Harry Scott's First Bike Shop was on State Street

Some time in the last year or two it looks like the State Library switched over to a new online catalogue, which includes their photography this time, and there are now better scans of photos that had been available only as dinky little things.

The first site of Scott's Cycle on State Street, circa 1914
Image detail, via Oregon State Library

The whole image:  Oregon State Library

September 9, 1916

One image it is especially nice to be able to see in an enlargement is a partial image of the very first location for Harry Scott's bicycle business, an enterprise that's still around and we know today as Scott's Cycle.

The single-story storefront was between the alley and the Griswold-Murphy building at the corner of State and Commercial, and you can just see the edges of it in the photo in the State Library's collection.

Here's a view of the Griswold block and the intersection of State Street and Commercial looking northwest about from above the Ladd & Bush parking lot (where there was a building, of course!).

Commercial Street at State Street, circa 1900
Griswold block in upper left; Pioneer Trust (1909) not yet built
Lots of people biking along!
Oregon State Library

The parade could very well be related to the Spanish-American War and the Oregon Volunteers.

Back to Scott's, if you missed the celebration last year, the business has been around for a century now! (You can read more about the history of Harry Scott's business here and here. Also, when you walk into South High, on the right is a bronze plaque commemorating its construction, and Harry Scott is named as one of the School Board members, about 10 years before he sold the business to Larry Lewis's group.)

For comparison, here's the site today, a gravel parking lot. The corner is slated to be redeveloped, and hopefully we won't see the empty lot much longer!

The site today: Sunday Streets in 2013

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For other notes remembering Veterans, see the African-American 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps, bicycles at D-Day, our earliest Veterans from the War of 1812, and elsewhere some thoughts on Lt. Col. Leonidas Willis, CSA, who settled here in 1871 after the war and whose son built the downtown building that now houses the Book Bin.