Off-and-on I have been working on a note about the origins of Englewood Park, and it is very pleasant to see that NEN and the Historic Landmarks Commission are already on top of it!
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| Second Lord & Schryver plan, 1941 |
At the HLC meeting on Thursday the 21st, the agenda lists "Englewood Park Designation" as a discussion item, and there is a packet of historical materials — albeit not organized as any formal Staff Report. There is nothing specific about what kind of designation is proposed.
An HLC member tentatively traces the origin of the park to 1924.
I can supply some information about the early days of the park. The earliest reference to Kay Park I found was in 1924, with the Salem Kiwanis Club clearing the area of brush so that it could be "in condition for use" during the summer. The city's eventual ownership of the property, like Kimberli mentioned, was a contentious issue. By late 1925, T.B. Kay was ready to have the seven-acre tract surveyed and platted for selling it off in lots. He offered the property to the city for $1,000 an acre. One city alderman was in favor of the purchase but feared residents would vote it down if it went to an election. He hoped it could be had for $5,000. Another idea was to have residents in the Englewood district put up the money for the park if the city would help pay off the debt. During the Jan. 18, 1926, City Council meeting, on the motion of Alderman Hal D. Patton, the ways and means committee, the park committee and Mayor Giesy were instructed to close a deal with T.B. Kay for the Kay park site in the Englewood district. After a contentious regular city council meeting that included name-calling on Feb. 15, 1926, a special meeting was held at 11:35 p.m. that night with Alderman Patton leading the efforts, approving the $6,000 purchase. The new park officially became known, by ordinance provision, as Englewood Playground and Park. On March 1, 1926, a report was read to the city council stating that the Kay park site can be purchased for $6,000 in cash. The city "definitely authorized" the purchase, "which will probably be transacted today" (3-2-26 Capital Journal).We can push it back a little further to the fall of 1923. Significantly, it was offered for free.
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| October 21st, 1923 |
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| November 9th, 1923 |
As the note in the HLC packet says, the transfer was protracted and contentious. Initially it was a kind of horse-trade: Free land in trade for paving access to the subdivision Kay was developing. Council balked.
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| Kay Addition with park area, 1924 |
One neglected area of history this discussion might open is the adjacency of the Kays to the Klan. Thomas Kay supported Kaspar K. Kubli (whose initials say everything) for Speaker of the House in the 1923 State Session.
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| January 9th and 10th, 1923 |
His sister Fannie Kay Bishop the year before had been on a Klan slate of endorsements.
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| May 17th, 1922 |
Fannie was not elected, but Thomas supported a platform, one that was popular it's important to say, but also one we find repugnant today.
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| February 27th, 1923 |
Though there might not be a direct view of any fire, there's a good bit of smoke here, and this is a part of Kay history and of Salem history that is underdeveloped and deserves a closer look.
For a little more on Kay see:
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| Brown = lots 50 years or older |
Also on the agenda is a discussion of SCAN's resolution for the City to initiate designation of it as a "Heritage Neighborhood."
From the Staff Report:
SCAN has requested the following projects as part of the Heritage Neighborhood recognition: 1) Completion of a Reconnaissance Level Survey (RLS) of architectural, historical, and cultural resources; 2) Completion of an Intensive Level Survey (ILS) by a professional historic consultant and 3) Identification of additional opportunities for enhancement, public education and awareness of SCAN’s architectural, historic and cultural resources.
Staff has identified a funding source (the Certified Local Government grant) to help provide funding for this program. Assuming SCAN can dedicate a minimum of four/five volunteers who are able to assist with the RLS fieldwork, and provided funds can be secured to hire a professional consultant to complete the ILS work, staff can work with the SCAN Neighborhood’s Heritage Committee throughout 2024-25 to complete SCAN’s requested projects. At the end of 2025 a final summary report including the RLS and ILS information for the SCAN Heritage neighborhood will be provided to the HLC along with recommendations for potential future historic property designations and additional educational projects.
The City lists benefits of designation as:
Once a neighborhood has been selected for recognition as a Salem Heritage
Neighborhood, the HLC will work with the Neighborhood Association to identify which products the neighborhood would like to receive during that calendar year. Options include (but are not limited to):
- Wayfinding Signage
- Historic Calendar
- Markers
- Walking Tour Brochures
- Street Sign Toppers
- Historic Survey
- Future National Register District nomination(s) or Local Landmark Designation
The entirety of SCAN is not any coherent and cohesive neighborhood. The Bush Park/Gaiety Hill Historic District is already chimerical, and the whole of SCAN would be even more so.
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| Mostly platted by 1892, it was slower to build out (Oregon Historical Society) |
Elements of signage, markers, walking tours and will be terrific, but this is also likely an attempt to complicate and even baffle infill for middle housing or apartments. It's a defensive move and expression of the exclusionary function of Historic Preservation.
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| Exclusionary themes in draft 2024 Oregon State Historic Preservation Plan |
For more criticism of our Historic Preservation framework and its use
for exclusionary ends, especially misuse of Historic Districts distinct
from individual designations, see:
- "Defense against Developer Dark Arts: Historic Districts' Unpredictable Charm"
- "Update on Historic Preservation Plan may be too Limited"
- "Incumbency Privilege in the Historic Preservation Plan at Council Monday"
- "Zoning and the Restoration Drama: Different Perspectives on the Buchner House"
- "Attempt at Grant Historic District Bears Watching: At the HLC"
- And also, see a series of notes on the history of zoning, especially the first zoning scheme of 1926
Notwithstanding these reservations about the exclusionary subtexts of our historic preservation framework, the designation could also provide a framework for better narrative history.
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| Lewis Judson described Kalapuya house pits in SCAN (Marion County History, vol. 8, 1962-64) |
What about the house pits Lewis Judson described? People lived here before the settlers and city. There has been some discussion of the Oak grove and Camas in Bush Park, but not much on other areas.
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| David Leslie and Fabritus Smith (1852 Survey) |
During the first phase of settlement, David Leslie gets some attention under his association with Jason Lee and then Asahel Bush's purchase of his house and property, but Fabritus Smith gets much less. A later house of his, the Smith-Ohmart house, still stands in SCAN.
Transportation is at the very heart of the development of SCAN. Last summer the Mill's history column talked about an abandoned streetcar line and its relation to development plans.
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| July 2022 |
A theme here is that our historic preservation scheme fails to account for the influence of autoism, that the autoism is itself an historical process, and not some timeless given.
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| December 9th, 1923 |
In a longish overview piece from exactly 100 years ago, Walter Chrysler wrote:
car ownership promotes home ownership...The motor car is a revolutionary influence. For example, it is responsible largely for the disintegration of urban residential life and development of suburban life.In 1923, "revolutionary" would invoke the still recent Russian Revolution and then-current red scare. It was a charged word for disruption. Chrysler means it!
Our cities changed with the automobile, and our climate crisis and current situation in history calls for us to change urban form again. Too much emphasis on preserving in amber is a denial, not celebration, of history.
We abstract house forms and lot configurations from the ways they are embedded in a transportation and street system.
There are houses in SCAN with links to transportation history, houses associated with bridge engineer Conde McCullough; car dealer, then Governor, Douglas McKay; Frederick Lamport, the son of a very early harness and saddle shop owner. But we tend to focus on how attractive and fancy are the houses, and not on what changes these people made or participated in on city form and development. Our historic preservation schemes should attend more to power and policy, and less on aesthetics.
So much of historic preservation is about halting change. But better understandings of our history might also offer ways to accommodate and even embrace change.
Designation of SCAN is not something to oppose, but it is something to watch, and to direct hopefully to more inclusionary ends.
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