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The Nicolai-Cake-Olson House

A Pioneering Craftsman Style House
1903 NE Hancock St.

The house was built by Harry T. Nicolai - later founder of the well-known Nicolai Door Company, once Portland's largest single employer, lived in by Harry M. Cake and his wife in the years when he ran for the U.S. Senate as the Republican candidate, and finally cared for and preserved by Judge Fred and Minnie Olson, who lived here from 1927 through 1967.

The architect was Emil Schacht, a rather under-appreciated architect who practiced in Portland from 1885 until 1925.  His notable buildings include the Old Portland Police Bureau building, the Oriental Building for the Lewis and Clark Exposition in 1905 (long ago demolished), the old Astoria City Hall (now the county museum), and nearly every house in the older parts of Willamette Heights (and many other fine residences). Schacht was one of the earliest exponents of Arts & Crafts architecture in Portland. His houses built in Willamette Heights between 1902 and 1907 constituted the first major A&C development in the city and provided Portlanders with their first glimpse of the styles which were to dominate middle class residential architecture here until the 1920's.

Schacht's houses in Willamette Heights captured the attention of the entire city when the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition -- Portland's great World's Fair of 1905 -- was held at the Guild's Lake site just below Willamette Heights.  Trolley car tours ran from the gates of the Exposition up Thurman Street so that tour-goers could see this example of a "Modern American Neighborhood".  What they saw was a collection of homes inspired both by the English Arts & Crafts Movement and by the writings of Gustav Stickley.

One of the most radical of those Willamette Heights houses was designated on the blueprints as "Russell and Blyth #14", built at 1727 NW Aspen Street in late 1904 or early 1905. That house was strikingly modern, and represented a very fine example of the new "Craftsman Style" having been based on plans in the June, 1904, issue of The Craftsman, Gustav Stickley's magazine of Arts & Crafts design. It was, in fact, one of the first Craftsman houses built in Portland.

For reasons that are lost to history, Harry Nicolai, obtained rights to the R&B #14 design and in late 1905 built a mirror image of it here in Irvington at the old 673 Hancock Street, now 1903 NE Hancock. Alas, the original R&B #14 has been modified so extensively that it no longer is recognizable, and though a fine home, has little historic interest, leaving this house the sole reasonably intact example.  The house was placed on the National Register in 2001 on the basis of its association with master architect Emil Schacht.

This home was part of the 2001 Irvington Home Tour.