Back to Index

Previous

Gallery of National Register Residences & Buildings

Next

The Olsen and Weygandt Building

A 1920's Classic on Irvington's Commercial Edge
1421-1441 NE Broadway

When Irvington was platted in the 1880's, Broadway was just another residential street, despite its name.  But with the construction of streetcar tracks in the street in the 1890's commercial activity began, filling in lots at major intersections.  The corner of 15th and Broadway was the junction of two streetcar lines, and traffic increased here accordingly.  With the building of the Broadway Bridge across the Willamette River in 1913, traffic picked up even more.  The growth of automobile traffic on Broadway connecting downtown with the expanding housing tracts to the east forced the widening of Broadway in 1930 from 60 to 80 feet, sealing its fate as a heavily traveled commercial thoroughfare.

In 1927, two local businessmen (about whom very little is known) bought this property and constructed a speculative commercial structure at this busy corner.  In anticipation of the planned widening of the street and increased traffic, they set back the facade by 10 feet and put an unusual amount of money into "exotic" architecture, utilizing the very popular Mediterranean Revival style with its tile roof, corner tower, arched leaded glass windows, and inset tile detailing.  They hired the firm of Snashall & Shipley, which had recently been organized, to design and build the structure.  Little is known about that firm, and this is the only known surviving example of their work.  Upon its construction, the building joined its peers in a strip of small well-built brick commercial structures extending from the river to 24th Ave and beyond.

This building would have simply been one of many in its style of the time and would have little to distinguish it from its peers had it not been for the ravages of time and subsequent development in the Broadway corridor.  Broadway is the dividing line between Irvington and the even older Holladay Park neighborhood.  Holladay Park was once the location of some of Portland's grandest homes, many dating to Victorian times.  However, in the 1930's California oil millionaire Ralph B. Lloyd determined that this area should become commercial property and began a long term program of acquisitions of land in the area.  What was once one of Portland's grandest residential neighborhoods gradually became a wasteland as the Lloyd interests demolished the homes in anticipation of a planned shopping and commercial district. By the time the Lloyd Center shopping center was constructed in the 1960's, the obliteration of the Holladay Park district and its over 100 square blocks of residential housing and small scale commercial structures was virtually complete.

The destruction of the Holladay Park residential district by out-of-town interests insured the wholesale demolition of the small-scale once-locally owned commercial buildings along the south side of Broadway.  As a consequence, the Olsen and Weygandt building, on the north side of the street, remains as the only fully preserved 1920's style commercial structure remaining in the first 24 blocks east of the river on Broadway.  It was on the strength of its careful preservation and survival against all odds, that the structure was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in December, 1992.