Nov 1911: Many Homes

In The Morning Oregonian, 8 Nov 1911, Mead & Murphy took out a half-page ad and showed many pictures of finished homes in Laurelhurst. It's so big, I had to downsize it to capture the screenshot on my computer screen.

There are so many homes on here, I think it's worth a separate post on its own, so I can show close-up photos of each house.

More Ida McCain Research

I've been working on more research for Laurelhurst trying to fill in some of the later history. In my search, I am always looking for more details about Ida McCain and her family. For those who have recently joined our blog, Ida McCain is the woman who built our house in 1911.

First off, I am grateful to the Multnomah County library which provides access to the paid NewsBank service for free. Also, another site that rocks is Historic Oregon Newspapers, which includes good quality scans of the papers. So, I was able to successfully search for newspapers in NewsBank, which had fairly low quality scans, and when there was pictures, I could go to the University of Oregon site and look up the date and download the pages.

I'm not going to repeat all my earlier information, but I do want to add more details I found in the last week during my latest bit of delving through old Oregonians. I'm not going to include pictures of the houses as I've already published them in an earlier post.

The Oregonian, 27 May 1909

Ida McCain came here with her family and formed Spencer-McCain in mid-1909. The earliest ad I found was May 27, 1909. They were advertising daily for work and got some.

It looks like they designed a house for E.L. Pope.
“The Oregonian, 22 Aug 1909:
E.L. Pope, an Easterner, who recently bought a five-acre tract overlooking the Willamette River about three and one-half miles this side of Oregon City, is having the Spencer McCain Company prepare plans for a handsome rustic bungalow. The bungalow will be 33x40 feet in dimension, and will contain seven rooms, a reception hall and a sleeping porch. It will be sided with resawed rustic, with buffet and mantle inbuilt in the walls. Furnace heat will be provided. The bungalow will cost about $3500. Mr. Pope intends to move into his new home with his family this Fall.”
     I don't know if they actually built it. I have no record of her working out of Oregon City. I did look up Pope and he ended up being sort of a big deal. He lived in Parkplace and ended up a judge.

The Oregonian, 29 Aug 1909

They did get a building job in Portland. They pulled a permit on the 27th of August: “Talbot Road, near Summit Avenue--R.W. Shepherd; builder Spencer, McCain & Co.; erect two-story frame dwelling; $4500.” This house is located at 2647 SW Talbot Rd (was 761 Talbot Rd).

Aladdin Kit Homes

Today, I had an opportunity to help a neighbor find appropriate color schemes for her English cottage style home, so I found myself poking through old Aladdin catalogs again. I just love to dig through old kit home catalogs. I found a website that allows users to download old Aladdin catalogs here.

As usual, I took screenshots of the ones in color I liked the best and I'm sharing them here. (Because this post is going to have a ton of pictures in it, I'm going to insert a page break so you'll have to load the post if you want to see them all.)

Aladdin Kit Home, "The Cadillac," 1917

Aladdin Kit Home, "The Champion," 1920

Aladdin Kit Home, "The Detroit," 1922 (same coloration as 1919 catalog)

Laurelhurst Research

In the past week or so—when I was procrastinating making runners—I finished up my Laurelhurst data spreadsheet. For most houses, I have the year they were built and who the first owner was. I now have a pretty good idea of when the bulk of the houses were built in Laurelhurst (hint, the 1920s). I also have a fairly good list of the builders of Laurelhurst.

My information is far from perfect because if an individual bought a lot and hired a contractor to build the house, the old permits would be under the owner's name, so I have no idea who the builder was. But, quite often, builders would buy several lots and build spec homes. Also, my list only includes information for houses where the original permit was available; quite a few were missing.

Now that the weather has started to turn toward spring, I've also been able to get outside and take some pictures of houses. Invariably, I am drawn to houses built in the 1910s because they were more often Arts & Crafts style or bungalows, which are obviously my favorite.

