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The Frederic E. Bowman Apartments

Craftsman Style Architecture on a Large Scale
1624-1636 NE Tillamook Street

In 1913 Irvington was still almost exclusively an enclave of single family homes.  A few duplexes and 4-plexes had been built, but their design was such as to resemble the large single family houses surrounding them.  However, the introduction of street car service across the Broadway Bridge three blocks south of Tillamook Street, was driving up lot prices substantially due to the much improved transportation to Downtown Portland.  Frederic Bowman, himself an Irvington resident, took advantage of the opportunities this presented by acquiring several properties between 10th and 16th Avenues within walking distance to the street car and constructing a number of rental apartment buildings.  This structure is one of the oldest and best preserved of those buildings.

In the period from 1901 to 1935 most apartment buildings in Portland were either duplexes, tri-plexes and the like, or large multi-story buildings ranging upwards of 5 stories or more.  The typical apartment size in many of these was 800 square feet or less.  Departing dramatically from this norm were the apartments constructed by F. E. Bowman & Co.  Following models more common in mid-Western cities like Chicago, Bowman built 2 and 3-story apartments with units ranging up to 1700 square feet.  The buildings were large, but employed an H-type layout to present an appearance of being several smaller structures, thereby fitting in much more comfortably with their single family house neighbors.  These medium scale apartment buildings were among the finest built in Portland at the time.

Four such buildings were constructed by Bowman in Irvington.  This is the second oldest, and best preserved of these units, and one of the oldest and best preserved larger apartment structures by any builder in the inner east side of Portland.  

The style of the building is strongly Craftsman, with the low-pitched hip roofs, gabled porticos resembling bungalow porches, and broadly overhanging eaves.  The strong horizontality and sharp contrast of dark brick and lighter stucco is reminiscent of the Willits House in Highland Park, Illinois, a 1902 Frank Lloyd Wright design.  The richly varied clinker brickwork provides a naturalistic, organic feel that was prized in the Craftsman era.  The identity of the designer of the building is not known.  Bowman himself designed some of his buildings, but it is thought that he may have turned to George R. Wright, a draftsman for A. E. Doyle.  This attribution is based on the similarity of this building to a known Wright design.

Little is known about Frederick E. Bowman other than that he was born in 1862 and came to Portland from Illinois around 1909 with his wife Harriet. His firm, F. E. Bowman & Company, constructed apartments and single family homes throughout the city.  Of the apartment buildings, only 6 survive into the 21st Century.  For an example of one of the grander homes he built on speculation in Irvington, see the Barnhart-Wright House listing in this website.  In 1929, Bowman's company was renamed the Bowman and Hawes Real Estate Company with the addition of Mark P. Hawes, Bowman's nephew, into the business.  Bowman died May 23, 1948.