City Council, July 13th - To Rename Center Street

Council meets on Monday, and they have history on the mind. In addition to the Historic Preservation Plan, they will moot Councilor Hoy's suggestion to rename Center Street to honor Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Center Street is much earlier than Asylum Avenue
and was already part of the earliest grid naming
Marion & Linn County atlas, 1878

Based on the first tranche of public comment, it seems likely that this is a concept that needs more discussion. Rather than snapping into focus with a consensus, several writers propose alternatives, each heading off into a different direction.

Advocating at the Capitol, February 3rd, 1919

Some of the suggested alternatives stress a local figure rather than national one. One person on social media suggested Beatrice Cannady, for example. I do not read the alternate suggestions as any kind of delaying sentiment, especially at this early stage of a proposal, but as offered in good faith. There is also no comment from our local NCAAP chapter or Oregon Black Pioneers, and a successful renaming proposal would be sure to have their endorsement and participation.

Altogether, it is not clear the proposal is fully mature, and there may be benefit from a wider community conversation about whom to honor and how to honor.

Incumbency Privilege in the Historic Preservation Plan at Council Monday

From a narrow standpoint, it looks like there is still a path forward on the adaptive reuse of the 1928 German Baptist Church in the Grant Neighborhood. The Neighborhood Association has been signalling that a plan for rezoning with a multi-family designation would be acceptable in a way that rezoning with a commercial office designation was not. So there is a real possibility still for the building to be preserved and affordable housing to be created.*

The cover of the new Historic Preservation Plan
features Grant Neighborhood

The Neighborhood objections, then, are not "full NIMBY," and it's important to stress that they appear to be offering a way forward they see as a compromise offered in good faith. The Neighborhood does not deserve the full weight of censure and criticism and we should not go all scorched earth on them.

But there is still a partial NIMBY sentiment, something a little coded, and with the Historic Preservation Plan at Council on Monday, which features a cover with the Grant Neighborhood, our whole framework of what we deem worth preserving, and how we think about it, in both formally designated historic districts and in other neighborhoods needs a more searching analysis. The way we talk about protecting historic resources is a little screwed up. By focusing too much on incumbency privilege, too often we subordinate preservation as a means to exclusionary ends.

"Economic, social, and demographic characteristics have not meaningfully changed"

In the letter from the Grant Neighborhood Association objecting to the German Baptist Church proposal was something that we have seen elsewhere and we will see in the future again.** It is a common appeal and style of defense. The ease with which we resort to this should probably make us a little uncomfortable.

We have not grappled with the exclusionary intent:
"properties whose economic, social, and demographic
characteristics have not meaningfully changed"
- and should not change, by implication

In that letter opposing funding, the Neighborhood Association talks about "rich history" and needing "protection" against "chipping away at its character."

Back-in Parking Valued in 1920, and Free Bike Repair - Bits

July 8th, 1920

Back in 1920, some "Salem autoists" preferred back-in angle parking as safer.

[A]t present a car while starting is moving in the same direction as are other autos...Drivers of machines traveling along the street will never know when a car is going to back out.

Here is it is on State Street in the early 1920s.

State Street circa 1920-1925: two-way travel,
back-in angle parking, streetcar in the middle
(unknown postcard source - via Strong Towns group)

July 20th, 1920

Photos dated to about 1930 show head-in angle parking, so some time in the decade it changed.

Climate and the Neighborhood Hub Survey

The headline in the paper today is soothing: "It's coolest and wettest" start to summer, "what an Oregon summer is suppose to feel like." That frame is used for a discussion of our prospects for forest fires.

Front page today

Wash. Post
July 4th

But elsewhere in the world, things are not so reassuring.

The frame of our start to summer being "middle of the pack" is accurate so far as it goes, but that context erases the question whether it is appropriate any more to measure "average" with a retrospective look.

