From Church to Bank Drive-Thru: A Lot and Urban Erosion on Chemeketa Street

Over on FB a person posted a vintage postcard image of old City Hall.

via Postcard dealer Mary L. Martin

Across the alley was a portico that didn't look like the porch for a house or business. What was it?

Classical portico, detail

The lot is where the recently demolished drive-thru for Petro Belluschi's also demolished First National Bank had been located.

January 11th, 1955

At the very same time in 1955 Ladd & Bush Bank had demolished some buildings next door for their own drive-thru. These are candidates for the first instance of demolishing potentially useful buildings downtown for a low-intensity drive-thru use. In more suburban type development with plenty of open space that did not require demolition there may have been earlier drive-thru restaurants or other concepts. So I'm not saying these were the first absolutely, but there are reasons to think they were the first that replaced existing walkable development. That is a real moment in our autoism and the erosion of place. We'll return to this in more detail another time.

The lot's history of use is a little interesting. The 1890 Sanborn showed a small house on it.

The site in 1895 (Library of Congress)

On the 1895 map with the "new" City Hall it was vacant, presumably demolished. Its outline on the 1890 map suggested it was a modest house that might have been shabby or deteriorated. Perhaps it was used for staging construction of the City Hall.

The portico, it turns out, belonged to the Second Church of Christ, Scientist, completed in 1903.

April 11th, 1903 (and 13th)

It got extensive coverage across two separate editions of the afternoon paper. It was a big deal!

According to those pieces, William C. Knighton had designed the building. We celebrate Knighton in particular here for Deepwood and the Supreme Court Building. (There are others, also; he and the buildings he designed have a real place in Salem history in the years before and after 1900.)

A couple of years later the First and Second Church congregations merged, and by 1925 the building was known as the First Church.

January 1st, 1925

At this time they were nearly finished with a new church just across the street. (The drawing is mislabeled "High and Chemeketa" and the correct corner is northeast on Liberty and Chemeketa, the current entry to the mall.)

January 1st, 1925

According to a grand opening piece at the end of the month, "the old church...is incorporated into the new church." It references a building on Center and High, but in the drawing the left hand portico, the one facing Liberty, looks exactly like the 1903 portico across the street on Chemeketa. It may not be possible to be certain at the moment, but that's how I read it.

January 31st, 1925

With the old building incorporated into the new, the lot was empty again, and the 1926-27 Sanborn also shows it empty.

In 1927 a used car dealer was using the lot.

April 19th, 1927

A few years later George Putnam of the Capital Journal purchased the lot for a new building.

Journal of the Society
of Architectural Historians
Vol. 55, No. 1 (Mar., 1996)

After Frank Lloyd Wright gave a talk in Salem in 1931 Putnam proposed a commission!

It didn't work out. Instead, local architect Lyle Bartholomew secured the commission. It opened in 1934.

May 2nd, 1934

December 18th, 1934

When Bernard Mainwaring purchased the paper from George Putnam, he arranged to share building space with the Statesman — and thus initiated the slow decline to today's Statesman Register Journal Guard Today.

June 7th, 1954

The City had shown some tentative interest in purchasing the building for an expansion of City Hall functions, but that didn't work out either. Instead, the First National Bank, the bank designed by Pietro Belluschi completed a few years before, wanted to open a drive thru. They secured the property and it opened in 1955.

Demolition in November, 1963
(Salem Library Historic Photos)

The church across the street was demolished in 1963, and the congregation moved to a new building across the street from Bush Park.

• See also the old Salem online history piece, "First Church of Christ Scientist" now at the Mill.

We'll stop here. There are some threads perhaps to take up another time!