Oral History Walking Tour

Posted on by Eliot Neighborhood

By Kayla Gill

A page from the tour booklet

Allies of Eliot, a group of eight PSU community development students, has produced a historic walking tour of Eliot based on a series of interviews conducted by the Eliot Oral Histories Project and on community outreach conducted for the walking tour.  The tour is self-guided and consists of an informational booklet with historical photos, and corresponding audio tracks taken from the interviews. Booklets and audio players will be available for checkout from Dishman Community Center, where the tour begins and ends.  A condensed brochure version of the booklet and audio mp3s will be available for free download from the project website this summer.

Continue reading Oral History Walking Tour

“Allies of Eliot” Continue The Oral History Project

Posted on by Eliot Neighborhood

By Owen Wise-Pierik

Allies Of Eliot

The history of the Eliot Neighborhood has been something that has brought culture and identity to it’s residents for a long time. It is something of controversy, life, and community. However, the neighborhood is changing. In order to keep the legacy of Eliot alive, Laurie Simpson and Arlie Sommer have teamed up with a group of Community Development undergraduate students from Portland State University to create an oral history project for the Eliot Neighborhood. Fusing together informational interviews of long term residents in Eliot and historical research, the students will create a historical walking tour of the neighborhood, bringing out oral narratives to show the changes and the history that exists here.

Continue reading “Allies of Eliot” Continue The Oral History Project

Robert E. Menefee: Profile of an Albina Businessman & Resident

Posted on by Roy E Roos

During the early years of rapid development in the town of Albina, which most of is now inside the Eliot neighborhood, many well-known businessmen were involved with the process.  When Albina was incorporated in 1887, it saw phenomenal growth through 1892.  Much money was spent and made on real estate investments and industrial expansions tied into the railroad industry.  Businesses during these years thrived on healthy profits in part due to an abundant supply of immigrant workers willing to work at working-class wages.  The real estate market was exceptionally healthy due to soaring lot prices.  After Albina merged with Portland in 1891, the value of property skyrocketed.  Most Albina businessmen and property speculators though lived in today’s NW and SW Portland, which was generally where most of the “well-to-do” lived.  Robert E. Menefee and his brothers were an exception to this rule as they resided in Albina during most of their lives.  Some of the homes they lived in are still standing in the neighborhood today.

16 NE Tillamook, oldest surviving house where Menefee lived with his father from 1890 to 1892.

Continue reading Robert E. Menefee: Profile of an Albina Businessman & Resident

Eliot Oral History Project

Posted on by Eliot Neighborhood

Written By Laurie Simpson

Boise Eliot student Anthony Brown during an interview

The Eliot Oral History Project has concluded their spring interview series.  The project, sponsored by the Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods and the Eliot Neighborhood Association, brought elders together with students from Boise Eliot’s middle school class to record stories about the Eliot Neighborhood.

Students were asked to reflect on the experience.  Here is what they said:

Continue reading Eliot Oral History Project

A Little Bit Of Norway in Eliot

Posted on by Roy E Roos
Queen Anne Cottages on NE Rodney. Circa 2000.

The residents of Eliot are fortunate today to enjoy ethnic and cultural diversity. What is more unique about our neighborhood is that it was always diverse since the beginning, during the last quarter of the 19th Century.  A healthy mix of immigrants from Europe settled here and built homes.  In the northerly portion of the original town site of Albina, which is bounded by today’s NE Morris Street west of MLK & NE Ivy Street east of MLK, a higher concentration of settlers from Scandinavian countries purchased property and built homes for themselves and related family members.  Most of these men held a variety of occupations that were often unskilled, but they were well-taught and highly skilled in carpentry.  Luckily, clusters of these small but decorative houses stand today and some have been sensitively restored.

Continue reading A Little Bit Of Norway in Eliot

Oral History Project Starting

Posted on by Eliot Neighborhood

The Eliot Neighborhood Association and Boise-Eliot School are about to begin the Eliot Oral History Project!  This project will bring Boise-Eliot middle school students together with Eliot residents to listen and record their stories and piece together an oral history and walking tours of the neighborhood.

