Slabtown Tours, Author at Slabtown Tours - N & NW Portland Walking Tours

Slabtown Fun Fact #16: Can you name all five historic names for this former Thurman Street movie theater?

Slabtown Tours Fun Facts April 6, 2015April 1, 2020Emil Schacht, Ideal Theater

Can you name all five historic names for this former Thurman Street movie theater?

The Ideal Theater Building 2405 NW Thurman. (TLM April 2015)
How Many Names Did This Theater have while operating as a theater? Answer is: FIVE names.

Test your skill…

1912: Ideal Theater was Designed by Emil Schacht and Son (silent movie theater)
owner: Conrad LeBlanc
1927: The Senate (facade remodel)
1929: The Bluebird
1944(45): Elmo (Fire c. 1949)
1951: The Crown
Closed December 1953 was used as a warehouse for years.

Emil Schacht practiced architecture in Oregon for decades and is attributed for introducing the residential English Arts & Crafts style to Portland (Ritz p. 347). His fifteen residential buildings in Willamette Heights neighborhood (1905-1909) are worthy of a Multiple Properties National Register Nomination. The advocates fort the Irvington Historic District have documented and preserved many of his notable residences. He designed Astoria City Hall in 1904 which is still standing and had been adaptively reused as a hotel. The Lewis and Clark Exposition Building (1905) was one of his more famous designs. My person favorite building for its cultural significance to Portland’s Black History and pleasing design is the Golden West Hotel.

The architectural firm Emil Schacht and Son lasted from 1910-1916.

Letter Preserved at the Portland City Archives and Records Office
Every secondary source states that the theater had 300 seats. This document leads me to believe there were four hundred in the peek period of significance.

All historic sources state the theater seated between 300-330 patrons looking at the letter below I’m inclined to think that the theater in the WWII years seated 400 plus. Glad that James Lommasson and Stewart Harvey remodeled this building in 2004. I am often distracted by articles around Portland, OR and censorship in the late teens. Oddly enough in 1920 C.E. Yeager proprietor of the Ideal Theater was fined for having a girl under the age of 18 working in his theater-it must have been a sting because six theater owners were charged.

Slabtown Fun Fact #15 Ramp to Nowhere off of Fremont Bridge. Where should it go?

Slabtown Tours Fun Facts March 21, 2015April 1, 2020Chet Orloff, Fremont Bridge, I-405, I-505

The freeway “chad”/ghost ramp is just north of St. Patrick’s Church.
This was once going to connect the Fremont Bridge to I505. (Image TLM March 2015)

PDC Slide City of Portland Archives I-505 Vision Couch School was still sharing space with MLC at the time this image was created.

Neighbors were alarmed when they noticed surveyors planning to clear away homes along the proposed route for I-505. The initial environment impact statement was four pages. In November 13, 1970, the Oregonian reported in “Road Route Plan Aired” that J.H. Versed construction engineer for the State Highway Department’s metropolitan division estimated that the construction would start in 1973 after homes along Thurman and Vaughn Street could be acquired and demolished. He estimated that the interstate would be completed in 1976. A few months later in September 1971 neighborhood groups filed a class action suit seeking to prevent further acquisition of right-of-way for I-505 and I-405 that were displacing residents.

Road Map assumed I-505 a 3.17 spur was going to be built. The section is from a Portland City map above was published in 1979 by Gousha.

Memories of Portland Development Commission’s(1) proposed Vaughn Street Urban Renewal plan were still in the recent past I-405 and I-505 would eliminate the blight that Housing Authority of Portland(2) and others had failed to eliminate. Thurman Street homes were being purchased to facilitate clearing a path for the 1.44-mile Portland spur. The city planning staff estimated that 400 people and some 200 of units of housing would be impacted by the I-505 alone. Our Historic Slabtown Tour would not be possible today had this freeway been built because what little that would be left to view would be so close to a freeway that the car noise would cancel out my tour guide vocal cords. The I-505 was conceived of as a junction was conceived to run between St. Helens Road (Highway 30) to Interstate 405. Puzzlingly one of the adverse impacts cited in the blocking of the construction of this interstate was that it would trigger an increase in land values.

If you want to learn more about the fight to stop the I-505 I recommend reading Chet Orloff’s 1991 interview with narrator Morton Paglin (link).

(1) PDC now known as Prosper Portland

(2) HAP now know as Home Forward

Fun Fact #14 Where did Slabtown Kids Learn to Swim?

Slabtown Tours Fun Facts March 3, 2015April 1, 2020Couch School, MLC School, Swim Tank

Image of the pool in the basement of MLC School. The water has been drained out but the lane dividers are still attached hanging like party decorations. Part of a mural of seas creature is on the right. This is taken from the deep end of the dry pool where there was once a diving board.

Fun Fact #14 Where did Slabtown Kids Learn to Swim?

Answer at School. In 1914 Portland Public Schools District was making every effort to replace Portland’s wooden school structures with new fire proof school buildings. The Old Couch School (built in 1882) was at 17th and Kerny and had a dire reputation post Small Pox (Think COVID-19 this was even prior to the Spanish Influenza). The New Couch School in 1914, at NW 20th and Glisan was one of the early efforts to replace a wooden structure. The excavated this property went deep enough to provide for a basement swimming pool at the time they called it a swim tank.

