Salem in 1927

World Events

• As the controlling Chinese Nationalists murder members of the opposition Communist party in Nanchang, the Communist Chinese People's Liberation Army is formed.
• Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin with control of the Soviet Union.
• Iraq gains independence from Britain
• Charles Lindbergh makes a solo flight across the Atlantic in his single-engined Spirit of St. Louis. There is a huge ticker-tape parade in New York city to welcome his homecoming. The Holland Tunnel opens linking NYC with New Jersey.
• The Iron Lung is invented for the relief of polio sufferers.
• The popular Harlem Globetrotters take to the road for performances. Babe Ruth hits 60 home runs.
• Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System (CBS) goes on air with 47 stations.
• The Academy Awards are established with "Wings" winning best picture. The Pulitzer Prize goes to Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder.

In Salem
This year Lee Eyerly establishes his flight school in Salem at what would become McNary Airfield. In 1921 he had been Salem’s pioneer commercial pilot. Using the latest training methods, he opened a ground school and taught mechanical work, rigging, meteorology, and navigation. Salem high school administrators caught the spirit and were offering flight-training classes to students. By 1928, Eyerly's planes were doing cross-country business as well as passenger hops over the State House, thought by many to be a prospective landing place. By this time, Salem had progressed so that any major plane overhaul or rebuild job was possible. The successful Salem airport campaign was presented in the form of a charter amendment calling for issuance of $50,000 in bonds for the purchase of land and the establishment of the landing field.

When you visit
Commuter air service in Salem was briefly served by SeaPort Airlines in 2011. Seaport took off from a terminal with a newly completed 4.000-square-foot expansion, a $1.5 million project paid for by grants from the Federal Aviation Administration and the State of Oregon. A great way to see the airfield is to visit the Flight Deck restaurant. The dining area has large windows overlooking the airfield.

For residents who are interested in commercial air service in Salem, the Salem Airport Advisory Commission meets on the 3rd Wednesday of each month at Fire Station #6. The public is welcome.

Other Events

• Thomas A. Livesley becomes mayor.
• The new YMCA Building, just completed, is much larger than the neighboring Court Street residences of the Boise and McNary families. To the east, toward the State House, the street was lined with handsome homes of other prominent "Old Guard" familes. None have survived.
• The last of the Ford Model-T automobiles are produced this year.

From left: Commercial Street from State Street looking north

• Marion County conducted a Health Demonstration Project between the 1926 and 1930. The parade of 1927 (above), led by the governor, proceeded down Commercial Street while automobiles and spectators lined the route.
• Salem Lutherans of German descent begin worshiping in old 1894 Presbyterian Church on Church Street. They buy the church and rename it as the Lutheran-American Church to indicate the services will be English. According to church records: "Mr. (Max) Gehlar, the Sunday School superintendent was a leader and through his efforts the Sunday School became one of the most active and well attended in the city."
• Notice is received from Redlands, California that Libbie Patton has died at the age of 85. She was the second wife of two noted Salem pioneers: she married Joseph Holman (1815-80) in 1875 and Thomas McFadden Patton (1829-92) in 1889. In both cases, she was the second wife.
• Ercel Kay establishes the Salem Golf Club with the first nine holes completed on the former John Hughes Land Grant. The fee for playing was 25 cents.
• Outdoor activity may have been handicapped by the weather in July, as reported by the Capitol Journal, Ben Maxwell recalled. During that month, the government thermometer on the 23rd registered 108 degrees, an all-time high. The climax came that evening when an electrical storm rattled windows and frightened children.
• In this year of booming economy, Salem families are building new houses. In a developing residential section of Salem, Sam and Lottie Adolph build a Mediterranean styled home on South Commercial Street. Photographed in 1978 by Bob Koval, and again recently, the house retains its original appearance. It is a Local Landmark in the SCAN neighborhood.
• Two blocks south of the Adolph House, is the Colonial Revival home built by Leland and Mildred Geer. The house was sold to Rollin and Alice Page in the next year. Mrs. Page continued to live here after her husband's death in the late 1940s and the house stayed in family ownership into the 1950s. This is also a Local Landmark and is in the SCAN neighborhood.
• A third Local Landmark in this neighborhood is the Mediterranean Meier House on Rural Street, then at the city limits. Fred Meier purchased it in this year and lived there off and on for the next twenty years, renting it out periodically. In 1946 the house was sold to Harold and Eva Jory who lived there until 1953.
• The Rosecrans House is built on Chemeketa Street by D. A. and Etta Hodge for their daughter Margaret Rosecrans, a widow, and clerk for the State Highway Commission. Mrs. Rosecrans resided here until 1942 at which time it was sold to John and Lela Jerman. Later owners were Linn C. Smith and Lulu Marie (Jerman) Smith. There is also a 1978 photograph. This house is a Local Landmark in the NEN neighborhood.
• A famous pooch, resident of Silverton, died this year. Bobbie, the Scotch collie that was lost from his owner and made his way from Indiana back to his former home in Silverton, is honored in that city where he is buried in a child's casket.

