Salem in 1939

World Events

• In June, the St. Louis, a ship carrying 907 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida. Forced to return to Europe, many of its passengers later die in Nazi death camps during The Holocaust.
• In September Germans invade England's ally, Poland and World War II begins. United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, India and France declare war on Nazi Germany. The U.S. declares neutrality.
• African-American opera star, Marian Anderson, denied the use of the DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., sings before an audience of 75,000 at Lincoln Memorial. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigns from the DAR.
• Legendary baseball retires after contracting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ~ now commonly known by his name: Lou Gehrig's disease. University of Oregon defeats Ohio State to become champions of the first NCAA basketball tournament.
• Academy Award: "Gone With the Wind". Prize-winning novels: Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck:  Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo and The Yearling, Margorie Kinnan Rawlings.

In Salem

One Salem citizen, Ralph Barnes, with his young wife and two daughters, is witnessing the political affairs in Europe as Foreign Correspondent for the NY Herald Tribune. The news Ralph is getting from his Salem father that the new State Library in the North Capitol Mall has been completed and that the Piety Hill homes along Court Street will be demolished next, for the Public Service Building. The Barnes handsome family home on Chemeketa Street, threatened by the construction of the state buildings on the North Capitol Mall, is safe for the present. Ralph learns that Charles Sprague, owner, editor, and publisher of the Oregon Statesman newspaper has been elected governor.
This scene, looking west on State Street, would be familiar to Ralph. Business is picking up with industry anticipating wartime contracts and increased employment. With few suburbs, downtown is in easy walking distance for many residents. It is the center of shopping and professional appointments for adults, for teenagers' drugstore sodas after school and movies on weekends, for family church services. But this is a watchful and anxious time as residents of Salem gather around their radios to listen to the news broadcasts and President Roosevelt's "fire-side chats".

When you visit
Many of these buildings remain, but of significant loss is the Capitol Theater to the left with its marquee dome. It was demolished in 2001: the lot remains empty with the only the back wall of the theater as evidence of its past presence. Beyond the next intersection at High Street, the interurban electric rail line, even then, no longer operated; travel of any distance was by automobile. Other familiar landmarks of this photograph remain, several recently renovated. From left to right, the Livesley Building, still our only skyscraper at 11 floors, the Pioneer Trust Bank and the Masonic Hall. Since 2001, a significant part of downtown has been accepted on the National Register of Historic Places and Heritage Tourism is encouraged. The new Grand Hotel and Conference Center have replaced the Marion Hotel (which was destroyed by fire in 1971) as a social center for both residents and visitors. Civic efforts are strongly focused on bringing more business downtown.

Other Events

• William W. Chadwick becomes mayor. He is among the group at the railroad station greeting Prince Olaf and Princess Martha of Norway on their brief stop in Salem. Since 1926, William W. and Lorena Chadwick had made their home at 1390 Winter Street NE. (above) Mr. Chadwick had been in Salem for only a few years, having been the Postmaster in Canby before 1921. From 1932, He rose in his local hotel career, becoming manager of the Senator Hotel, and General Manager of the Chadwick Hotel Co. Inc. and Chadwick Operating Company. The Chadwicks continued to live in their Winter Street home through his death in 1968.

• With the Patton residence gone, the new Oregon State Library and one remaining tree loom over empty space. The first of four state buildings envisioned for North Capitol Mall, it is an impressive structure. Faced in Georgia marble, granite steps lead to the main entrance, on the east, and the seal of Oregon, carved by Gabriel Lavare. This artist also created the "Pioneer Mother" statuary in the main lobby, the brass elevator, and the decorative architectural features of the second floor; plaques along the wall memorialize persons and symbols important in Oregon history.
• The last two Salem Civil War veterans, John Olsen and Al Feilen, march in the Memorial Day parade.
• South of town, the Buena Vista ferry operates across the Willamette near the town of Independence.
• At Wheatland to the north, another ferry is in operation. One commercial ferry or another has crossed the Willamette River between Yamhill and Marion Counties for over 160 years.
• Hugh Morrow becomes Director of the Salem Public Library, beginning a more than 30 career of service to that facility and our cultural community.
• The first wedding takes place in the new Oregon State Capitol.