There was not really a shallow end tables we dropped into the water so that non-swimmers could learn to swim (2012 TLM)

Fun Fact #13 Thanksgiving Trivia!

Slabtown Tours Fun Facts November 27, 2014April 1, 2020Sylvester Pennover

According to the Oregonian article dated November 25, 1917, the state of Oregon wasn’t always in agreement with the rest of country as to when Thanksgiving should be celebrated. The newspaper reported that in 1894, then Governor Sylvester Pennoyer wrote a handwritten proclamation on an ordinary sheet of note paper from his Salem office. It read: “I hereby appoint the last Thursday of this month a Thanksgiving holiday.” This caused confusion because 1894 had five Thursdays in November, and the rest of the nation was observing the holiday on the fourth as it is today. The article claimed some Oregonian’s celebrated one day and some of them observed the other. Even back then, they must have been thinking about how many shopping days we could get in before Christmas.

Governor Sylvester Pennoyer agrees Walking Tours Gift Certificates make great stocking stuffers. Order Online.

Fun Facts #12 Would Jesus have shopped here?

Slabtown Tours Fun Facts July 11, 2014April 1, 2020Better Beef and Bible, Jon Heil, Trendy-Third

He may not have been a regular customer, but many shoppers were very “faithful”
to this 23rd Avenue business.
Image Credit Mike Ryerson

Would Jesus have shopped here?

When Jon Heil opened his Better Beef & Bible store in the summer of 1976, rents for prime retail spaces on the not-yet-Trendy-Third Avenue were still very inexpensive. The sharp young marketing graduate took a chance and opened a small shop in the former Arrow Ambulance office at the corner of NW 23rd & Hoyt Street to specialized in what he loved best. Good quality beef,and the good book.Heil, who was a Christian, had been a sales-man for Attilla Meat Company, so he knew his merchandise well. His unique business served the neighborhood until the early 1980s . . . mostly with beef.

Slabtown Fun Facts #11: Myrtle Casper

Slabtown Tours Fun Facts June 11, 2014March 31, 2021Fred DeWolfe, McMenamins Tavern & Pool, Myrtle Casper, NW 23rd

Image courtesy Mike Ryerson
Photographer Fred DeWolfe

The late Myrtle Casper was a longtime resident of the Slabtown area in Northwest Portland. Her husband Ben Casper owned the Saw Shopwhere the Northwest Portland Library parking lot is located today. Myrtle loved spending her time shooting pool with the guys at the Northwest(now McMenamins) Tavern & Pool on NW 23rd Avenue. After all, what else was there for a lady todo when her husband sharpened saws all day? Myrtle Clara Casper was born in Kansas in 1890.She was married three times, and she spent many of her early years doing housekeeping. She died in 1974 in an apartment above her favorite pool hall at age 83. Ben died four years later at 93 years old.A large copy of this photograph of Myrtle hangs on the wall of McMenamins Tavern & Pool.

Fun Fact #10 Who was that big guy in the center?

Slabtown Tours Fun Facts May 12, 2014April 12, 2020Beverly Meskel, Guild's Lake, Lincoln High, Swede Holbrook

Who was that big guy in the center?

He towered above his Lincoln High teammates, and

he let them to a State Basketball Championship.

Slabtown had a hometown hero, because of his own struggles with class and the status quo in Portland. His “quest” and notoriety (transformation from freaky tall to starlight), which was followed by residents even after they were relocated, was to succeed at a sport—basketball—with which he had had no previous experience. Harvey Wade “Swede” Halbrook, who had an important career in the National Basketball Association in the 1950s. I met pro-baseball player Milo Meskel’s sister for the first time at the third Guild’s Lake Courts reunion in 2009.

Beverly Meskel: We all had fun down there. Everybody was friends—didn’t matter where you came from, you were all broke. We didn’t have anywhere to go…. We came from Minnesota where my dad made a dollar a day. If we didn’t live on a farm, we all would have starved to death…. Swede Halbrook, well, if you lived in Guild’s Lake [Courts], everyone knew Swede Halbrook. Well, in the fifth grade I stood about this high [motioning short] and Swede stood about this high [motioning tall]. And my brother-in-law’s dad used to say you two should get married so your kids would be the right size. He was quite a guy. I think there were…four guys [brothers]—Joe, Dan, and Jim and him, I think.

Joe: They were all tall.

Beverly Meskel: They were all tall, but Swede also had a gland problem. We almost lost him in sixth grade; he was up at Oregon Health Science for a long time.

Joe: Halbrook was in my class at Chapman.

Beverly Meskel: Was he? So, like I said, he was not that well of a person. Plus he tried so much to have friends that he did not know who his friends were and who were the users. He got himself in quite a bit of trouble… He was a neat kid, really.

