Salem in 1899

World Events

• Russia increases control over Finland, declaring the right to veto their legislative rulings.
• U. S. takes possession of Wake Island. Philippine people demand independence and hostilities begin in Manilla. The war will continue until 1902.
• The Hague Convention establishes the first multinational treaties addressing the conduct of the military forces toward defeated opponents  and the protection of civilians caught up in combat. These treaties are based on the Lieber Code signed by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.
• The Great Blizzard brings freezing temperatures as far south as Florida, bringing disaster to the Florida citrus crop.
• Marconi successful send a radio signal across the English Channel.
• Voting machines are approved by Congress for U. S. federal elections.
• Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" is copyrighted as ragtime music becomes popular.
• The Story of Little Black Sambo, by Scottish author and illustrator Helen Bannerman, is published as one of a series in The Dumpy Books for Children. This was the first story to portray black heroes in children's literature. It has undergone criticism of racism since the mid-20th century.

In Salem
This photograph from Ed Austin's collection was displayed as a part of the 1995 Railroads in Salem exhibit in the Heritage Room at the Salem Public Library. It shows a large crowd has gathered at the Salem station on August 10, 1899 to welcome the returning Oregon 2nd Volunteers home from the Spanish American War. The view, taken from the water tower (now Mission Mill Museum property), gives an interesting perspective of the early Salem layout south of this location. Note the street car to the right and the stub switch on the mainline in the foreground. A band was on hand to lead the parade downtown where table were spread for a welcome home luncheon.

When you visit
Unfortunately, we are not able to perch at the top of the water tower (which is still there) and take a comparative photograph in 2010. However, we can pick out some urban developments since that day. The area to the left was later occupied by a hop warehouse, and then the California Packing Company cannery. After the cannery closed, the Tokyo International University campus was built in that area. The station burned and was replaced by 1918 by the third railroad station, the one we use presently. The old freight depot (out of sight beyond the passenger station) survived again and is part of the Salem Railroad Station's listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

Other Events

• This year Greenbaum's Department Store opened at 240 Commercial Street. Now Greenbaum's Quilted Forest, it celebrated a 100th anniversary in 1999. It is located in the remaining section of the 1889 South Eldridge Block. In 1919 the local merchants partnership of Rostein & Greenbaum bought the building. In the second Greenbaum generation, Adolph continued the enterprise, changing it to "Greenbaum's Fine Fabrics" in the 1940s when the building was sold. When Adolph died in 1960, his sister, Irene Depenbrock, took over the business. She was responsible for purchasing the building in 1966 and so preserving it for the future of the business. Her daughter and son-in-law, Sylvia and Bill Dorney continued this family business into the present commercial life of our historic downtown.
• Maud Hill, who had walked from Missouri to Oregon as a child, marries John Zackary, the great-grandson of the noted pioneer, Tabitha Brown, often called the "Mother of Oregon." When the marriage ended with the death of her husband in 1917, Maud made a home for her family on Front Street, laboring as a laundress to raise her five children. She died in 1954 and is remembered with honor by her descendants.
• In 1899 Steusloff Meats has a prominent downtown location at 284 Commercial and an impressive display in the interior. However, just five years later, in 1904, a new concrete building was completed for the business at 399 Court Street. In 1947-8, the exterior of the building was altered and then sold by the Steusloff family. It housed the popular "Sally's", a ladies' clothing store for several years. A Starbuck's coffee shop now occupies this northwest corner of Court and Liberty Streets.
  This change in Salem's downtown architectural style was also reflected modifications of the Pearce and Breyman buildings one block to the west at the Commercial and Court Street intersection. Nearly all modernization efforts involved the removal of decorative detail, resurfacing of the exterior facade, and updating of the ground-level storefronts. These changes reflect the evolving, post-war feeling that becoming "modern" in Salem's commercial district would bring economic prosperity and dynamic growth.

