Growing up and living in New Jersey, I knew little to nothing about the city of Portland, Oregon. Then I found these pictures taken in the 1930s and ’40s by a photographer named Minor White. They are extraordinary not only for their artistry and clarity, but because White was practically the only person from this time period photographing doomed Victorian houses from both the inside and the outside. Without his work, no detailed visual record of these incredible lost mansions would remain.
White was employed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as a “Creative Photographer”. He had the unique ability to see rare beauty where others saw nothing but outdated structures in the way of future plans. Exuberant Victorian architecture was decidedly out-of-fashion, and (incomprehensible to me) virtually no one cared about the steady loss of such buildings during these years. But somehow White, through his images, was the “lone voice in the wilderness” who managed to gain access to these houses and even photograph the elaborate interiors as well, just before the end came.
Two historic Portland mansions extensively photographed by Minor White:
- The Knapp House, full block between Northwest 17th and 18th Avenues, between Davis and Everett Streets. Built 1882, demolished 1950.
White’s photos go in sequence, as if you were with him walking up to the house, going inside, and looking around. Most of these photos are not on the Internet, so I took them directly from the book entitled Heritage Lost by Fred DeWolfe (1995).
How it ended: A neighboring church (St. Mary’s Cathedral) decided it needed more parking space, so the church purchased the land and had the house razed.
2. Jacobs-Dolph House: Southwest Park Avenue between Montgomery and Mill Street. Built 1882, Demolished 1941.
How it ended: It was determined that the property could produce more income with a high-rise apartment complex built on it. Thus the house (and its twin next door) were demolished and Ione Plaza was built. (Now called The Vue Apartments).
A happy discovery . . .
Next door to The Vue Apartments is the Simon Benson House, which was built in 1900. However, it was not built at this location–it was moved here from Southwest Clay Street & 11th and totally restored in 2002.
After seeing Minor White’s photographs, I became inspired to incorporate something of the Knapp and Jacobs Houses’ High Victorian grandeur into my own house, which was built the same year as the Simon Benson place.
Dining Room: This lockset came from a door someone was throwing out.
Stained glass in Living Room, also from CL.
The only house that I know of in my area comparable to the Knapp and Jacobs Houses is the Krueger Mansion in downtown Newark NJ. This house sat abandoned for 40 years in the most riot-torn, crime-ridden section of Newark, yet has somehow survived largely intact. With LOTS of government money, it is now being renovated into something called a “Makerspace” for local residents. Supposedly most surviving original exterior and interior features will be restored. Let’s hope in this case, the story will have a happy ending.
For more color photos of lost Portland architecture, see CC Snapshots: Cars & Architecture–The Ultimate Collection.
Also, here’s a video about Minor White in Portland: Minor White Captures The Ornate Beauty of Portland’s Past–Oregon Art Beat.
Can hardly imagine the detail handwork that went into these houses. Gorgeous!
Thank you very much for bringing this architecture to us. As for the destruction of two stunning homes, DISGUSTING, GREED, STUPIDITY – choose a judgment. Unfortunately, it happens over and over. I rejoice when I see treasure that have been preserved. I admire interior and exterior architecture.
As a historic preservation professional who does historic resource reports for homeowners wishing to have their homes hisrtorically designated, there are darn few of these Victorian masterpieces surviving today i can tell you.
The pressure from the greedy and in California those who think the govenment can mandate ( and they are) municipalities to change their zoning to accomodate increased density to “provide” housng will cause many more of these houses to go by the wayside.
One of the ways they are doing it is to get around state and local preservation ordinances by doing surveys by architectural firms hired by a City to rate the housing stock by degree of originality and historicity of design, architect if known etc. that are older than whatever the municipalities age parameter is to meet the preservation ordinance.
By identifying houses deemed not to meet the State/local preservation ordinance requirements for an historic review en masse, the municiaplity opens up more properties to be more densely devloped through discretionary permits.
In one Southern California town. whose housing stock dates back to the 1880’s and has an historical association with Naval aviation, the survey claimed 80% of the remaining housing stock not already historically designated, to not meet the criteria. En masse. No individual research report. Just a windshield survey I believe.
This is why it’s very important for folks, who like in our case appreciate vintage autos in particular, need to get involved in the preservation of our historic built environment where we live. Once they’re gone…………well you know the rest.