There is, instead, evidence that we have to think of a moving average, and that any average calculated from values in previous decades is not predictive. It is true in the sense that it is an accurate mathematical calculation of average, but not true in the sense of probability for the future and for creating expectation. There is tension between a mathematical and psychological understanding of average here.

It seems wrong, then, to stress the comfort and familiarity, the reassuring dullness of an "average" temperature range and amount of rain.

It is likely that this is not a reversion to "normal" but is in fact a new abnormal.

Register-Guard, June 25th

In light of this, I wonder about the newest survey on Neighborhood Hubs that the City has sent out.

Erasing and Excluding: Public History and Public Art in Salem

The Sunday paper has a nice bundle of commentary on public history. Disggregated online, it might get lost, but in print it has more weight and together they have even a kind of dialog with each other. The paper's worth reading!

Too much "empire," not enough democracy
Before the vandalism, Library of Congress

The commentary may seem academic, and at the Capitol in particular just about dumb and wanton vandalism, to which the only proper response is repudiation and condemnation, but public art also reflects the ways we see ourselves and instantiates our values, and these have on-going consequences for current policy and politics. In the vandalism, in addition to the vulgar and gratuitous marks, the words "empire takes" were sprayed over in the motto, and there is a real critique in that gesture.

Laments about vandalism at the Capitol
erase costs of "Empire building"

On a different sculpture celebrating pioneer heritage, back a lifetime ago when we were selecting a statue in place of the rejected nude, the sculptor himself put exclusionary definitions behind "real Westerners" and "true Americans."

As Commercial Hall, old Central School was briefly Hub for Socialism in Salem

Commercial Hall, formerly Central School,
September 2nd, 1912

Here's an unexpected turn in the history of the old Central School. R. R. Ryan, who had apparently purchased and moved the building, was a Civil War Veteran, a Granger, and a Socialist. He seems to have been at the center of a small Socialist scene that thrived here up to the conservative reaction and red-baiting associated with the first World War.

Oregon Daily Journal, October 6th, 1920

Ryan died in 1926, and his political activity seems to have been lost, erased by design or forgot by convenience. His life deserves more research and attention!

This is another scrapbook post, as there is not enough information yet to stitch a very detailed narrative.

Oregonian, March 26th, 1902

Ryan ran for governor in 1902. It's not entirely clear how serious of a candidate he was. In March, Salem Socialists felt he was too aggressive and asked him to withdraw, but he refused. It made the Portland paper.

With New High School, Big Central School was Moved in 1906 - Updated

(See addendum below for several corrections!)

The School Board has been in the news, and some of the reasons stretch way back to the start of our public school system.

Central School from the Barrick Funeral Home postcards
Salem Library Historic Photos (note the updated website!)

You might remember that Lucy Rose Mallory was a teacher and the Bush House and Museum was going to do more research on the first schools, especially Little Central School. From the Oregon Encyclopedia:

School-age children in Salem in the 1850s had only one public school to attend: the Old Log Schoolhouse on the corner of Marion and Commercial Streets. The school required tuition of from four to five dollars per child each term (from late September to March) to pay for maintenance. Black students were not allowed to attend....

African American artist William P. Johnson had offered in 1861 a scholarship of $500 to one of the schools to allow his daughter-in-law to enroll, but his offer had been rejected. By March 1867, he had collected enough funds from friends and other black families in Salem to open a school with about eight students and possibly some young adults. With $430.75 in hand, he rented a room for $10 a month and engaged a teacher to conduct classes....

The Colored School had completed one six-month term when in 1868 the Salem School District opened Little Central School, a $1,500, one-story, two-room structure at the southeast corner of High and Marion Streets. The school was designated for the education of African American students and was adjacent to the larger Central School, where white students attended. The first recorded teachers at Little Central were Lucy Mallory and Marie E. Smith. The Colored School remained at this location until the end of the 1871 school year, when the school was discontinued.

Little Central School probably
(OSL - but their photo site is broken - via Salem Reporter)

It's good Bush House will be doing more research, because the existing materials are not very detailed or always very certain.