Swede, pictured sitting down with his long legs and enormous shoes, became a man of mythical proportions, who, at 7’3”, was the tallest player ever to play for Oregon State College. He was even larger than life when he lived at Guild’s Lake Courts, but he never played basketball there because there was only one hoop in the entire development, and that was inside a mixed-use room in the Guild’s Lake School.

Fun Fact #7 Lost Flanders Street Home Found Thanks to Local History Detective Mike Ryerson

Slabtown Tours Fun Facts February 2, 2014April 1, 2020Captain Sladen, Cochise

Sladen House Courtesy Sladen Family & Mike’s History Tours (our old branding)

Portland’s layers of street re-naming and re-numbering can some times cause a house to get lost. The Flanders Street home was found thanks to Local History Detective Slabtown team member Mike Ryerson.

When Civil War army veteran Captain Joseph A. Sladen retired from the military in the early 1890s, he built a beautiful home for his large family on Flanders Street. This structure is one of the last remaining 1890s mansions in the boundaries of the Alphabet Historic District.

After Sladen died in 1911, his family eventually moved to various locations, many of his descendants live in the east coast region of the country. When his descendants attempted to find the historic old house based on the address obtained on multiple sources including: historic letters, Polk directories and federal census enumerations, they determined that their assessorial home had been demolished. After being lost for 75 years, we’ve informed them we found it right where he’d left it.

We are always digging deep into the neighborhood history to enrich our walking tours:

In 2013 after this fun fact came out became fascinated with the remodeling being done on the Captain Joseph A. Sladen Home at NW 22nd Flanders. Mike Ryerson contacted the owners to learn more about their restoration project and what the current owner did or did not know about the history of the house. Co-owner Robert Wagner, a partner in the law firm of Miller & Wagner who occupies the building, told us the house was originally the home of Captain Sladen who had served in the Civil War. He went on to tell us that a book had been written called “Making Peace with Cochise” which was compiled from entries in Sladen’s journal during his military days. (More on the book later.) We didn’t recall ever having seen any old photos of the house, so we set out to find one. After searching historic Oregonian newspapers for facts on Captain Sladen, we posted a message on Ancestry.com asking Sladen family members if they had any photographs of the building. Within a few days, we received several replies informing us that the house had been torn down years ago. Over the course of many years, Sladen’s decentness had researched “722 Flanders Street” to see if they could find the old family house, only to conclude that the address no longer existed. We were happy to inform them that Portland addresses were changed in the 1930s and their old family home was safe and sound at 2210 NW Flanders Street. They now have current photos, and they have shared with us and the current owners many splendid images of the old Sladen house and the Sladen family.

Fun Facts #6: Its not Christmas without Elvis

Slabtown Tours Fun Facts December 25, 2013April 1, 2020Elvis Presley

DJ Fired for Playing Presley Record

Found a free source of Elvis Presley’s 1957 version of this song-listen for yourself. I do not have the set list from Elvis’s performance to a crowd of 14,000 at the Multnomah Civic Stadium on September 2, 1957. Lots of great details about his time in Portland on a Elvis fan site including images and recorded interviews.

Portland’s KEX Radio banned Elvis Presley’s recordingof “White Christmas” from being played on the air. One popular deejay at the radio station ignored his boss and it cost him his job. When radio station KEX received a copy of “Elvis’ Christmas Album” in 1957, the management made the decision not to air the “White Christmas” cut. Disc jockey Al Priddy figured station manager Mel Bailey wouldn’t be listening late on a
Sunday night, so he gave it a spin. Unfortunately, Bailey was tuned-in and he promptly
called the station and told Priddy to finish his show and then look for a new job. “The record was banned because it is not in the good taste we ascribe to Christmas music,” he
told the Oregonian. “Presley gives it a rhythm and blues interpretation. It doesn’t seem to me to be in keeping with the intent of the song,” he added. Al Priddy returned to the work at the station several weeks later and all was forgotten. In 1987, at age 78, he was invited to be a guest disc jockey at KEX so he could play Elvis’ “White Christmas” one more time.

Mike’s Fun Facts (2014-2015) were produced monthly by Mike Ryerson and Tanya Lyn March PhD partners of Mike’s History Tours.

Fun Fact #5 Who Burned Down Chapman School?

Slabtown Tours Fun Facts May 5, 2013April 1, 2020Chapman School

Text: Old Chapman School. NW 25th and Wilson - 1891-1923- Photo taken about 1910 - Destroyed by arson fire in 1924.

Answer: Sheepherder John Hardy burned down Chapman School in 1924.

John Hardy claimed he didn’t have any reason for destroying the old Chapman School with a single match. “I just did it,” he admitted. “My mind don’t work right and when

I see a building, I just can’t help setting it afire.” The paper from 1924 lacks today’s political correctness their by-line “School is burned firebug confesses, John Hardy, Sheepherder, Fires Chapman Building–OTHERS ATTEMPTS LISTED: Prisoner, Declared ‘Queer,’ Tells of Setting Match to Structures About City.” The paper reports a week later that he was committed to a mental institution.

Slabtown Tours – N & NW Portland Walking Tours

Author: Slabtown Tours