Salem in 1955

World Events 

• American Advisers are sent to aid South Vietnam government.
•  West Germany becomes a democratic Federal Republic, separate from German Democratic Republic in the east, which is a Communist dictatorship.
• Protests against racial segregation lead to federal law forbidding it on interstate trains and busses. Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for not giving up her seat in the "colored section" to a white woman. Montgomery Bus Boycott follows.
• American labor unions merge into AFL-CIO. General Motors is the first American corporation to make profits over a billion dollars in one year.
• Actor James Dean is killed in an auto crash near Cholame, California.
• Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California. "Gun Smoke" and "Mickey Mouse Club" debut on TV. Bill Haley introduces "rock 'n' roll" music blending country and blues.
• Ray Kroc opens his first McDonald's in partnership with the McDonald brothers in Des Plains, Illinois.
• Academy Awards: "Marty" (US), Samurai, "The Legend of Musashi" (Japan). Prize-winning book: A Fable, William Faulkner.

In Salem
Salem shoppers are excited about the opening of a local branch of Portland's Meier and Frank department store. The business enterprise is built on the traditional site of Salem schools: the 1906 Salem High School and the earlier Central School. Gerry Frank, owner and manager, became a well-known political and business leader in Salem and was a prominent member of Governor Hatfield's staff. This is a photograph of the familiar entrance on the southwest corner of Center and High Streets N.E. The view includes the southeast corner of the building's parking structure at Center and Church Streets N.E. It shows Salem's use of parking meters downtown at that time and the grid of one-way streets.

When you visit
This department store chain has been sold to Macy's, but the local branch continues to operate at this location. Information about Gerry Frank's Konditorei was published in 1999 by SalemHistory website. This specialty restaurant currently (2014) operates at the southeast corner of Kearny and Commercial Streets.
The iconic Meier and Frank lobby clock, famed as a local meeting spot, was given to the Salvation Army Kroc Center by Frank in 2008. The gilt-encrusted clock had been installed in 1955 and is the work of Welton Beckett Architects in Los Angeles. It was removed from Meier and Frank in summer 2006, when the May Co. remodeled the building.

Other Events

• A Christmas parade for children is inaugurated this year. It continues as the 'Festival of Lights." However, due to the city's inability to aid in the financing, the parade moved to Keizer in 2011.
• The former President of the United States, Herbert Hoover, visits Salem where he lived for three years in his youth. The Newberg home of his uncle, Henry Minthorn, is renovated beyond recognition this year.

• The foreground of this aerial view of the 1955 Salem downtown shows the availability of land on the hill south of Pringle Creek that will later house the new Civic Center (left foreground of the photograph). In the left center, the area of the three bridges that cross the Willamette River (back to front) the railroad bridge, Marion Street Bridge and Center Street Bridge. The dark tall evergreens at the end of the bridges are in Marion Square Park. North-south streets (left to right) are Front Street; Commercial Street with the Columbia River Paper Company at the left edge of picture. The present Civic Center is located in the left foreground.  Up one block is the Marion Motor Hotel and one block further Ladd and Bush Bank; Liberty Street with the tall Capitol Tower building at the State Street intersection; and High Street with Marion County Courthouse (trees and grass in front, far right) and on the other side of the street further along is Salem City Hall with its clock tower.
• Brush Creek School, established in 1895, still has only a single classroom when the students and their teacher pose for a portrait outside the front porch. Since then, the school buildings have expanded and been renovated several times. The unique quality of this school is that the original bell tower still remains, even with the bell itself. The school celebrated its long service to the community in 2010 with an exhibition of student work and a collection of historical photographs. 
• Graduates of the 1890 class of East School held a reunion at the home of Dan Fry in August of this year.  This school was one of Salem's architectural gems, but unfortunately the maintenance of the building was too high and the facilities out-of-date. To local historical preservationists, who have little influence in city planning, the three greatest architectural losses have been this school building, the old City Hall on High Street and the Victorian Marion County Courthouse. None of these could have continued in their original functions so these demolitions were logical financially. Whether any one of these could have been transformed into a local historical museum, devoted to the city's heritage, is debatable. We still (2012) have no institution in Salem dedicated to this purpose.

• The plaque that commemorated the location of Salem's first commercial venture, the Thomas Cox store on the northeast corner of Ferry and Commercial Streets in 1847, was removed this year from the building that stood there. The photograph that was taken is our only record of the plaque which has disappeared. Ed Ritter, wrecker, is pictured on the left.
• One of Salem's most outstanding local businesses, the Paulus Brothers Packing Company, is sold to Dole Pineapple Company, Ltd. This is a further signal that traditional canning operations have become limited because of the popularity of frozen foods. All the canning facilities south of Trade Street were replaced by parks and other urban uses. This gentrification of the downtown has given it a more attractive appearance and made room for enterprises such as SAIF and a downtown, Pringle Creek condominium, Salmon Run. This loss of industry has been a detriment to the economy of the city 
• Myra Albert Wiggins, a granddaughter of the pioneer Holman family who left Salem to pursue a successful career as a photographer, dies at her home in Toppenish, Washington at the age of 86. Myra's life as a wife and mother never limited her career. Her love of family, natural beauty, the theme of Native American women and her world travel were all reflected in the art she produced. Her life is profiled on Salem Lifelines.