From the Capitol Journal:

• Plans to extend water mains into the Salem Heights area reached the stage for voter approval.
• Salem High School was dropped from the basketball tournament because of participation in the "riot" staged after the Salem-Chemewa game in March.
• A Salem man was asking for a divorce from his wife, alleging she struck him in the face without first removing his eyeglasses.
• The following comics were features: Little Orphan Annie, Reg'lar Fellows, Tailspin Tommy, Dumb Dora, Bringing Up Father and Mutt and Jeff.
• The American Legion's Committee on Subversive Activities reported that four un-American organizations were active in Oregon: Young Communists, the Communist party, German-American Bund and the Silver Shirts. The Silver Shirts were potentially most dangerous since they relied on the "vigilante spirit" in achieving their un-American ends.
• In November, other municipalities of Oregon referred to the city government of Salem as a "three ring circus" because its affairs were conducted by a mayor and 14 councilmen serving without pay and each responsible only for the department immediately under individual control.

Salem in 1935

World Events

• Congress passes the Social Security Act.
• Senator Huey Long is assassinated in Louisiana. ("All the King's Men",  a 1949 film, was based on prize-winning novel, based on Huey Long's life, by Robert Penn Warren, )
• Great dust storms in the U.S. hit the mid-west the hardest. The Dust Bowl ballads and photographs will become classics. Grapes of Wrath, a novel published in 1939 captures the plight of farmers forced to leave their homes and migrate to the possible opportunities in California.
• To give employment in the Depression, The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and other government-funded work programs are instituted. Hoover Dam, dedicated this year, had many of these skilled laborers.
• Radar equipment able to detect aircraft is developed. Humorist Will Rogers and pilot Wiley Post are killed when their plane crashes in Alaska.
• Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is founded.
• The Academy Award goes to "Mutiny on the Bounty". Applauded as the most original fiction of the year is The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles G. Finney. Pulitzer Prize: Now in November, Josephine Winslow Johnson.

 In Salem

The State House fire beginning in the late afternoon...

...its climax that night.

The event most transforming of Salem life occurred on April 25th when an accidental fire begins in the late afternoon, destroying the State House in a spectacular blaze that is witnessed over a wide section of the city and attracting a large crowd of on onlookers who stood along Court Street in amazed wonder. The gentlemen who lived in the mansions lining the north side of the street joined the rescue of state papers and records, rushing into the building even as the blaze spread. Artifacts were carried into living rooms, despite the objection of several ladies, and were soon scattered on carpets and in hallways. A six-year old Spaulding grandson joined his family watching from their front porch directly across Court Street. But he had seen pictures in a book about Pompeii, and as the copper dome began to glow brightly, he took refuge under a bed, thinking another citywide catastrophe was in the making. Later he was teased because he missed its brilliant collapse.

Ruins of the State House with dome collapsed, April 1935

Interior of the Sate House the morning after fire

These photographs taken the next day demonstrate the tragedy. The neighbors lived with the ruins for many months as the state authorities decided how, and where, to rebuild.
Immediately after the fire, discussions had begun as to where a new capitol building should be constructed: in the same place or, perhaps the Candalaria Hills? If in the original location, how can new state buildings, needed for many years, be accommodated in that core of the city surrounded by Willamette University on the south, the railroad tracks on the east, the stately residential "Piety Hill" on the north, and the downtown on the west?
Meanwhile, where would the governor and legislature be housed? Kathleen Carlson Clements wrote, "State clerks spent the day after the fire sorting through saved records and filing cabinets, removed to the armory during the fire. The businessmen of Salem called a special session of the Chamber of Commerce to offer space for state offices displaced by the fire, which were quickly set up at various locations including the Oregon Building and the Supreme Court Building. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a cable expressing his sympathies and offering federal aid in rebuilding."