A June ad in the Capitol Journal advised readers to stop smoking. No-To-Bac, it reported, removes the desire for tobacco without nervous distress, expels nicotine, purifies the blood, restores lost manhood, and makes you strong in health, nerve and pocketbook. 

In September, another advertisement extolled the use of Dr. Peau's Yellow Nerve Pills that were guaranteed to cure all nervous diseases, weak memory, headache, wakefulness and (as above) lost manhood. It noted that these pills could be carried in the vest pocket.

In August, the property of the closed Orphans' Home situated "near the state asylum", was being sold to the Salem Hospital. It had closed for want of funds and standing idle. It was planned that the property and buildings be deeded to the hospital with the provision that they should always be used for hospital purposes.
 Local businesses made the news:

Jos. Myers and Sons, Salem's greatest store, advertised blankets for hop-pickers for 29 cents.

Frank Dearborn's bookstore offered juvenile attractions: The Oliver Optic series, Henty books and the Sailor Boy with Dewey series.

Capital Lumber Co. was working a short day ~ a nine hour shift.

On a Sunday, a swarm of wasps and honeybees gained access to the Harritt & Lawrence Grocery Store and carried away 30 pounds of honey. On the next Monday, they made another raid and the store had to be closed while the bees were smoked out with sulfur.

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

Salem in 1867

World Events

• Alaska is sold to the US by Alexander II of Russia for $7,200,000: the purchase is ridiculed as "Seward's Folly." Nebraska becomes the 37th state.
• Emperor Maximilian, an Austrian, is executed in Mexico and Benito Juarez (considered the "Abraham Lincoln" of that nation), becomes president again.
• Skeleton of Cro-Magnon man is discovered in France. The Cro-Magnon people, who lived probably 45,000 years ago are considered the earliest anatomically modern humans.
• Richard Wagner composes "The Ring." The waltz, "Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss is first performed in Vienna.
•  Das Kapital by Karl Marx is published in Germany. It addressed the global problems caused by capitalism in disrupting political and economic systems. It created an international debate on how to reform politics and social relations.
• Charles Dickens gives his first U.S. public reading in a New York theater.

In SalemWillamette University students studying any of the political or cultural topics mentioned above, find dorm rooms and classes in the new Waller Hall, named for Alvan Waller. It has been built in the Renaissance style of architecture, designed in the shape of a Greek cross, each side with the same measurements, the top with a cupola. The five-story, redbrick building has been twice by fires gutted by fires, with the interior rebuilt each time. It went through renovations in 1987, 1989 and 2005.
Alvan Waller was prominent in the establishment of the Oregon Institute (Willamette University), to the construction of the original Methodist Church and to the founding of the Pacific Christian Advocate. he died in 1872. His wife Elepha died in 1881.
 
When You Visit: Waller Hall at Willamette University
The building is currently used for administration offices and is the oldest U.S. university building west of the Mississippi still in use. It is located at 900 State Street, across from the Capitol, and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1975. If the door on the south side is open, enter for a visit to the beautiful Cone Chapel on the second floor.

Other Events

• John H. Moores is re-elected as mayor, the first to serve more than one year. In the 1870s, he consolidated his lumber business with that of the Capital Lumbering Company. He was the secretary and manager of the latter company from June 1876, until his death in December of 1880. During the more than 27 years that he spent in Salem, he was actively interested in various public enterprises. He was treasurer of Marion County, a member of the board of trustees of Willamette University, and was for several years a member of the board of directors of the Salem public schools and of the Oregon State Agricultural Society, of which he was also treasurer. He was also a member of Salem's first city council, four times mayor of Salem, four years a member of the Oregon State senate, and was with the late George H. Atkinson, named as a commissioner to designate the location of the Oregon penitentiary and the Oregon State Insane asylum. Mr. and Mrs. John H. Moores were both members of the Salem First M. E. church, and Mrs. Moores was president of the Oregon Children's Aid Society that erected and maintained an orphans' home on Asylum Avenue in Salem. Their son Albert married Cora Dickinson, daughter of Obed Dickinson, the first minister of the Congregational Church. Their home was in the Piety Hill residential area, now North Capitol Mall. Their home was moved to Leffelle Street.

