2738 NE 14th Avenue A Sprawling Double Bungalow

In 1911, Major Henry Kendall and his wife Mary packed up their possessions in several large wooden ammunitions crates and moved from San Antonio to Portland. They bought land in Irvington in May of that year and proceeded to build this house.  When they unpacked their things, they stored the crates in the attic. When the current owner bought this house in 1976, the crates were still there.

Only the 4th owner, the current resident has restored and refined the house bit by bit, allowing it to evolve organically, and doing much of the work himself. The house is a bungalow, to be sure, but with a very unusual layout that resembles a double barreled shotgun, with a string of connected rooms running on either side of a long center hall, which the owner calls "the spine". The house, which indeed looks compact from the street, rambles languorously back into it's lot, like a cat stretching in the sun, leaving only a 10' passage in behind, and surrounding itself with lush gardens on either side.

The sophistication of the design of this house suggests an architect design, rather than a planbook or other plan source.  As of this writing, however, the architect is unknown.