Simply spectacular! Thank you for sharing!! 🙂 DFO
A treat to see so many photos of a spectacular house now long gone. Thank you.
As an occasional illustrator, I can totally relate to the enjoyment and satisfaction the architects, engineers, and carpenters felt, building these spectacular structures. Everything designed, and built by hand. They deserved to have everything they put into these buildings, preserved indefinitely.
Earlier this summer, I illustrated a nearby Victorian home, and the detail work was painstaking. I can very much relate to the many hours of dedication involved here. And feel a heavy heart, with all that has been lost.
Thanks for sharing and thankfully, we still have the Pittock Mansion in Portland, OR. https://pittockmansion.org/
Just imagine the man hours put in by incredibly skilled craftsmen. Amazing Thanks
Pittock Mansion, Portland, OR
It is simply unbelievable how much money and craftsmanship was spent on these houses.
Did previous generations have more taste or had they not read the memo that a simple concrete block with windows can be built for a fraction of the amount?
Yes, of course you have to demolish something like that because you need space for a car park, or put a faceless tower block in the same place.
Here too (Europe, Germany, Lower Saxony, etc.), misguided urban planning after 1945 caused more damage than the Allied bombs could ever do. Has it got better? I don’t know. But when you see old photos (like the ones in this article), you realise what our society (generation) has irretrievably lost.
The sole purpose of these houses was of course to very publicly display the great wealth of their owners, who almost certainly made their wealth as lumber barons, destroying untold hundreds or thousands of square miles of Oregon’s virgin old growth forests. As such, I have somewhat mixed feelings about their creation, but certainly once built, they were worthy of preservation as monuments to the vast craftsmanship of those that did the actual work.
High Victorian architecture is certainly worth preserving, but I’d much rather actually live in a mid-century modern house. The formality and fussiness can be overbearing.
Thanks for sharing these pictures, and good work on the continued preservation of your house.
I’ve been a lifelong fan of “mid-century modern” architecture and fixtures long before that name was bestowed upon them. When I started out doing renovation work (mostly kitchens and bathrooms) in the early ’90s, my neighborhood was full of such houses, but to most people at that time houses and stuff from the ’50s through ’70s were just old and dated, kind of like 1980s oak kitchen cabinets and almond-colored appliances would be now. I had an untold number of people who wanted any plumbing fixture that wasn’t white ripped out; a blue, green, aquamarine, or especially pink bathroom just wouldn’t do. Gold-speckled Formica countertops had to go. So did lots of cool-looking 1950s/60s appliances with control panels that looked like the dashboards of cars from those years (some of those appliances were of course actually built by car companies). In more recent years, I’ve actually installed old stuff of the sorts I used to rip out in new renovations of mid-century houses. Doing so is complicated though due to old stuff often not being up to modern electrical, plumbing, or other codes, containing lead or asbestos, etc.
I agree with Paul. As an architect. AIA, ret., I do appreciate a variety of architectural styles, and even restored/rehabbed an Edwardian home in the Lafayette Square neighborhood of St. Louis. Lived there from 76 to 88. However, I am more “at home” with Mid Century Modern. Grew up with it and currently in our second MCM home in Phoenix. Much easier to dust, for one thing. Why a staff of servants was a must in those elegant old manses.
Thank you for this look into the almost forgotten past. Your home is lovely! Don’t forget the Ballantine House in Newark – I’m sure you’ve been there. It’s a true time capsule of the age. We lost the Kastner mansion as weeks ago… very sad
I’ve long been a fan of Minor White and so really appreciate seeing a portfolio of these amazing interiors. Wow.
It is hard to look at these sorts of things and not be somewhat judgemental. In that regard, I’ll say that at least in the case of the 2nd house profiled, the original was destroyed so that it could be replaced by buildings that housed many. In the grand scheme of things, I suppose that this is a worthy use of resources. In the case of the 1st house, though, to destroy it for a parking lot really seems like a case of adding insult to injury (if, to take Paul’s point…as I personally do…that these houses were originally designed and built as showcases for timber barons’ vast wealth that came at the expense of the environment).
Moving beyond all of that, I will say that the fate of both of these houses is testimony for our more modern sensibilities related to historic preservation. While worthy architectural treasures are still lost every day, at least nowadays we have a process for talking about this and for providing some amount of public input. I would doubt that any of that existed in the 1940s and 1950s…and hopefully we’re all better off now that that’s different.
