Salem in 1976

World Events

• Mao Zedong of Communist China dies after a mortality record of causing up to 70 million deaths due to executions and forced labor.
• IRA bombs explode in London. Ten thousand Protestant and Catholic women demonstrate for peace in Northern Ireland. (Irish rock band U2 is formed by drummer Larry Mullen.)
• The US celebrated its 200th anniversary. Jimmy Carter is elected as President after a Democratic convention keynote address is delivered by a first African-American, Barbara Jordan.
• "Legionnaires' Disease" strikes in Philadelphia causing 29 deaths. The Ebola virus occurs in Yambuku, Zaire.
• The (supposed) last U.S. convertibles roll out of Detroit, new Apple Company, founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
• At Uganda's Entebbe Airport, Israeli commanders free 103 hostages held by Palestinian hijackers of an Air France plane.
• Viking 2 spacecraft lands on Mars: NASA releases Mars photo. 
• Nadia Comaneci earns the first of 7 perfect scores 10  in gymnastics at the Summer Olympics in Montreal.
• Academy Awards: "Rocky" (US) and "Black and White in Color" (France). Prize-winning Books: J R, William Gaddis and Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow.

In Salem
A 40-year Salem controversy between a local cooperative, Salem Electric and PGE over electric power service was resolved this year, bringing underground wiring to downtown. Salem Electric was founded in 1938 by a group of West Salem residents led by Harry Read. Mr. Read stubbornly refused to limit SE's growth into downtown Salem commercial area, linking its West and North Salem service areas. During 1968, after several years of discussions, Salem Electric and PGE reached agreement on service boundaries for the Salem/Keizer area. In 1972, Salem Electric received its third point of delivery, Brush College Substation, from Bonneville Power Administration, providing a 70% increase in the co-op's available capacity. In 1975, Salem Electric's Board approved a $1 million loan to continue its acquisition of the remainder of PGE facilities and for conversion of overhead to underground facilities in the downtown area. When the project was complete, Liberty Street gained this improved appearance (seen in 2007) as part of a revitalized business environment.

When you visit
Salem Electric has moved from its former headquarters adjacent to downtown Salem. In 1968, Salem Electric had constructed a new office building and warehouse located adjacent to the old headquarters on the northwest corner of Front and Union Streets. But in 1976, the City of Salem condemned the co-op's eight-year-old headquarters as a part of its Front Street widening project. The current headquarters are on Seventh Street in West Salem.

The historic downtown, one of our most attractive civic features, has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Many of the designated Local Landmark buildings have informative plaques at their entrances. For an online walking tour, please click on that image on the homepage of SHINE. For a copy of the 2011 booklet that is a guide through the history of downtown Salem, call the Community Development Department at 503 588 6173.

Other Events

• Craig Metten provides a dramatic sight for pedestrians on the ground as he scales the First Methodist Church tower during repairs. The steeple is replaced at this time. An even more startling photograph is taken looking down at Craig and the street below at the intersection of State and Church Streets.

View from Methodist Church steeple

Dining atop the Equitable Building

• The new Equitable Building at Center and High Streets, now completed, rises above the one-story businesses to the south at Chemeketa Street. This new six-floor tower has a bank on the ground floor with offices above. But the real treat is the opportunity for a downtown view from one of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Loft Restaurant on top floor. Unfortunately, the restaurant was open only a few years.
• The Oregon State Capitol undergoes an expansion this year with wings at the north and south along State Street.
• Karr's Tavern occupies the historic Boon Store; the renovation to contemporary use of this 1860 building is yet to come. The interior had the appearance of a living room in a residence. The 1846 Boon House had been removed to Mission Mill Museum property and placed on the National Register of Historic Places the year before.
• Our McNary Airfield Air Control Tower receives an award for meritorious service by the Oregon National Guard. United Airlines is serving Salem this year with regularly scheduled commercial and passenger flights.
• In August, Salem residents enjoy rides over the city in a Goodyear blimp. Refer to Oregon Historic Photographs Collection for many aerial views of Salem in 1948 and 1976.
• The Downtown Development Advisory Board is created this year. Composed of a total of 11 members, 6 presently represent the interests of business, property owners and others with interest in the Riverfront Downtown Urban Renewal Area and 5 represent the community at large. Two members represent West Salem specifically.

The Reed Opera House undergoing renovation

• A major rehabilitation of the Reed Opera House provides space for almost two dozen small retail stores in the basement and first floor. An attractive mezzanine opens the area for attractive vistas of the interior. Due to the attention being given to Salem historic preservation, the building is successfully nominated for the National Register in 1978. The Reed Opera House is featured on the Historic Downtown walking tour slide show on SHINE website.

Five neighborhood associations are organized this year:

• Morningside, which is generally bordered by Madrona and Kuebler Drive as you travel south, east of Commercial and west of Fairview Industrial Drive. Businesses line both sides of Commercial Street, but the neighborhood remains residential. It was originally an area of orchards and a few properties still reflect that history. The SHINE Morningside photograph album shows 2 Local Landmark structures moved to the neighborhood, 3 that were in orchards, a significant International style home and another associated with one of Salem's most prominent early families.
• Southeast Salem Neighborhood Association (SESNA) is located south of State Street where early middle class families as well as laborers of the Kay Mill and the railroad built their small craftsman houses 100 yeas ago.
• Sunnyslope, is a relatively new South Salem section of the city and has had little historical research. The Wingate house on Kuebler Drive is the only representative so far.
• Highland was organized by Henry Minthorn as a Quaker community. It later featured the suburban Hollywood Business area along Portland Road.
• Grant, just north of downtown, is one of our oldest neighborhoods (and the smallest), containing many historic properties. The neighborhood is working on establishing a historic district. The city maintains support of these organizations and provides information on the Neighborhoods page of the city website.