The former Ladd and Bush Bank

• Asahel Bush left publishing and entered banking, founding the Ladd and Bush Bank (still in business on the corner of State and Commercial Streets.) He managed and directed the bank for 45 years until his death in 1913, at the age of 89. In 1854, he had married Eugenia Zieber, the daughter of one of his printers. They had four children: Estelle, Sally, Asahel III (known as A.N. Bush) and Eugenia. The young and beautiful wife and mother had died of consumption in 1863 at age 30, and Mr. Bush raised the family with the help of servants. Mrs. Bush never lived in the Bush House constructed in 1877-78, but daughter Sally never married and continued to live there with her father and act as mistress of the household.  She died there in 1946.
• The African-American community in Salem raised $427.50, which allowed them to operate a school for six months. They placed an announcement in the newspaper this year, saying that “Notice is hereby given that the colored people of Salem expect to pay all the expenses of the Evening School now being held by them, without aid from other citizens - no person is authorized to collect funds in our name.” The following year, the city of Salem continued what they had begun, and opened Little Central School. This segregated school was located near Central School on High Street between Center and Marion. Its fifteen minority students were taught by Marie Smith and Mrs. R. Mallory. Tuition at Little Central was $4 a term, the same that white children paid to attend “big” Central School.
• The completed Millrace directly supplies water for Salem Woolen Mill and increases flow into Pringle Creek for increasingly prosperous Salem Flour Mill.
• The Starkey-McCully Building is erected at 223-233 Commercial Street with earning from a successful California Gold Rush enterprise that gained the Iowa partners, John Starkey and Asa McCully $5,000 each. They moved to Oregon in 1858 and opened a store in the present location of the historic Ladd and Bush bank. Their next enterprise was this new construction that was rented to various retail, grocery, sporting goods, furniture and auto supplies. The facade is decorated with wrought-iron detail, possibly the oldest of its kind in place. Only 70 feet of the original 120 feet building frontage remain.
• A Willamette University graduate, Edward E. Dodge, organizes a W. U. baseball team that defeated the town "Town Team" 84-23 on a field that now is Willson Park. Edward Dodge, the catcher, scored 10 runs. However, the University nine lost to the Portland Pioneers, 92-25, playing on the Fairgrounds diamond.
• John Minto purchases the 247 acre island in the Willamette River, later named for him.

Featuring our Summer Street Heritage

Today the Statesman Journal featured Grant neighborhood's efforts to establish a National Register Historic District in an area including this historic Summer Street house. Originally built in the 1930s for Juanita and Robert Paulus, it is now owned by Lola and Christopher Hackett who are active in preservation activities and are quoted in the current newspaper article. On October 8, the Marion County Historic Society will welcome Norma Paulus as speaker at their annual dinner, held at Mission Mill Museum. We are fortunate in Salem that both newcomers to our community and representatives of past generations work together to preserve our valuable cultural heritage.

Moving Salem History #3 and #4 of 12

photo above from the collection of Carole Smith

This historic 1934 photograph was taken from the lawn of the old Courthouse on High Street, looking north toward the former City Hall and Senator Hotel, now replaced by a parking lot and the bus center. The Grand Theater is across the street to the left. Now relocated are the World War I statue of the Doughboy (a traditional term for American infantrymen in earlier times) and the small house to the right.

The Doughboy soldier was erected in 1924, stored somewhere after the Courthouse was demolished in 1939. In 1991 the statue was placed in the Memorial Park of the Oregon Department of Veteran Affairs at 700 Summer Street.

The William Beckett house used for the Marion County Home Demonstration in 1934 was originally located on the corner of Liberty and Union Streets. Moved to the Courthouse lawn and completely renovated and refurnished, it was an example of Depression “how-to” remodeling for the average homeowner. It was sold to Larry Grote for $1,295 and moved to this Wilson Street lot behind his own home . It is now on the National Register of Historic Places.