2141 NE 23rd Avenue Craftsman 4-Square Meticulously Restored

This house was built for Mr. George Reed in 1906, and is thus one of the older Craftsman 4-Square Style homes in Irvington.  This appears to have been just one of several in the area that Reed built on speculation in those real estate boom years, but was the one where he actually lived until 1909.  Contractor T. B. Schellhammer began construction of the home in August, 1906, with a planned cost of $3100 -- the source of the plans is not known but may have been Schellhammer himself.

When Reed first arrived in Portland, in 1896, he stayed with his sisters Thelma and Myrtle who lived a short distance away in the then-new Victorian Style home at 24th and Tillamook, which was on the Irvington Home Tour in 2002.  In the years before he bought this house, Reed received a law degree from Lewis and Clark College.  An early photo in the current owners' collection shows Mr. Reed sitting on his front porch with empty fields across the street.  Speaking of the porch, most of it had been removed over the years.  What you see now is a restoration, which proved to be amazingly accurate once original photographs of the house surfaced some time after its completion.

In the seven years the current owners have lived here, they have painstakingly restored the house inside and out.  An awkward addition built on a bad foundation at the back of the house in the 1930's was removed and a beautifully designed on with a garden balcony took its place.  A former guest bedroom was converted into a master bath and the kitchen remodel includes detail elements copied from elsewhere in the house.  The dark woodwork has its original finish throughout the living room and dining room, but in the dining room, the matching crown molding was created new to match the rest of the woodwork.

The house is full of delightful art and antiques, as your virtual photographic tour will reveal.