When you visit
Today this site is completed changed with the newly positioned building and the area half a mile to the north transformed from residential to state offices. By 1939 the new Vermont marble Capitol (not called the State House anymore) was constructed in a modern style of on the same site, facing north instead of west. Needing new office space, the state acquired by "eminent domain" the immediate residential area 4 blocks to the north of the Capitol and over the next twenty years, from 1937 to 1959, the dignified "Piety Hill" homes were either demolished or sold for removal. A few that survived in another location were those associated with the families Judge Henry Bean, Mayor Louis Lachmund, Ladd and Bush Bank officers David Eyre and Joseph Baumgartner, pioneer descendant Cora Moores, prominent physician Dr. Frederick Thompson and Judge Brand. Lost were the homes of prominent families such as Kay, Patton, Spaulding, Miles, Bush, McNary, Barnes, Albert, Rigdon, Bishop and many others. The First Presbyterian Church was moved, another church demolished. In all, the process took 20 years and created the North Capitol Mall with four state buildings: the first, in 1937, was the Oregon State Library.

Floyd McMullen, a 22-year-old Willamette University Student and a volunteer "sleeper" for Salem Fire Department, is the only fatality. He dies of injuries sustained from falling debris inside the building.
Seventy-five years later, Floyd McMullen remains the only Salem fire fighter to die while on duty. Fire Station #7 is dedicated to his memory and contains a museum with artifacts from the fire which so greatly changed the future of Salem.


Other events

• V. E. Kuhn is elected mayor and he showed strength in pursuing a North Santiam, clean water source. The business community was against such a "risky venture" at such high cost. A pipeline and treatment system from Stayton Island was accepted by the City Council.
• Max and Mark Gehlhar establish the Oregon Fruit Products Company in West Salem. The fruit dryer was destroyed by fire, but the cannery building across the street was saved.
• Dancing is allowed at Willamette University for the first time.
• An unusual, cobbled-stone English Cottage style house is built on D Street for Guy and Edele Irwin. Mr. Irwin worked as a meat packer. After his death, Mrs. Irwin married Ernest Hobbs and continued to reside here into the 1960s. Mr. Hobbs was employed at the State Printing Board. The house was acquired by the State in the late 1990s is now an office. This former residence and the Adolphson house next door are the only two North Capitol Mall Heritage Park houses still in their original locations. They are both designated as Local Landmarks.
• Along Church Street, on the east side of Fry Hill, Daniel Fry builds homes to rent. Employees of his Commercial Street Drug Store occupy several. Conde McCullough, a bridge engineer, rents one. He may have influenced the design of the Church Street Bridge across Pringle Creek near this house. (The bridge is credited to R. A. Furrow, a city bridge engineer.) Mr. McCullough later moved to an English Arts and Crafts residence on Leffelle Street designed by Clarence Smith. McCullough favored the arch form for bridges, taking Oregon bridge building to a fine art. He designed 32 major arch bridges existing in Oregon and a prototype for a covered bridge that was used as a model for many of the covered bridges built in Oregon between 1905 and 1925. He died suddenly at his home in Salem in 1946.

The Tonning House

• South of the city, a young couple's romantic vision of an English cottage leads to the construction of a remarkably beautiful home on Croisan Creek Road that became known as the Tonning House. This residence, modeled on an architect’s “dream home” that had won a blue ribbon in the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, was begun in 1935, but completed later by new owners, Nels and Olga Tonning. Among the guests in their more than thirty years of hospitality were John Croisan and his wife who had lived in the old homestead on the back of the property. When their home burned down, they lived upstairs while they were building another home next door. This house is in the Croisan-Illahe neighborhood (now SWAN).