Salem in 1891

World Events

• After the Hawaiian regent David Kalakaua dies, his sister Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii. Her attempts draft a new Constitution and extend voting rights led to her overthrow by the U.S. within two years.
• Java Man, considered the "missing link" between apes and humans is discovered by Eugene Dubois. The fossils are at least 700,000 years old.
• In France, troops fire on a workers' May Day demonstration in support of the 8-hour workday, killing 9 and wounding 30.
• New Scotland Yard becomes the HQ of the London Metropolitan Police.
• Croatian-born Nicola Telsa invents the Tesla Coil, a high voltage transformer. With Westinghouse, Telsa produced the electricity that lit the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago.
• Edison exhibits his kinetoscope, creating an illusion of movement on film.
• In Coney Island, Jesse W. Reno patents the first escalator.
• Appearing this year in British magazines:" A Study in Scarlet", by Conan Doyle and "The Light That Failed" by Rudyard Kipling. Also published in  (in a censored and serialized version), "Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented" by Thomas Hardy.

In Salem
Willamette students at a YMCA Conference in Massachusetts came home to Salem excited about the new game of basketball, invented by James Naismith. Frank E. Brown, a first year student at Willamette University Academy, was the leader in promoting the game after hearing about it from students who attended the conference. They reported that Naismith had taken two peach baskets and had hung them in the gym as targets for the ball. The first Salem games were played in the YMCA gym housed a handsome, three story building at the northwest corner of Chemeketa and Commercial Streets (The photograph above was taken in 1898.). Players from the YMCA and the University followed the "crudely simple" rules: including players lying in circle and scrambling for the ball at a beginning whistle. A Girls Basketball team was described in the 1905 Wallulah yearbook as "five of the pluckiest girls that ever bloomed forth in bloomers."

When you visit
The YMCA moved out of the building in the following year and the building itself (the State Insurance Building) was demolished before 1948. In 1895 Brown convinced University trustees to build a gymnasium and it was used for basketball until it burned in 1921. After his death in 1958, the University dedicated a recreation area to Frank Brown.

Other events

• P. H. D'Arcy is elected mayor and will serve for two years.

• Fire destroys the interior of Waller Building at Willamette University. The photograph of that date shows men and women, all dressed formally (everyone in hats), watching smoke bellow from the roof.
• Two business establishments are constructed. The Burke Building just north of Ferry on Commercial Street, is significant as the location where the Salem Chamber of Commerce was organized in 1922. The Gray Building at the corner of State and Liberty (above), stands in one of our most important downtown locations. In the early 1900s, the Russell Catlin and James Lynn, merchants doing business together, bought the building. The present owners are descendants of Russell Catlin. (See these in the SHINE Downtown Walking Tour.)
• Two substantial farmhouses that had recently been built beyond the city limits are now Local Landmarks in the NEN neighborhood. The Pettygrew house at 587 Statesman Street was owned by that farming family from 1910 to 1939. It has retained its integrity for over a hundred years. The Matthews house at 2010 Nebraska Street was not so fortunate. Owned by that family for about 40 years, it had a number of subsequent owners and suffered many unfortunate alterations during the years it was modified into apartments. The current owners have restored it to its former dignity.
• The Strang House, on the southwest corner of Capitol and Leffelle Streets in the SCAN neighborhood, is somewhat of a mystery. Believed to be of this construction date, it was moved here from its original location on Front Street, in 1891 a typical Salem middle class residential neighborhood. It is likely to be the oldest house in the Gaiety Hill/Bush Pasture Park Historic Residential District. (It can be seen in the SHINE Gaiety Hill/Bush's Pasture Park Walking Tour.)
• A "development" of three Simpson Cottages are built on Court Street on the block between 17th Street and Mill Creek. These are now part of the Court-Chemeketa Historic Residential District.
• Four miles southeast of Salem, a $50,000 institution, serving as a reformatory for boys was established as the Oregon State Training School. Inmates would be instructed in behavior and given military drill and discipline. By the 1920's Salem's city limits were closer to the Reform School and townspeople were alarmed by the city's proximity and the relative ease of escape by its youthful inmates. A 1927 fire gutted the main building and the decision was made to relocate the facility to Woodburn, now the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility.
• The North School is constructed this year. The name of this imposing building at Market (Garden Road) and North Winter Street was changed in 1908 to Grant School. It was razed in 1954 for the modern school building in that location today.

• The original First Baptist Church at Marion and Liberty Street is built in an elaborate style that includes a tower and turret, windows of various shapes decorated with stained glass, and a center section rising to a peak in two elevations. It was demolished in 1943.
• On August 5, a surprise undertow at North Beach (near the former Tioga, WA) took the lives of two members of a bathing party: Willie Steel and Nellie Boise. The tragic incident is reported at length in a newspaper article entitled, "A Cruel Ocean." Miss Boise was the daughter of Salem Judge Reuben Boise.
• In December, F. S. Dearborn, a book seller on Commercial Street, offered Oregon wild flowers nicely presented and arranged in booklet form as a Christmas gift to be mailed.