Continue reading Oral History Project Starting

A Review of Jumptown

Posted on by Kirsten Jenkins

When most people think of jazz, Portland, Oregon, is not the first place that comes to mind.  And yet, for a golden decade following World War II, the Eliot neighborhood, a thriving African American neighborhood that would soon be bulldozed for urban renewal, spawned a jazz heyday.  Such luminaries as: Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dizzie Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and local talent; Wardell Gray and Doc Severinsen headlined Portland clubs.  The fact that Portland was a port city with a busy railroad, and had a bustling shipbuilding industry, made it ripe to become a jazz Mecca.  Jumptown, by Robert Dietsche is a fascinating blend of music, politics, and social history.

Continue reading A Review of Jumptown

The White Eagle Saloon

Posted on by Roy E Roos
White Eagle Saloon

A Building Full of Colorful History & Stories

Our neighborhood is so fortunate to have buildings that have survived for nearly a century or more.  Every building has seen much use from many people over the years and has many stories to tell as well.  The White Eagle Saloon & Café at 836 N Russell Street is a great example of a simple building known for its colorful past.  The White Eagle, as it is now known as, has not only serviced many different people from different walks of life, but also is full of stories of events passed through several generations.  In 95 years of existence, the building has served the same function as a saloon, tavern, or pub.  Perhaps the walls are trying to talk as mysteries still shroud this building and reports of haunting by ghosts continue.

Continue reading The White Eagle Saloon

Historic Elks Lodge Grateful for Volunteers

Posted on by Martha Gies
Elks Lodge Renovators - 2009. Photo: Faye Burch
Elks Lodge Renovators - 2009. Photo: Faye Burch

In Eliot there’s little left to see of the neighborhood’s complicated past. Once the vibrant, if sometimes dilapidated, center of Portland’s Black community, today almost all the landmarks are gone. The drugstore that anchored the busy intersection of Williams and Russell was beheaded and razed, its beautiful dome transplanted to Dawson Park. The Prince Hall Masonic lodge is now a tapas bar; the Cotton Club, flourishing in the sixties, sits abandoned behind a chain link fence; and the Black Panther medical clinic, which provided free health care to the community throughout the seventies, is long closed.

Continue reading Historic Elks Lodge Grateful for Volunteers

An 1883 House on the Endangered List

Posted on by Roy E Roos
216 NE Tillamook
216 NE Tillamook

The Eliot neighborhood may soon be losing a historic home at 216 NE Tillamook. A demolition permit was filed by the company who purchased it two years ago but the city required a 120-day demolition delay on the house due to the fact that it is inside a historic zone and the age of the house. The delay is designed to provide some opportunity for someone to move the house to another location and restore it. Fortunately for the house, the owning firm who planned a condominium development on the site had financial problems and the property entered foreclosure recently.

Continue reading An 1883 House on the Endangered List

Neighborhood History Book

Posted on by Clint Lundmark

historyofalbinaIf you have read many of the postings from the “History” category on eliotneighborhood.org or if you are a regular reader of the Eliot News newsletter you probably recall reading about a history book in the works.  Author Roy E Roos, who has written many Eliot News articles over the years, finished the book last fall.

Continue reading Neighborhood History Book

Eliot Remembered – Jane Bachman

Posted on by Martha Gies
Jane Bachman
Jane Bachman

Jane Weber graduated from Grant in 1948, attended University of Oregon, where she earned a Bachelor’s in General Arts & Letters in 1952, then took a one-year post-graduate course in medical records at Duke. Returning to Portland, she worked in the records department at St. Vincent’s until she and Don Bachman, whom she had married in 1958, adopted their first child. They had adopted two girls and a boy by the time they had three daughters of their own.

Continue reading Eliot Remembered – Jane Bachman

Eliot Remembered – Emma Brown

Posted on by Martha Gies
Emma Brown
Emma Brown

Emma and Finn Brown came from Biloxi, Mississippi, to the Pacific Northwest by train, and settled in Vancouver, Washington, in 1949, where their only child, Annie Louise, was born at St. Joseph Hospital. Finn first got a job working at a cannery; later, when he was hired on at Rich Manufacturing in Portland, they moved across the river. Emma went into domestic service with a family in Dunthorpe, with whom she worked for more than two decades. Widowed in 1978, Emma Brown, has also outlived many of her clients. Today she is 84 and still working part time.

Continue reading Eliot Remembered – Emma Brown