Salem in 1912

World Events

• The Manchu Qing dynasty ends after 268 years, the Republic of China is proclaimed and officially led by Sun Yat-Sen's Kuomintang political party. (His wife is one of four Chang sisters educated in U.S.)
• Emperor Meiji of Japan dies, succeeded by his son , Emperor Taisho. Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo gives 3,000 cherry trees to be planted in Washington, D.C. as a symbol of friendship.
• Woodrow Wilson is elected President. Elihu Root is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for his strong interest in international arbitration and for his plan for a world court".
• The Titanic sinks after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic with a loss of at least 1500 passengers and crew.
• New Mexico (47) and Arizona (48) become the last contiguous states. Alaska is accepted as a territory.
• The Girl Scouts is founded by Juliette Gordon Law in Savannah, Georgia.
• W. C. Handy, known as the Father of the Blues, publishes "The Memphis Blues", giving attention to "southern rag", the "blues" of today.
• Edgar Rice Burrough's "Tarzan" and Sax Rohmer's "Fu Manchu" both appear in magazines.
• New American Books: A Dome of Many-Colored Glass, Amy Lowell and Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey.

 In Salem
In 1912, postcards were all the rage for Salem travelers wishing to share the novelty of new places seen in their adventures. The Patton brothers, Edwin Cooke and Hal had lived in Japan as children when their father was US Consul in Kobe. They knew the value of this business and opened Patton Postcard Hall in 1908. A narrow room filled with cards, it was located between the Patton and Gill Buildings on State Street. In this 1912 photograph, E. Cooke Patton, is working with an unknown lady assistant. Patton postcards were among the finest produced at the time with a German photographer and the colors applied with artistry.
Local collectors have preserved many of these postcards.

When you visit
No architectural traces of this pioneer family remain in Salem. The Postcard Hall disappeared during the expansion of US National Bank east along State Street in the 1960s. The Patton Building, adjacent to the bank, was demolished in the same construction. Their home is also gone. The brothers' grandfather, Edwin Cooke, had built the Cooke-Patton mansion on Court Street, opposite the State House. They lived in the house all their lives, first with their parents and then settling in with their wives after they married. Luella, Cooke Patton's daughter, was born there and lived with her family until she married and moved to 23rd Street. The house became among the first to be demolished for the construction of the state office buildings beginning in 1937.
(Luella lived to be 109, dying in 2007.)

Other Events

• Equal suffrage won voter approval in Oregon; women are allowed to vote for the first time in the December 2 city election. Smoking is therefore not permitted at polling places as the City Council determines a smoke-filled environment is not suitable for women. However, women were declared ineligible to serve on juries.
• Salem's first Oregon National Guard unit occupies the new Armory on the corner of Ferry and Liberty Streets.

Carnegie Library now Willamette University Civic Law Center

• The establishment of a Carnegie Library in Salem, sponsored by a committee of local women, opens on State Street. After the library moved into the Civic Center in 1972, the YWCA used the building. It is now the Civic Law Center of Willamette University.
• The handsome Masonic Hall is completed on the northwest corner of State and High Streets. It was designed by Ellis Lawrence, founder of the University of Oregon School of Architecture, who was also the architect for the Hubbard Building and the Elsinore Theater.
• The Jason Lee Memorial Church and the nearby Highland Elementary School are built this year in North Salem. Both are still serving their original purposes one hundred years later and are designated as Local Landmarks.

The Dome Building of Oregon State Hospital

• The Dome Building of the Oregon State Hospital is erected on the north side of Center Street. It was designed by Edgar Lazarus who also known for his Vista House on the heights above the Columbia Gorge. The beautiful building, originally used as a receiving ward, has a curved canopy descending over the entrance, fluted cast-iron columns, a flat roof with saucer dome and two-story wings to the north and south. Located on the north side of Center Street, it is not part of the current hospital renovation. It gained recognition in 1975 when used for scenes in the Academy Award winning film, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Oregon Sate Hospital Historic District.
• Walter Gerth, an early booster and mayor of West Salem, opens a store. The family home is now a Local Landmark on Gerth Street.
• Through 37 years, 1920-1957, Louis Olson and his wife Ida lived in a spacious 1912 bungalow at 1490 McCoy Avenue. This beautiful home is in the Grant neighborhood. Mr. Olson had a variety of occupations: packing superintendent at King Foods on Front Street (now Truitt Brothers), patrolman with the Salem Police Department, weightmaster with the State Highway Department, elevator operator and engineer at the Masonic Temple and, finally, caretaker of that institution.
• The Waller-Chamberlain House is moved to its present site on Court Street. It is considered the oldest residence in the Court-Chemeketa Residential Historic District.
• Wilbur Boothby dies at his residence, 171 Court Street. His life and many outstanding local achievements are recognized in contemporary newspaper accounts and a lengthy obituary. Born in Maine in 1840, he had come to Oregon in 1864, after various enterprises in California. His first business a sash and door factory. As a contractor and designer, he built the ornate Marion County Courthouse, the State Hospital, South Eldridge Block (now Greenbaum's Quilted Forest), Bush House and many other local buildings. His wife, the former Miss R. A. Dalglsish, died in 1910, leaving a son and daughter. The Rev. P. S. Knight conducted his funeral service at the home and Boothby was buried in the I. O. O. F. Cemetery ~ now Pioneer Cemetery.

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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