History of the Architectural Home Styles in Portland

[Music] hi and welcome to another episode around the neighborhood with me scott mcmahon and this is a show about the quest for fun history mystery in our backyard and today we're going to be all over the portland metro area as we're going to have some fun with the history of the different architectural styles in portland i had the privilege to attend a fun workshop here at the architectural heritage center first off i didn't even know that this place existed until i attended the workshop but when you can please visit and take a look inside you know when it's safe and we're out of this pandemic the architectural heritage center is located on the corner of grand avenue and alder street here in southeast portland the heritage center's mission is in their own words inspire people to conserve the art craft and context of historic buildings and places to promote our cultural heritage as a vital element of livable sustainable communities the center is owned and operated by the non-profit bosco milligan foundation the building itself has its own story as it used to be west block building and there's a whole article on the heritage center's website about the amount of work that went into the restoration and preservation of this building anyway as i was saying i had the privilege to attend a workshop here that was presented by anda wolfe principal designer and co-owner of arcoform arca forum specializes in design builds and restoration of homes in portland built prior to 1970 and case in point let's hop over the willamette river to southwest portland and check out a building like this one [Music] here on the corner of southwest broadway drive and southwest grant street this is one of the many projects that arca farm has been working on this is the morris marks house and morris was a shoe merchant who had this home built by architect warren hayward williams in an italianate style way back in 1880 italianate style homes were first developed in britain in the early 1800s drawing inspiration from the italian renaissance so it's kind of a revival of a revival some of the key elements of an italian eight style home is the low pitched or flat roof with projected eaves supported by core bells which is kind of a bracket that is a structural piece of stone wood or metal jetting from a wall to support the weight of the roof the house that was used in the show full house at the beginning of the show is an example of an italianate style the story of this home is nuts it used to be located over on 12th avenue and it was run down abandoned and vacant for years and it was almost demolished until the owner sold it to the architectural heritage center as we saw for one dollar if they could raise the funds and have it moved and that's what they did in 2017 the house was split in half and it traveled across portland state university and got reassembled here just off broadway when the project of restoring the home was completed it will become an office space like it is now leasing two office spaces and the building itself has been saved and preserved to celebrate our city's cultural heritage again our reform has an in-depth article about this project on their website and i'll leave a link in the description of this video but let's go back in time to the mid-1800s and trace the style of homes from the pioneer settlers and move forward to today [Music] we're going to start right here underneath the morrison bridge where southwest washington meets nato parkway nato parkway was originally called front avenue or front street but it was changed in 1996. anyway back in 1844 asa lovejoy and france's petty grove built the first home here in portland it was a simple log cabin constructed from local timber which is fitting because that's when we became known as stumptown back then one of the things about these early homes is there was no indoor plumbing in the 1900s a bowl a pitcher and a chamber pot were kept underneath the beds and emptied out every morning of course there was the outhouses known as the necessary back then and since heating water was time consuming most families shared the same tub of water and these tubs were made from galvanized steel and copper and sat in the middle of the kitchen so if you ever watched some old western movies there was most likely a scene where someone was taking a bath in the middle of the house but before i go too far down this episode i wanted to give a shout out to another expert that i pulled a lot of information from and that is architectural historian eric wheeler from the positively portland walking towards now eric has been posting daily videos on facebook where he gives us little bites of architectural history of various buildings all throughout portland both and a wolf from arka form and eric willa from positively portland walking towards they are the real experts so check out the links for their companies in the description below okay well let's continue our little journey and we're gonna head over to northeast portland right now [Music] moving on to the years between 1860 and 1900 we come upon the victorian era this is about the time when queen victoria ruled great britain this was also a time when the industrial revolution happened which meant dramatic growth for american home designs increased due to mass production access to different materials was made possible through the railroad system and stylistic details with formal sensibilities ruled over comfort just like the fashion of the time speaking of fashion apparently it was the silky white dress that queen victoria wore that started the trend for brides wearing white on their wedding day she wasn't the first but i guess it spearheaded the tradition that still exists today now the victorian style homes cover a number of different styles including the gothic revival italianate which we covered earlier with the morris marks home the french second empire style and the queen anne style and one of the best examples of the victorian style in portland is right here in north portland at the victorian bell mansion as you can see they are doing some renovation mostly it looks like they're painting the facility so i can't get quite in close enough to show you how beautiful it is but i'll show you some of the stock footage that is available online anyway built in 1885 as a wedding present from david cole to his new bride amanda laura boone the great granddaughter of frontiersman daniel boom this mansion is supposedly the first portland area residence to have indoor electricity and hot and cold running water supplied by a windmill power water pump additionally rooms were vented to a wood burning stove to provide central heating and had one of the first voice powered intercoms similar to tube systems found on ships that summoned the servants the victorian bell mansion is an example of the queen and style now these properties feature especially heavy ornamentation gabled roofs rounded towers and large windows that are equally functional and decorative and often asymmetrical it's pretty cool huh not all victorian style homes are mansions like the victorian bell in fact you can find smaller victorian style homes in the historic willamette neighborhood in west lynn now if you look at these charming homes there's a lot more history about these homes which deserves its own attention but that's for another episode all right when it comes to the french second empire style it's best to think of paris mansard these dual pitch roofs eclectic and ornate vertical lines resembling stone structures are features of the second empire style one of portland's more famous french second empire homes used to be here at the corner of southwest fifth and salmon the failing house built in 1892 henry falling was portland's mayor for three terms and he lived here a little bit of french styling in the heart of portland victorian style homes weren't the only style that became popular during the 1800s there was also the colonial revival style the colonial revival style was known for its cemetery accentuated front door porches supported by pillared columns then there's the dutch colonial homes like this one