Salem in 1925

World Events

• Kristiania, the capitol of Norway, reverts to its original name of Oslo. After a fire destroyed the city in 1624, it had been rebuilt and named for King Christian IV.
• London's first enclosed double-decker buses are in service.
• Meher Baba, Indian spiritual master, begins a silence that lasts for 44 years, until his death. He communicated with an alphabet board or hand signals, interpreted by his disciple.
• A dog-sled serum run to Nome (The Great Race of Mercy) brings diphtheria antitoxin across the Alaska  territory to combat an epidemic.
• The Butler Act in Tennessee prohibits the teaching of evolution in public schools. Biology high school teacher, John T. Scopes is arrested for teaching Darwin's Theory. "The Monkey Trial" of Dayton was the most celebrated of the time, attracting the famous lawyers Clarance Darrow and William Jennings Bryan (who died 5 days after the trial.) Scopes is found guilty and fined $100.
• A Thompson sub-machine gun can be purchased for $175 from the Sears Roebuck mail order catalog.
• An exhibition in Paris introduces the Art Deco style of architecture, design and decoration. New books: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald and An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser.

In Salem
Cornelia Marvin celebrates her 20th anniversary as Oregon State Librarian. Through her career she had traveled by team and wagon to speak to farm groups, teachers and clubs, encouraging support for the development of free public libraries. The Legislature had appropriated funds for the purchase of trunks, each including 50 books, to begin traveling library service. Three years later, Cornelia Marvin married Governor Walter M. Pierce. She came under heavy criticism, as women were not expected to have careers of their own, much less be influencing state legislation. Numerous newspaper articles of that time debate about whether Mrs. Pierce was stepping out of her place by continuing to work in state government. She retired the next year. It is appropriate to remember Cornelia Marvin Pierce's determination to make libraries "the hub of the wheel of knowledge" for everyone.

When you visit
Cornelia Pierce lived to see the creation of the Oregon State Library building in 1939. It was the first of the state buildings to be erected on the North Capitol Mall and occupies a prominent position just across Court Street from the Capitol itself. Governor and Mrs. Pierce lived only a few blocks away, adjacent to the Methodist Church. He declined a second term as governor, but was elected to the US House of Representatives, serving from 1932 to 1943. They retired to a Rt. 4. home in the Eola community. He died in 1954 and Cornelia three years later. There is a photograph of the exterior her home and one of her living room, both taken in 1957.

Other Events

• Salem Cherry Growers Association is established.
• During the first part of the 20th century, Salem's canning industry grew from one plant to over ten and canned cherries were an important part of this Salem produce. With improved refrigeration, rail shipments of fresh cherries increased. One of the largest shippers was Salem Cherries Growers Association formed this year. Their fresh packing operation was set up the Max Gehlhar dryer in West Salem.
• Curly's Diary was originally built in 1925, in the old part of Salem on Hood Street. There, Mr. Hans (Curly) Hofstetter converted an old garage into a milk processing plant. The business successfully served the community and became a well-known institution. Unfortunately, economic conditions in 2006 forced it to close.

The "Little Gem" on Water Street near Riverfront Park

• The Little Gem Grocery Store was probably started this year. Originally located at 17th and Chemeketa Street on the corner of a 1906 residential property, it served as a small neighborhood grocery for many years and finally became an artist's studio. In 1998, when the property owner wished to extend his front porch, the neighbors were allowed to move it temporarily to another property where it was repainted and restored so it could be moved to its present location. It is now owned by the city and is a part of the Gilbert House Children's Museum.
• Dr. Carl and Cleo Cashatt built a bungalow on High Street across from Bush's Pasture. They lived there until 1942. Subsequent owners have preserved its exterior integrity and the original interior features. It can be seen in the SHINE Gaiety Hill/Bush's Pasture Park Walking Tour.
• A residence was built this year by Margorie Kay Huntington and her husband, Hollis. The house was originally just to the north of her parents' property on Court Street. Through the expanion of state property for the North Capitol Mall, the house has been moved several times. It is now a part of the Heritage Park on D Street.