The first house, by the way, reminds me of a wood version of the Heurich House in DC’s Dupont Circle neighborhood. That’s worth visiting someday if you’re in the area. In this case, the vast fortunes of a Beer baron vs. a lumber baron.
https://heurichhouse.org/
Thanks Stephen for this article. I love your pieces on architecture.
Thank you
Amazing that they weren’t painted over in the 20s. Unfortunately, old stuff has fallen out of fashion again. It’s OBF–old brown furniture.
Somewhere, I have several books from the 70s of B&W 1930s pictures of colonial and Federal buildings and interiors of Georgetown, Alexandria, and Annapolis. Fortunately, many of them survived until historic preservation took off because the areas were unprosperous.
I discovered when renovating my ancestral home that they didn’t build very sturdily before building codes were enforced. The two original 1875 rooms had hand-done joinery but grossly inadequate wood dimensions for the 16′ span and 11′ ceiling. The changes in the early 20s were criminally sloppy–a plaster wall supported 3 feet away, no jack studs under the window beams. Every wall and the plank ceilings had been papered, but when my grandparents built a new house next door in 1940, it had zero wall paper.
Just for the record, the Knapp and Jacobs Houses were not built by lumber barons. From the book “Heritage Lost”:
“Richard Baxter Knapp made a fortune selling farm implements during the 1870s, when farming represented the largest sector of the regional economy. Furthermore, he had a hand in downtown real estate and railroad development in the Willamette Valley.”
Isaac Jacobs and his brother Ralph emigrated from Germany. They were in the clothing business in Portland and founded the woolen mills at the falls in Oregon City. The brothers built twin houses next to each other, only differing in interior decoration.
I think the ultimate “Lumber Baron” house is the Carson Mansion in Eureka, CA:
Thanks. I made a calculated guess and was wrong.
Yes, I’ve been to the Carson Mansion a number of times. I find it to be rather garish, but to each their own.
Labor was very cheap back then, as was old growth lumber (all redwood, in the case of the Carson Mansion). That’s certainly not the case anymore, on both accounts. That explains a lot.
Thanks for supplying the correct info, Stephen.
Carson Mansion:
Thanks for sharing these pictures – truly amazing. The Knapp House reminds me of a mansion that used to exist near where I grew up; it was the home of department store magnate John Wanamaker (pic below), and it burned down in 1909. It always amazed me how few photos survived of the place, and hardly any of the interior, so it’s great to see some of these places documented so expertly.
When I was a kid, I used to enjoy wandering the property, which was yet to be redeveloped. Some of the elaborate landscaping features, such as from the ponds, were still there. In the 1980s, office buildings were constructed on the site, and the pond structures were integrated into the design, which was a nice touch. Hard to see that kind of thing being done these days – they’d demolish it all and them put up a historical marker in its place.
Great to see the pictures of your home too. Incidentally, the color and wood tone of the master bedroom is probably my favorite color combination for a room. I wish that someone hadn’t painted all of the woodwork in my current house sometime long ago – I just don’t have the time to restore it, so I just live with white-painted wood, but… blech.
So sad to see the destruction of beauty.
Unfiortunately there was this mindset back then that progress was good, new was better and maximising money was all that mattered. As a child I saw many lovely buildings (on a much smaller scale) in my neighbourhood destroyed because rental income from 21 jerry-built apartments was greater then rental income from one sixty year old house on the same size block of land. I had many arguments with my father back then – it seemed like he was totally incapable of appreciating beauty – like the guys who demolished these treasures.
Imagine the work it would take cleaning and maintaining these – you can tell labour was cheap back then.
Another mansion-related story comes to mind. My father used to work in construction for a university, and at some point, the university was willed a mansion that it didn’t want. They used it for offices for a while, but didn’t take very good care of the place and in the late 1960s decided to demolish it . They started the site work surreptitiously so that the neighbors wouldn’t know (and complain).
Many guys on the construction crew took stuff from the house. My father took an enormous fireplace mantle – which was a gigantic, intricately carved wooden piece. That was somewhat absurd, because my folks lived in a small duplex without a fireplace. Dad kept it for a while, and then gave it to a friend. I think he also would up with a door, though I don’t remember what happened to that.
Below is a picture of the mansion when new, and then when being demolished.
