproar grew. Mr. Putnam, publisher of the Capital Journal newspaper, commented that it was "just another art lover sneer at Salem for rejecting an unsuitable memorial to Oregon’s early pioneers." An answering editorial in the rival Salem Oregon Statesman newspaper concludes, "If we want to capitalize on this publicity, perhaps we should set up a base, bearing the label "Venus Unvictorieuse". The Capital Journal newspaper also presents a letter from the Council of National Sculpture Society emphasizing the unsuitability factors." The controversy would not be settled until 1959.

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  Gray House

  The Gray House is constructed at 3251 Bluff Avenue in the Morningside neighborhood. This International style residence was to be a retirement home for builder Paul Gray and his wife. However, Mrs. Gray died two years later and the house was sold to Viola and George Corrigan. Viola, widowed and remarried twice, lived in the house 43 years, walking 2-3 miles a day around the neighborhood. The present owners bought the house from her in 1998.