Anyway, I have a growing photo album of pretty homes located in Laurelhurst. Is this something you guys are interested in seeing? I can post them occasionally, but I don't want to bore my followers to death . . .

Here are a few to give you an idea.

Ida McCain built this house

Ida McCain built this house

Another house with a Porte Cochere

This house is just begging for a red roof

Not sure what style this is—an Arts & Crafts Four Square?

Okay, that's enough. If you guys want more pictures of houses this year, let me know in comments . . .

Ida McCain

So, besides being sick for the last several days, I've been obsessed with trying to figure out Ida McCain's story. (As a reminder, for those just now dropping by—she was the female architect who designed our home in 1911.) I broke down and re-subscribed to Ancestry.com for six months, primarily because I have so many people from Laurelhurst I want to research. (I'm getting quite the collection of family trees of people who aren't related to me.)

In my research, I discovered through old directories and census records that Ida McCain was the architect of the firm Spencer-McCain, and she was only 25 or so when she was here in Portland.

Arthur, her brother, worked as a meat cutter before arriving in Oregon, and then described himself as a contractor for the 1910 census. Their business partner, Charles Spencer, was a bricklayer and reported contractor on the 1910 census. He was also married to Eda McCain, Ida and Arthur's sister. (Their mother Hannah King was also here with them.)

Besides our house, I've found 10 houses they completed here in Portland (that haven't been torn down). In March 1912, this sentence was published in The Oregonian, ". . . the Spencer-McCain Company will build on seven lots [in Laurelhurst] this summer."

I've identified maybe four of these houses, so there might be three more. Or maybe they just abandoned their plans for seven houses to return to California. Or maybe they didn't plan to build that many homes but said they were because they were trying to create interest; I'm trying to figure it out. So, I am irrationally going through lot-by-lot making an "inventory" of all the houses in Laurelhurst including the builders, when I can find the information at portlandmaps.com. (What an amazing resource we have!) This will also help to match up old photos when they only identify the owner (or builder) name.

Anyway, I can usually get through 100 to 150 a day during my goof off in front of TV time, so at this rate it will take me something like a month or two to make the full list. But, if Spencer-McCain built more houses in Laurelhurst, I am determined to find them. =)

Oh, and since I'm taking over the Laurelhurst newsletter this spring, I should have some good material for history-based articles. At least I hope so.

This is a concept drawing for a house they were planning to build for Hannah King, their mother, in Alameda Park. Though, I think they actually built it (or its twin) in Laurelhurst on Senate Street.

AHC Library Visit

Because our kitchen was on their Kitchen Tour last April, we were gifted with a free membership to the Architectural Heritage Center (AHC), so I was determined to take advantage of my ability to research through their records before our membership expired. We made an appointment for last Thursday and got to take a look at their collection.

While, they did have three sales brochures I had never seen before, and a large map, their collection on the Laurelhurst neighborhood was—disappointing. They didn't have any pictures of individual houses (other than those in the sales brochures) and nothing resembling architectural plans.

Because of my recent efforts digging through the Oregonian archives, I have better information. So, I've sort of taken on the challenge of improving their records for Laurelhurst. Over the next couple of years I am going to put together my Oregonian articles into a transcribed document with whatever photos I have been able to glean and put them all together in binders. (I've already started—I've put together 1908 through 1910.)

Although, the one high point of the visit was getting some more information on our house's builders; Spencer & McCain were listed in "Architects of Oregon" by Richard Ellison Ritz. The partnership included Arthur W. McCain, Ida F. McCain and Charles Spencer. And once I had their full names, I was able to find more information . . . at least for Ida.

I found an article published by the San Francisco Chronicle on Ida McCain, "Renegade Ida McCain brought character to hundreds of homes for the Bay Area's middle class." The wide columns on the basic bungalow pictured looks just like our house's. Apparently the McCain family breezed up to Portland in 1909, designed a bunch of homes, then breezed back down to Los Angeles by 1914. Then a year later, Ida was in San Francisco where she had a successful career for a number of years, until the mid-1920s . . . then she establishes herself as an independent architect and builder. It's not clear how successful she was after that. She moved around a number of cities, but I don't see much information about many houses being built.