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.

Salem in 1890

World Events

• William II, autocratic Emperor of Germany, dismisses Chancellor Bismarck, continuing difficult relations with France.
• King William of the Netherlands died without a male heir, the throne going to the princess who becomes Queen Wilhelmina.
• At Wounded Knee in South Dakota, an attempt by 7th Cavalry to disarm Lakota Sioux results in the deaths of 153 Native Americans and 25 soldiers.
• The Land Rush of the year before had produced so many settlers that the Oklahoma Territory was established in May of this year. Idaho and Wyoming are admitted as states.
• American industry produces an entirely steel frame building in Chicago. The use of Hollerith Company (later IBM) punch cards for the census of this year introduces computing hardware.
• Mass rallies and one-day strikes in cities in North America and Europe demand an eight-hour workday.
• Notable new books of this year: Hedda Gabbler, by Hendrik Ibsen and Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. 

In Salem
The Salem Canning Company is founded. Robert Wallace secured land on a corner of the Willamette University campus (seen above), opposite the Thomas K. Woolen Mill providing rail car loading on two sides and frontage on 12th Street. In the cannery building tomatoes, peas, corn, beans, cherries, black raspberries, plums, pears, and apples were processed. Mr. Wallace died unexpectedly the following year and the company was sold, later operating under the Allen name. (In 1920 Mr. Allen designed a new home, and had his crew build it, at 901 Capitol Street. This beautiful property on the intersection with D Street is now a Local Landmark. For many years it has been used as a business office.) The plant became the Oregon Packing Company and was later a cooperative known as the Mutual Canning Company. It was secured by the California Fruit Canners Association and that ended local ownership. In 1935 it became known as Calpak Plant #126. The plant closed in 1953.

When you visit
The photograph above was taken near the Willamette Heritage Center gate on 12th Street, looking north toward State Street. The railroad tracks, going east into Willamette University, are no longer there since a major renovation for the creation of new campus buildings in the 1980s. The site of the original cannery is now the location of a university parking lot.

Other events

• Salem's population reaches 2,617.
• A structure built just four years before by the enterprising Mr. Wallace, our first bridge over the Willamette River, collapses due to flooding on February 3. The timber wagon bridge cost $50,000 and first opened to traffic on December 7, 1886 when the river crested at 37 feet and one inch. A pier, improperly placed in relation to the current, washed our first. Then the spans crashed. A drawing in West Shore magazine captured the event and shows Billy Chambers and L. Goolsby barely escaping.

The collapse of our first Willamette River bridge

• Another successful businessman, brick maker George Collins, builds an elaborate Queen Anne style residence at 245 Church Street. His bricks were used in many of our historic Salem downtown structures. Almost thirty years after the house was built, it was sold to Robert Downing and the property stayed in that family until the death of Hazel Downing Isbell in 1986. In the later years, it had become divided into apartments, but when it was moved to 1340 Chemeketa Street in 1989, it was restored to its original interior design. It now serves as professional offices. This NEN neighborhood property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

This year, Salem continues to experience a boom in residential building:

• Southeast of downtown, two new Vernacular style homes are built: William Siegmund, a blacksmith, lived at 1396 Lee Street for many years and Jefferson Myers, a local attorney and political figure, lived at 1896 Lee Street. Both houses are Local Landmarks in the SESNA neighborhood.

• Two farmhouses across the Willamette River in Polk County are built: the Fennell and Stoller houses are preserved as early Local Landmarks in the West Salem neighborhood.

Dairy Farmhouse

• There remains today a farmhouse of a large dairy that once extended east from the Oregon State Hospital property to what is now Lancaster Drive in the NESCA neighborhood. Now reduced to a single city lot, the property retains many of the original trees and other features. Three adjoining small houses along Park Avenue to the south were for dairy workers. We often drive pass this house, on the southeast corner of Park Avenue and D Street, without thinking of its long history and how recently this area was all farmland. Unfortunately, we do not know the name of the original dairy owner.
• On Cottage Street, north of Salem, a house is built as a rental. In 1913 Charles and Lillian McKinley purchased the property. The present owners have restored and thoughtfully maintained this Local Landmark in the Grant neighborhood.
• Near his brother Joshua's property in Spring Valley, Andrew Jackson Purvine builds a new residence to accommodate his second family. Although altered, it retains many of the qualities of the original home.
• The originally Quaker community in Highland welcomes the German Baptists on Hazel Avenue. Still retaining its classic exterior, it is a Local Landmark as the Immanuel Baptist Church.

Ben Maxwell recalls: 
In May, it is reported that Margaret Hutchins, "squaw wife" of celebrated old Santiam Chief Joe Hutchins, dies of fever in a tent among little trees between the Southern Pacific depot and the woolen mill [on the present 12th Street]. The item noted she was member of the Molalla tribe.
Within 5 miles of Salem, good fruit and farmland could be bought for $30 to $50 an acre.
On July 4, Salem staged the greatest celebration in the Willamette Valley. Rev. C. C. Stratton [son-in-law of pioneer Alvan Waller] delivered the oration and W. J. D'Arcy read the Declaration of Independence. The national anthem was sung by 150 trained voices and 7 brass bands offered additional music. Previous to this ceremony, there was a 13-gun salute. Residents on Wilson [Willson?] Avenue were advised to leave windows open to prevent their being shattered by the concussion.

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