Salem in 1914

World Events

• Diplomatic relations with Mexico break down, U.S. Marines land in Veracruz which they will occupy for 6 months.
• Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria assassinated. As European nations begin World War I, President Wilson promises to keep America out of the conflict. (He signs a Mother's Day Proclamation.)
• German trips invade Belgium: The British Empire declares war on the German Empire, including Austro-Hungary, which declares war on Russia. China declares neutrality. Japan extends its influence in China and seizes German territories in the Pacific and East Asia.
• Ford Motor Company establishes an 8-hour day for workers with a minimum $5 a day wage.
• Panama Canal opens in Panama with the passage of the SS Ancon, a 1901 steamship that had played a major part in ferrying supplies for canal construction. (The Path Between the Seas, David McCullough, 1977)
• Charlie Chaplin makes his first movie debut with the character of the tramp in "Making A Living". Mary Pickford's name appears above the title of film "Hearts Adrift", beginning the "Star" recognition.
• New American Books: The Titan, Theodore Dreiser; Penrod, Booth Tarkington, The Congo and Other Stories, Vachel Lindsay.

In Salem

William C. Knighton, the official state architect of that time, designed this handsome Supreme Court building costing $320,000. The exterior is finished with cream-colored terra cotta and the interior is marble and tile. At the rear of the ground floor, there is an ornate stairway leading to a handsome columned library. The third floor contains the Court Chambers with a glass skylight that includes a replica of the seal of the state of Oregon.
Former Oregon Chief Justice Wallace Carson, Jr. was honored as the Salem Citizen of the Year 2010 at the Chamber of Commerce banquet February 11, 2011.

When you visit
The building is open to visitors after passing a security officer inside the front door. You will be told whether the upper floors are available for visiting at that time. The beautiful library and courtroom are well worth a visit and you may be able to hear some of the deliberations of the court.
It is easy to see the impact the Oregon State Government has on the life of the city. It provides stable local employment and helps make Salem a destination for many visitors, but also increasingly occupies properties, particularly in the core of the city, for which the city provides services but receives no tax revenue.

Other Events

• B. L. Steeves is elected as mayor. The family's 1926 Dutch Colonial home still stands at 1694 Court Street, however the lawn and trees of the property were lost when 17th Street was widened in the 1960’s. The home was owned and occupied by the family into the second generation. The house next door at 1674 Court Street was built for the Steeves daughter, Muriel. Her family occupied this home until 1960. These properties can be seen on the SHINE Court-Chemeketa Walking Tour.
Three blocks, away in this same historic district, is the Buchner House also built this year. It was owned by Walter Buchner and his wife May. Mr. Buchner grew hops on 160 acres he owned south of Salem and established a feed store and mill in town. The family sold the house in 1942. It had long since been converted into rental apartments when it was firebombed in the early 1990s. The neighbors bought the structure, restored it and sold the house to new owners.
• The Roberts Store is established south of Salem and a farming community (complete with train stop) grew up around it. The store remained open until a recent closure (the photograph was taken in 2008), then opened again. The school was put to other uses and the abandoned church collapsed.
• The local YWCA is started in the spring of 1914 with Mrs. C.K. Spaulding heading the board. The organization’s headquarters were in the Knight home on North Liberty Street and the Salem Women’s club made the arrangements and gift of money which made the organization possible. An excerpt from the front page of the Daily Oregon Statesman on April 1, 1914 says, “Salem business men have heartily endorsed the organization plan and have promised to assist in any manner possible should the association care to call on them”.

• 

  Richmond School in its first year, 1914

  Students of the new Richmond School pose for a photograph.
• Two years after the completion of the new Carnegie Library on State Street, the city takes over financial responsibility for this cultural institution. The Salem Public Library Advisory Board (our first Advisory Board) is created with members appointed by the mayor and councilors. The nine members presently meet at the library with the Director on second Wednesday of each month at 7 pm. The public is welcome.
• Another public structure, the Mt. Crest Mausoleum, was completed this year. The architect was Ellis Lawrence who designed the Mahonia Hall, Elsinore Theater and other Salem structures. The building has been added to 9 times, have 6 governors interred there and a number of other prominent people of Salem through out the years. It is a part of City View Cemetery, just to the west of Pioneer Cemetery, sharing a fence.
• April 18 on this year, John Zachary began serving an indeterminate sentence of three to twenty years in the Oregon State Penitentiary.  He did not survive his sentence, dying in the prison hospital on November 27, 1915.  He is buried a short distance from his great-grandmother, Tabitha Brown, in Pioneer Cemetery. His widow, Maud Hill Zachary, moved to Front Street with their five children, making a living as a laundress.

From the Capitol Journal:

• Governor Oswald West made an official visit to Washington, D. C. and the round trip cost the state of Oregon just $1.50. In New York, Governor West made a speech for which he was paid $375. This he turned over to Secretary of State Ben Olcott when he filed his expense account. The state's share of $1.50 was the cost for the governor's travel between Salem and Portland.
• Benjamin S. Via and C. L. Imus, sponsors of the organization of a cavalry troop in Salem to participate in a possible war with Mexico, said they had their quota signed up and were ready for a call by the proper authorities.
• In December, "Old Tiger", the fire engine that had seen service in Salem for many years, was taken to Willamette Slough to pump water on the ice and make the surface smooth for skaters.

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

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.