• Ben Maxwell's Salem, Oregon (edited by Scott McArthur, 2006) recalled two Capitol Journal articles this year about the value of a public school education for young boys. One asked if a parent had the right of educate his own child, or is the child in Oregon a ward of the state? The question was raised by by T. S. Watts, farmer in the Salem Heights district who did not send his ten-year-old son to public schools. His contention was that the boy was receiving as good instruction, or even better, than in the public school. The boy read Emerson with understanding, wrote a good essay and was well mannered. In the second, Kenneth Cole, aged 6 1/2, never went to school a day in his life but knew the alphabet and figures. He set all the headlines for the Falls City Enterprise without help. Only one correction was required.
• On Fairmount Hill, Clarence Smith, a noted architect, designed an English cottage for Burt Ford and his wife Margaret at 490  Leffelle Street in the SCAN neighborhood. Mr. Ford was a partner in the law firm of Ross and Ford. Mrs. Ford continued to live here well into the 1940s. The house is now designated a Local Landmark.
• Local businessmen started Salem's first Golf Club venture this year by donating $250 each to purchase the John Hughes Land Grant to develop a first class golf course. One man, Ercel Kay, the grandson of the founder of Thomas Kay Woolen Mills of Salem, brought it all together. When the golf course first opened to the public, the green fees were 25 cents for the nine holes and 40 cents for the full 18 holes. In 1965, son of Ercel, and great-grandson of the Mission Mill owner, Thomas Kay, bought the course from his father.

Salem in 1903

World Events

• With U.S. encouragement, Panama proclaimed independence from Colombia. Several different treaties between U. S. and Columbia (and then Panama) in what was called "gunboat diplomacy" were necessary until  U. S. had the authority to build a canal across Isthmus of Panama. (Roosevelt's popularity leads to toy bear being called the "Teddy Bear".) 
• Cuba leases Guantanamo Bay to U. S. "in perpetuity".
• The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party splits: Bolsheviks (Russian word for "majority") and Mensheviks ("minority").
• The Wright Brothers make the first successful petrol-powered, heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
• The first Tour de France bicycle race is won by Maurice Garin. In the first World Series, the Boston Red Socks defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates in 8 games. The first stock car event is held at the Milwaukee Mile.
• Crayola crayons are introduced, 8 colors in a box for 5 cents.
• Best New American Books: Call of the Wild, Jack London and The Ambassadors, Henry James. For children: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Kate Douglas Wiggins.

In Salem
The city welcomes President Roosevelt who speaks to our Legislature in the State House. In this photograph he is leaving as a group of top-hatted gentlemen walk along, Governor Chamberlain to his right. The local star of the day was our own soprano, Hallie Parrish Hinges, who sang the National Anthem for the thousands who were present to hear his speech. Her clear soprano, it was reported, could be heard as far away as the top of High Street hill eleven blocks away. President Roosevelt said to Governor Chamberlain, "She has one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. Have her sing again." Hallie responded by singing a favorite of the time, "The Flag Without a Stain," and soon the president wiped his eyes, asked for her name and said, "Truly, she is the Oregon Nightingale." This was the second time Hallie had sung for a president: she performed for Benjamin Harrison in 1891. In 1911, she gave her third presidential performance. Standing beside William Howard Taft in an open, touring car (surrounded by secret service men), she led a group of school children in serenading the top-hatted president on Court Street.

Mrs. Hinges was the granddaughter of Josiah Parrish, a Methodist missionary pioneer of the "Lausanne" party of reinforcements in 1840. He was noted for his work among the Indians to whom he was known as "the man of peace". He was awarded the one-mile square donation land grant that was the northeast section of the four-mile Salem distribution. The Lee Memorial Cemetery, where many pioneers are buried, was begun by his family on their land. His 1860s Capitol Street home (across from the school that honors his memory) was relocated to the A. C. Gilbert Discovery Village on Water Street in 1990 due to the construction of the Oregon State Archives. Hallie's parents were Norman O. Parrish and his wife Henrietta. She married Dr. Charles H. Hinges and had two children, Karl and George.