Salem in 1928

World Events

• Herbert Hoover sweeps into the White House with 444 electoral votes, defeating Al Smith ~ the first Catholic nominated to be president.
• Chiang Kai-shek is named Chairman of the National Military Council of the Nationalist government of the Republic of China.
• Famine claims 25 million lives in Soviet Union.
• Haile Selassie is crowned king of Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
• In England the women's voting age is lower from 3o to 21.
• The Kellogg–Briand Pact is signed in Paris, the first treaty to outlaw aggressive war.
• Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin.
• Mickey Mouse is introduced in Disney cartoon movies. Mae West is "Diamond Lil" on Broadway. The Academy Award goes to "Broadway Melody". 
• The Pulitzer Prize awarded to Scarlet Sister Mary, Julia Peterkin. The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to the three volume Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Unset. It remains a classic for its "powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages".

In Salem
An orphan before he was 10 years old, young Herbert Hoover was sent to Newburg in 1888 to live with his aunt and uncle. In the next year, his uncle, Dr. Henry Minthorn, opened a land-settlement office in Salem, and the family moved into a house at Hazel and Highland Avenue. (see below)

According to remembrances of Hoover Published in the Capital Journal, he was a quiet, serious teenager with few close friends and an intense appreciation for the outdoors. He was introduced to literature by local educator Jennie Gray who had the greatest influence on his life. With Gray’s help, Hoover left Salem in 1891 to attend Stanford University. In his successful career as a mining engineer, he made a considerable fortune before entering public service.
During his three years in Salem, Hoover became acquainted with another orphan his age, Charles McNary. Hoover's presidency is remembered for the beginning of the Depression era. His 1932 presidential campaign was unsuccessful, but it involved and influenced a ten-year-old Marion County boy named Mark Hatfield. Hoover's final visit to Salem was in August 1955 when, at age 80, he spent a night in Salem’s Senator Hotel. He died in 1964.

When you visit

Dr. Henry Minthorn was a leader in the Society of Friends (Quaker) community here in Salem. He was primarily responsible for the development of the Highland section of the city. The home where they lived still standing on Hazel Street, but too much changed to be recognized. (See above)
The Highland Friends Church that Hoover's family attended is at 580 Highland Avenue, however the handsome building has been sold to another religious institution.

Other Events

• The Hollywood Press, a weekly agricultural newspaper, is established. In 1932 it became the Capital Press.
• The Senator Hotel is built with 111 rooms, 3 tubs and 24 showers. It was in the 1915 Derby Building at northeast Court and High Streets, the location of bus parking at the former Transit Center at Courthouse Square. A photograph shows the hotel as it appeared in about 1957. The hotel was demolished in 1997.
• The Chemeketan Club is organized to promote use and preservation of our out-of-doors. A recent issue of their Chemeketan Bulletin contains pictures and accounts of 1930s hikes in the Salem area.William and Nora Anderson build their home on Court Street.
•  The Andersons owned a sporting goods business downtown and she was a prominent supporter of Salem's cultural life: the Anderson Rooms of the Salem Public Library are named in her honor. The house is now a contributing property in the Court-Chemeketa Historic Residential District in the NEN neighborhood. In order to build their new home, the Andersons had to remove the Spayd cottage, already on the property, where they had lived since 1909.
• Grace McLauglin (or perhaps her parents, the Robertsons) whose home was across the street, offered to put the cottage in her back yard. It remains there, a significant historical property in that historic district. Mrs. Spayd and her husband had purchased the cottage in 1906 from August Wilhelm who bought the property in 1903 and presumably built the cottage.
• The Cole House is built on Capitol Street. Removed for the construction of the State Archives Building in the 1990s, it is now on Hood Street in the Grant neighborhood. It is a designated Local Landmark.

• A Tudor style house is designed by Clarence Smith for Hubert and Rose Stiff at 795 Winter Street. Mr. Stiff was general manager of the H. L. Stiff Furniture Company. The house was sold to Daniel and Edith Jarman in 1942 and Mrs. Jarman continued to live there after her husband's death until 1966. At that time the State of Oregon bought the property and it became the residence of Governor & Mrs. Tom McCall, then of Governor and Mrs. Victor Atiyeh. Bob Koval photographed at that location in 1978. It has recently been photographed in its new location on Winter Street. It was moved in the early 2000s for the construction of the State's North Capitol Mall Office Building. The former residence is now a state office is in this CAN-DO neighborhood. It is also a Local Landmark.

Franklin Home on Portland Road

• North of the city on Portland Road, Olie Franklin and his wife Maude, move into a new Colonial Revival home on 8 acres near their cleaning establishment. The new house is similar to their former home on High Street except a second story has been added.

Franklin Log Cabin

•  A few years later, a neighbor offers a log cabin on his property: it was moved to the Franklin back yard where it is today. A historical architect who examined it recently does not believe this is an authentic cabin of pioneer days, but a replica built in the 1920s to reflect nostalgia for early, pioneer years.