With the news about the estate sale last weekend at the house of Gerry Frank, the location of the house is now fully
public. Since the main development of that area occurred in memory of people still living, the neighborhood's history has perhaps been assumed and taken as mere background noise, but it is worth a closer look.
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| August 5th, 1955 |
Local Architectural History
The house itself is recessed and hidden from the streets, on the corner of
Downs and Crestview in Candalaria Heights, but it's pretty grand. It even has an interior swimming pool, apparently added in the 1970s.
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| August 13th, 1953 |
The architecture by John G. Groom may or may not be first rate and high-style mid-century modern. The house is for sale, and the listing teases it as an "Incredible home built by one of Oregon's most iconic citizens." But there are no good photos of its exterior, unfortunately.
Groom was a local architect associated with Morningside School, the school administration building at 13th and Ferry, and also with the Sunnyslope branch of US Bank at the shopping center. Probably there are several others. But we do not much remember him or his firms today, and maybe there is more to say about that. At the least, they were representative of an era.
Development of Candalaria Heights and Salem Heights
The Frank house straddles the boundary between Candalaria Heights and Salem Heights, but it has been absorbed notionally into Candalaria.
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| September 21st, 1892 |
On a big west coast tour in 1892, about 600 Odd Fellows came to Salem by train, took the streetcar to the cemetery terminus, and had a great picnic at the "celebrated 'Candelaria' fruit ranch." The area and name seems clearly established by then.
The orchardist, Samuel A. Clarke, had been associated with Willamette Farmer for nearly 20 years, and later wrote Pioneer Days of Oregon History. He died in 1909 and is buried in the IOOF Pioneer Cemetery.
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| Falk house c.1876, photographed c. 1900 (from an HLC staff report) |
There is no "Clarke house" remaining, but the Falk house, in which he seems to have lived for a brief bit, is still on the middle slope of the hill above Lifesource and the Fire Station.
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| June 21st, 1904 |
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| January 28th, 1928 |
While Salem Heights passed through an intermediate period of small orchard parcels as the Ewald Fruit Farms, Candalaria Heights bypassed much of that and in 1928 went directly to smaller lots in the suburban mode. I am not sure this distinction between suburban and more agrarian modes is all that significant, but it is interesting to note. Early the streetcar had stopped at Hoyt and the Cemetery, but later it was extended to Madrona and Salem Heights School, so I do not think that was an influence. (The second vowel in Candalaria also seems to have shifted from "e" to "a." There are other details that deserve a closer look, too. The school's history says the Candalaria name came from the Looney family, but that is the married name of Clarke's daughter. The newspaper seems clear the name came from Clarke.)
With the Depression immediately following the 1928 plat, and perhaps other factors also, Candalaria did not develop promptly, and was available as a possible site for a new Capitol in 1935.
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| September 30th, 1935 |
After the war, housing there took off finally.
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| October 22nd, 1949 |
Candalaria Heights had been annexed in 1946, but the area just south of that remained outside the city limits for a few more years.
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| Candalaria in yellow, June 21st, 1946 |
Certainly there is more to say about the Grabenhorst family and real estate businesses. They developed a shopping center also. (It has been demolished and the newer mall complex with the French Press, Cafe Yumm, and UPS is there now.)
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| August 6th, 1953 |
About them and another area of town, in 1940 the Bitsman said
Grabenhorst Corners was about four miles south of Salem, now on the Pacific Highway. G. H. Grabenhorst bought the land, from the famous Frank Baker, state printer. Members of the Grabenhorst family are among Salem's leading realtors.
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| At Boone and Sunnyside Roads - 1917 USGS |
At the ground-breaking for the Meier & Frank store in 1954, it was announced "young bachelor son of Aaron Frank...is planning to build a home on Candalaria Heights where has has purchased a large view lot at Crestview and Downs." In the previous generation a person of means might choose to build on Fairmount Hill, but now Candalaria Heights was a desirable address.
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| June 2nd, 1954 |
Permits were taken out in the spring of 1955, and construction wrapped in late summer or early fall.
With increasing traffic about that time Council considered Hansen Avenue, and installed the four way stop at Crestview and Hansen.
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| August 18th, 1955 |
And we now have a conversation about traffic and speed on Salem Heights Avenue.
There might be more to say another time also about the history of roads and traffic in the neighborhood. Some of the avenues are very broad and overbuilt. The streets named after Salemites still living at naming, like Doughton and Skopil, also deserve more attention.
There are many links to recent history and current affairs in the neighborhood! It is not possible now to be at all exhaustive, and probably we will come back to pick up some of the threads. And of course Frank himself is interesting and important, and hopefully we will get more critical assessments of his place in social history and in political history.
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