Not only overly-wrought and ornate but absurdly large. I too love MCM architecture but even some of those, Neutra et al, can be somewhat over the top in size and scale, especially, so have always been a big fan of smaller scale MCM like that done by William Krisel, who died a just couple of years ago and built affordable-scale MCM houses in places like the Twin Palms development in Palm Springs.
The quality of craftsmanship from the 19th and early 20th centuries was simply amazing. I’ve seen homes and office buildings like this from that time period that are absolutely fantastic.
Take the Singer Building in NYC built in 1907 and razed in 1967 for a featureless modern glass office building. The original was built for the Singer Sewing Machine company and it truly embodied the Gothic tradition of architecture. I wish it were still standing!
Disgusting the shortsightedness that has allowed these one of a kind structures to be destroyed. So much of it also has happened here in StL.
At least in California, a lot of mid-century modern homes were lower cost, affordable houses and as such often blended good design concepts (architecture) with pretty poor execution (materials and craftsmanship). Kinda like the Chevy Citation of homes 😀. Our 1920’s Craftsman-ish bungalow strikes a good blend of design and construction but I sometimes long for a more usable floor plan not to mention better insulation, systems, and interior door hardware that can open and close more quietly and easily.
Thanks for that, very interesting. Minor White’s moody, precise landscape photography was a huge inspiration to me in my early days with a camera. Late in life, that had developed into a real estate photography business. Once I photographed a home in Colorado Springs that was built in the 1940s, in a plain style. Inside, I found extensive evidence of reverse updating – old, leaded wooden windows and doors, fancy mouldings and a grand staircase. It turned out that the owner had a house-wrecking business, and this was the chosen salvage that he could fit into his own home.
That’s more heartwarming than the story of my little Denver home. Built in 1875, it was third-oldest in the neighborhood. It was small and simple, barely two bedrooms, but the front bay windows were seven feet tall, and the baseboards were six inches of ornate woodwork. About 1% of the finery of this Portland mansion, but still impressive. I found out it was built by a rising executive of a Colorado railroad company. As his career boomed with the Gold Rush, he kept adding more woodwork to his little starter home. I sold it as the turn-of-the-century Condo Rush blitzed my neighborhood. Just a year after I put it on the national register of Historic Places, to memorialize it somehow. I’d like to think some of that woodwork got repurposed, but I I’ll never know. Many times I’ve imagined that excavator crashing through the old bay window…
The amazing thing for me about the Minor White photos is that these are not beauty shots of a newly-built home from the builder’s or real-estate agent’s brochure, but rather photos of houses deemed not worth saving in the condition they were in. I’ve seen pics of lots of once-grand old buildings taken just before they were demolished, and usually they have a decided “faded glory” look – you can tell they were once beautiful homes but now are dilapidated and have obviously not been well maintained for decades. There’s none of that in the White photos – everything looks pristine, as if the photos were from 1905 or thereabouts.
I wonder if there are any modern residential construction companies even capable of building something new in this style.
It takes a fortune to build a property like this. Once built that property needs a fortune to maintain it. If that fortune runs short, the property starts to degrade and it doesn’t take long. Owners die, the next generation doesn’t care, the dwindling fortune was split amongst heirs and that spells more neglect. Tastes change too. We appreciate these houses now for what they are but when they fell out of favor they were yesterday’s fashion and nobody cared. On to the next new thing. Also don’t be fooled. Much of that hand made woodwork was made in factories by machine. Take a look at a Sears catalog from the Victorian age to see how much “hand made wood work” was available back then.
Yes, just plain vanity. In the 19th century a millionaire had less ways to show wealth, didn’t have cars or jets or whatever. What would you do with a fortune?
I love real art and beauty too and really enjoyed this post, thanks!
Wow. Fantastic pics and the detail in these is amazing. You just don’t find that detail in new construction over the past 30 + years.
Those Victorians liked ornate – check the plasterwork in my 1890 built house in the UK, it’s a bugger to paint.
Does it all have to be one color? Try picking out in gold, with colored walls . . . ?
(Florence Twombly Mansion; Madison, New Jersey; built 1897.)
It’s hard enough painting it white 12 feet off the floor – I did draw a moustache on one of the “cherubs”.
Like the old mansions, the B&W photos depict an all but lost art.
Shot with a large format (perhaps 4×5 or 8×10 inch negatives) view camera.
Superb resolution, better than more recent 35mm cameras.
Swing/tilt/shift lens for perspective control.