dutch colonial is known for their gambrel roofs now i get confused because there's the gable roof style which is the classic a-frame pointed type roof and the gambrel style roof is similar to the french style mansard style roof the dutch colonial gambrel roof has two slopes on each side and was used to better manage rain and snow moving right along let's fast forward from the victorian and colonial revival to the turn of the 20th century and the lewis and clark centennial exposition portland's first world's fair well sort of it wasn't technically a world's fair but amongst portland history it is here's a crazy thing about world's fairs at that time a lot of the buildings and exhibits were constructed for temporary use but they were beautiful buildings look at this poster from the lewis and clark exposition in north portland how cool would it be to have that still around today [Music] right seriously how amazing were those buildings if they still existed in portland and you know what exists there right now this one of the only buildings that still exists from the expo is the national cash register building which was moved to st john's and is now in mcminneman's the mcminiman st john's theater and pub [Music] portland had a population of about 90 000 people in 1900 and the fair happened and within 10 years portland grew to over 207 000 people that was nearly 130 percent increase with a population explosion came the need for affordable starter homes and thus the arrival of the craftsman-style homes that populate a lot of east portland before we go into the craftsman homes let's talk about some of the advances in building materials at that time during the fair of 1905 plywood was developed now we take that for granted but it was a big deal when it came out and it's still used today to build homes and there was also shiplap which was wooden planks that overlaid each other to create a better weather proofing system for homes by the 1920s we had electricity telephones automobiles and other building materials like subway tiles that were very popular because people had an obsession with germs before they were sheetrock there was lathe and plaster and of course there was lead-based paint and asbestos ah the craftsman style home this is my wife's favorite style home and we're looking at the years between 1905 and 1930 again with the population explosion of portland after the world's fair in the advent of affordable building materials there was a movement to go opposite of the overly stylistic look of the victorian style homes the craftsman homes were known for their low pitch gable roofs with deep overhangs and multiple roof planes they had a large tapered and square columns front porches that spanned the entire width of the house and it had an oriental asian inspired design with a home that took advantage of electricity to light the whole spaces the craftsman home wasn't just a home style it was an entire movement william morris was a british textile designer a poet a socialist activist who started the craftsman movement in response to the industrial revolution in england and there was a magazine called the craftsman which expanded the movement into hardware furniture and interior design there were other style homes between 1910 and 1930 that became very popular in portland there was the four square home which really defines the shape of the house usually a two-story home with a hip roof a pyramid shape to reflect the four walls and a square plan with four rooms upstairs and four rooms downstairs now within a four-square-shaped home you can have a craftsman-style home or a colonial revival home or even a prairie style home and then there are the tudor style homes built between the 1920s and 1930s and during the roaring 20s there was a desire to evoke a romantic connection with the medieval england style and bring that back into homes here in east moreland you can find a lot of tudor style homes with tudor style homes roofs were present on every angle some wooden gables exposed on all sides and the anglo-aristocratic styling was offered to the middle class of the time now stucco and brick veneer were new materials at the time and that became very popular now these style homes fell out of fashion in the 1940s due to the great depression and world war ii with what was going on in the world at the time home styles began to reflect this so enter the cottage and the cape cod style homes it was a little house that could usually one story small home with minimal detail and a steep pitch roof within these confines builders could adopt the cottage into a craftsman cottage or tudor cottage or a colonial cottage as world war ii came to an end and the automobile became part of american life a new type of home became very popular between the years 1935 and 1975 and that was the ranch style home you'll see a lot of the ranch style homes further from portland because of new land developments and the use of the automobile the identifying features of a ranch home are usually a simple broad single story with an attached garage america was seeking quiet instability after world war ii but then came the baby boomers in the 1950s and the 1960s and the mid-century modern [Music] do [Music] there aren't too many mid-century modern homes in portland but there is a rabid fan base for them so when a mid-century modern home comes on the market and it's designed to a tee they don't last long at all because i know i have a client who wants a mid-century modern home and she offered 25 000 over asking all cash and she was still at bid that's how crazy things can get when a really sharp mid-century modern home comes on the market mid-century modern homes are known for their large section windows open space floor plan integration with nature spaces that flow from interior to exterior very innovative and a sculpture in appearance by the time we get into 1970s home designs just got weird [Music] so enter the 1980s till today and that's when we see a lot of what was referred to as the new traditional this is a counter movement to the free spirited era of the 1970s and traditional homes are loosely styled after classic architecture oftentimes it's the builders interpretation of these styles with the garage very prominent in the home design you can see in this subdivision that there are elements of the tudor style and the colonial style and the craftsman style all wrapped up in the traditional construct as computers help with the design process and newer building materials like 3d printed homes become available it'll be very interesting to see where the architectural history takes us well i hope you liked this episode and since the show is sponsored by my real estate services all my contact information is listed below in the description in case you're ever looking to buy or sell a home in portland please let me know or let someone else know anyway for everyone else you can go to around the neighborhood dot tv for more episodes again that's at around the neighborhood dot tv thanks for tuning in and i'll see you around the neighborhood the building itself has its own story as it used to be west block building and there's a whole article on the heritage center's website about the amount of work that went into the restoration and preservation preservation again arc reform has an in-depth article again arc pretty cool huh not all victorian style homes are mansions like the victorian bell mansion uh there are numbers of victorian there are these are numbers and of course there were the outhouses known as the necessity the necessity the necessary we're going to start right here underneath the morrison bridge we're swap it was a simple log cabin constructed from local kim

Channel: Around the Neighborhood

Views: 9,429

Keywords: History of home styles in portland, history of architecture home styles in portland, history of architectural home styles in portland, home styles in portland, buying a home in portland, selling a home in portland, queen anne style, craftsman homes portland, tudor homes portland, mid century modern homes portland

Id: jRAEbzo06ME

Length: 19min 37sec (1177 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020