When you visit
If the popular "Teddy" left any other memento of his visit except this photograph, none is known. The State House burned in 1935 and has been replaced by a modern structure, unlike this classic building.
Governor Chamberlain, whose wife did not wish to leave her home in Portland, rented a room in the Cooke-Patton mansion across the street, now the site of the Oregon State Library. He resigned in 1909 when elected to the US Senate.
Long a favorite performer at Oregon vocal events, Hallie Hinges died in 1950 at the age of 82. A home associated with her family (and later Samuel Kimball) was at the SW corner of Chemeketa and Summer Streets. In 1938 it was removed due to construction for the State Library. It has since moved twice due to the expansion of the North Capitol Mall and is now at 1075 Capital Street, NE.

Other events

• The city grows for the first time since its incorporation: annexations include all of the present Grant neighborhood, the south half of Highland, almost all of NEN, SESNA to about the present Airport Road to the east and SCAN to Rural Street on the south. The 5th, 6th and 7th wards are added, bringing the number of Aldermen to 14, two for each ward.
• The first Cherry City parade is organized, sponsored by the Elks Club. Its lodge hall was the State Street structure that is now the Micah Building of the United Methodist Church. Agnes Gilbert was named Cherry Festival Queen. Fifty-three years later, as Mrs. B. O. Schucking, she became Salem's First Citizen.
• A public library committee is formed with the first collection of books in a room of the City Hall.
• The Queen Anne-styled Ada and Mark Skiff Block, just east of Liberty on Court Street, is completed. It will be used as commercial shops and offices, but not for the Skiff family. Dr. Lansing F. Skiff was one of the first dentists in the Far West, a so-called "circuit rider" of dentistry. He was also one of the first dentists in the United States to use a water motor in the in cleaning teeth. He founded the Oregon State Dental Society. His son, Mark, followed in this profession and reportedly set the first gold crown in Salem. Neither dentist practiced in the building. It is included in the SHINE Downtown walking tour.

Cole-Jewett House

• At 1020 16th Street, a Queen Anne residence is built, probably by Vincent Cole. In 1911, the large, many gabled residence was purchased by George and Hattie Jewett who lived there for forty years with several other adults of their family. After the mid-forties, the property was subsequently sold to a succession of owners: Thomas and Frances Moisan, Mrs. Stella Ashton and Arnold and Mary Unger. Well maintained with its original architectural integrity, it stands in a mature landscape with other houses of similar age. It is an outstanding local Landmark in the NEN neighborhood.

Mystery House moved from Ferry Street to 17th in 1903

• Another residence is moved in that neighborhood: from Ferry Street (directly behind the Methodist Church) to 17th Street. north of Mill Creek. A few years ago, a lady came to the house and said she (or perhaps her relatives) had lived in the house after its relocation here in 1903 when the owners placed it here and sub-divided the several acres around it ~ constructing the street that runs along the north side of the creek and selling lots for other houses.
  We hope the owner will continue research so we may learn the names of earlier owners of this house and its history. This may be the oldest residence in Salem.
• South of the city, in the Ewald Fruit Farms (now 3915 Liberty Street South), a hilltop farmhouse is built among the orchards. It may have been on the Chapman land in the 1920s, but 1951 was the home of Robert D. Taylor and his wife Hope. He was president of the Salem Brake and Wheel Alignment Company. By 1976, he had retired and this was the last year his name appeared at this address. No other research has been done on this house that is now a rental.
• The first automobile, an Oldsmobile, is brought to Salem by Otto J. Wilson.

Salem in 1878

World Events

• In the Anglo-Afghan war, the Treaty of Gandamak  allows the Afghan tribes internal rule while the British act as buffer between the Raj in India and the Russian Empire.
• In London, Scotland Yard is established. 
• Chinese migration to America, in response to the demand for cheap labor, reaches 120,000.
• An epidemic of Yellow Fever takes 14,000 lives in the Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast.
• Albert Pope transforms a sewing machine company into one that makes the new "bicycles". Edison patents the Phonograph.
• Adolf Eric Nordenskiold navigates the North Sea Route, a shipping lane fro the Atlantic to the Pacific along the Siberian coast. The United States territory of New Mexico is linked to the rest of the nation by railroad for the first time as the Aitchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway completes a line through the Raton Pass.
• New Books: Daisy Miller, Henry James. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoi. The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy.