I am late getting here, but really appreciate this. In my own midwestern city (Indianapolis) the pattern was that these ornate Victorian mansions were the homes for the wealthy, but by the 1920s they had gone out of style and the wealthy moved on to new homes in new neighborhoods. The homes left behind had a very limited market, and those who could afford them followed their friends to the areas of new development – a pattern that has happened repeatedly.
By the 20’s those old Victorians were either cut up into apartments, or were razed as those old inner neighborhoods became commercialized. Of course, once that process started, values dropped, which kept the process going.
Interestingly, the next generation of wealthy people’s homes seem to have had more staying power – the old high-end neighborhoods developed between, say, 1915-1930 seem to have fared better as time has passed, and many more of those homes have survived and been restored. There are some pockets of the old Victorians that were brought back here, and we are lucky to have them!
Yes, I’ve noticed the same pattern–surviving grand houses from 1860-1900 are rarer than those from 1915-1930. My favorites are the city mansions from 1870-1890s–they’re the rarest, with the fanciest designs and the finest materials.
Typical example is the Kastner Mansion in Newark, referenced by Cang (above). It just burned down a 2nd time (homeless people broke in), and the City bulldozed the remains. This is especially sad because there was a plan to restore it, and $250,000 was recently spent. The owner ran out of funding and it all went downhill from there.
Someone recently told me, “If that house were in Summit (nearby affluent community) it would be worth millions!”
The explanation for this is pretty obvious: these grand houses from 1860-1900 were typically built very close to the city/town center, which at that time were still quite small. American cities and towns were growing quickly, and the new houses built in the 1915-1930 period were further out, and in areas that due to new zoning regulations, were strictly residential. The older houses were built before any zoning existed, so they were in areas that might well have had industry or commercial areas nearby.
As folks flocked to these new residential areas, the owners of the older houses also moved further out and these houses lost value, and were turned into low-cost apartments. And other apartments were later built nearby. As such they became stranded in a lower-income, less desirable part of town, until they were eventually swallowed up by urban core redevelopment.
But the residential-zoned newer neighborhoods were protected from apartments and commercial development by the new zoning, and therefore stayed attractive, especially in more recent decades when their location was deemed increasingly desirable, being both close-in yet calm.
Zoning had everything to do with how American cities developed once they were implemented starting in about 1910 or so. Of course a very key purpose was to segregate the races, and that’s the painful reality and legacy of zoning. Single family zoning (R1) and “redlining” was a way for whites to keep out Blacks and other minorities and preserve and maximize the value of their homes. It’s been extremely successful at that. But change is in the air…Oregon, CA and some other states have now essentially eliminated the R1 zoning code. Here in Oregon any residential lot, even a small one, can now support up to 3 or 4 dwelling units.
Did some checking–most of Newark was already redlined as early as 1939, when it was still a viable city. The Krueger and Kastner Mansions would be on the inner edge of the big red area in the center. Red means “4th Grade (worst) Residential Security”, i.e. no mortgages or mortgages with high interest.
Today, most old buildings in that red central area have been demolished–it is mostly urban renewal, vacant land, parking lots, and a few old places, many of them dilapidated.
The smaller red area to the right (the “Ironbound” section) somehow survived mostly intact. The population is mostly Portuguese and Hispanic. Hope you like aluminum and vinyl siding though–nearly every old house is covered with it!
Steven..what a spectacular set of prints of these magnificent homes. True works of art!
As a former NJ resident and tour director for an organization that studied Victorian era architecture, I offer 2 other properties that you might be interested in (or maybe already are aware), both in Montclair/Essex county: Kip’s castle, and the Charles Schultz House.
My wife worked for a law firm that that formerly owned Kip’s, and they did quite a lot of restoration back in the ’80s. It is now owned by the Essex county park system and I believe they offer tours.
The Schultz house was owned by the Montclair Historical Society which I had a hand in managing the restoration budget back in the early 2000’s. It is now under private ownership.
Each of these properties had their times of relevance, however as with your examples, fell by the wayside. At least each are still standing!
Cheers.
I’ve been through Kip’s Castle (1st floor only) and it has a lot of charm. I’ve driven by the Shultz House in Montclair. It was for sale for a long time; no one wanted it. It eventually sold last year for $955,000, which I think is a screaming bargain in the NYC area for what you’re getting. The woodwork on the inside is magnificent! Taxes will be killer though, around $40,000/yr., I’m guessing.