In Salem
The structure of the United Methodist Church in Salem represents the original motivation of settlement not only in Oregon and the Willamette Valley, but also in Salem itself. Under the guidance of Jason Lee, missionaries first arrived in the northwest in 1834. By 1840, the mission site (near the present Wheatland Ferry) had proved unsuitable and the mission began its move 10 miles upriver to the Salem site. In 1841 the Methodist missionaries moved their worship services to the Oregon Institute (now the site of Willamette University). By 1852, on the State Street site where the church is today, they were able to build a small wooden church that was dedicated by Alvin Waller. (This building later had other uses and was moved to another location. It was photographed in 1909 when it was on Liberty Street.) In 1871, the congregation had outgrown their church and they began a Gothic brick sanctuary at the same State Street location. Even with a national depression, the Salem Methodists were successful in their monumental building effort. Local architect Wilbur F. Boothby, who also assisted in the design of the Oregon State Hospital, Bush House, the Marion County Courthouse and other downtown buildings, supervised the construction that cautiously featured a sanctuary on the second floor because of past floods. The church is completed in this year.

When you visit
The United Methodist Church has had alterations and improvements. The sanctuary was remodeled in 1953 to add a chancel rose window, new altar, pulpit, pews, and an Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ. 185-foot wooden spire, which makes the church the tallest building in Salem, was replaced in 1984. In 2000, the organ acquired its full rank of pipes.
The church is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is featured on the route of our self-guided "Salem in Oregon History" walking tour on this web/blog. An extensive archive is maintained on site and in the Micah Building to the east. Tours are available by appointment. For more information, call 503-364-6709.

Micah Building was originally the Elks Club, built in 1925 and occupied by that fraternal organization until 1993 when the church purchased it. Before the Elks Club was built, this property had been the home site of the Werner Breyman residence built before 1871. When the site was purchased for the Elks, the residence was moved around the corner onto Cottage Street, remodeled into apartments and since demolished.
Standing at that corner today, looking north across Cottage Street, one can see the 1904 Breyman Brothers Spanish American War Memorial. Both brothers could gaze on the memorial from their front porches: Eugene Breyman's home was one block north, across the Post Office lawn (now the area to the east of the State Executive Building), at Court and Cottage Streets.

Other Events

• In this year, T. M. Gatch's unexpired term is completed by G. W. Gray
• Abigail Scott Duniway, women's rights advocate, is presiding over a Women's Suffrage Convention at the Reed Opera House where the ladies are planning to take their demands to the state legislature.
• Asahel Bush has bought out his business partner, William Ladd, to become sole owner and president of Ladd and Bush Bank. Hoping to be selected by the legislature to represent Oregon in the US Senate, he travels to Washington, representing the Democrats, to testify in the two-year contested election between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford Hayes. The Republican, Hayes, wins the presidency and James Slater of Corvallis becomes senator.
• The State of Oregon appropriates funds for a library in Salem. The books were collected in a series of locations, including the State House, until the present structure was built in 1939.
• Oregon State fairgoers this summer were invited to see two of the latest inventions, Thomas Edison's gramophone and Alexander Graham Bell's telephone.  However, it not be until 1884 that a limited telephone service was introduced to Salem when the phone was first used by the Capital Journal newspaper about the business of collecting news. 

• The Adolph house on State Street (above) is completed with Sam and Lottie Adolph as the first owners. Mr. Adolph was secretary-treasurer of Rostein and Adolph, Inc., a property and casualty insurance company formed in 1931 by Mr. Adolph and his brother-in-law, Mr. Rostein. Lottie Adolph resided here on the 5-acre estate as a widow and was followed by her son-in-law, Isadore Greenbaum. In the early 1950s the house passed into their son David's ownership. It is now a professional office building and is listed on the National Register of Historic Properties.