She also appears in a recent book: "Early women architects of the San Francisco Bay Area : the lives and work of fifty professionals, 1890-1951" by Inge S. Horton. I've ordered a copy through the interlibrary loan system.

I don't know why I get so obsessive about things like this; it sort of becomes like a game to see how much information I can find. Google is really invaluable to provide leads. And while I'll probably never find a good picture of our house from the 1910s or 1920s, it is fun to try. So my quest continues; next up, the Oregon Historic Society.

Our House's Builder: Spencer McCain

The last few days I've poked around a bit and I figured out the builder on our house: Spencer McCain. I actually always had it, but didn't realize it. I had this original plumbing permit from 1912. It shows the owner as Spencer McCain.

This morning, I typed the name into Google and a few links showed up in architectural publications. Then I tried the Oregonian archives and I found a few ads, shown below. (It would help if they didn't change the format every time they put it in the paper; over the three years it shows up as Spencer & McCain, Spencer McCain Co., Spencer-McCain Co., and Spencer, McCain Co.)

The Oregonian, 26 Nov 1911

The Oregonian, 13 Mar 1910

The Oregonian, 9 Sep 1911

I also found a number of classified ads for lots and building plans by this builder, but not ours, alas. Maybe they just had too many projects in the works to consider this one important enough to advertise. All of these ads were published between 1909 and 1912, and then the name disappears. I wonder what happened . . .  

Anyway, this afternoon I wrote the Architectural Heritage Center to schedule an appointment to do some research on our house. Hopefully I'll be able to find more information about our house specifically.

Update the next day:

Some more digging and I found it (the description of our house's construction):

The Oregonian, 19 Feb 1911

The article reads:

The Spencer-McCain Company has prepared the plans and commenced the erection of a two-story, seven-room, modern frame residence in Laurelhurst. The design is carried on the broad lines with low sweeping roof and broad eaves. To one side and under the main roof is carried a porte-cochere supported by heavy brick columns. The exterior of the house is shingled with brick trimmings.

The interior is finished with hardwood floors, beamed ceilings, and panel wainscot in the main living rooms. There is very broad, artistic mirrored buffet in the dining-room and built-in bookcases in the den. The mantel in the living-room is rock-faced brick. On the second floor are three chambers and bath, which are finished in white enamel; also a large sleeping porch and airing balcony. The Dutch kitchen and lavatory room are also finished in white enamel. There is full cement basement with furnace and fruit room. Completed this residence will cost about $4500.

For more detailed entry of this builder, visit my Spencer McCain Page, where I've set out the information I've found so far on the houses he built.

1906 Building Resource

Sharon was excited earlier today when she discovered online an architecture book titled "Building Construction and Superintendence" that gave information about how gutters were done in 1906. It had several diagrams and showed how the gutters were installed.

And as Sharon dug into the book further, she discovered all kinds of great stuff. It had information about soapstone, siding, interior woodwork—it was like—WOW! What a great resource! Too bad it was missing so many of the diagrams and figures.

Now, imagine Sharon's surprise when she realized this book was written by F.E. Kidder. Frank E. Kidder—Jeff's Great-Grandfather! We actually have this book (or rather series of books) in our personal library! How lucky is that? It was packed and stowed away for safe-keeping during the remodel, but now that we know what a treasure it is—we went and pulled it out of storage.

Sharon is now hoping to post short sections from these books, as they relate to our remodel.

Craftsman Exterior Research

I have found some awesome resources online for researching the exterior appearance of our home and I thought I should share them. Of course, there is Robert Schweitzer's Bungalow Colors: Exteriors, which is a good place to start, but I always want more! And I found it this week.

The Arts & Crafts Society has an absolutely amazing archive of old home kit catalog images online:
Kit Home Information
I have spent hours meandering through all their links.

There is a second amazing resource at the Antique Homes website:
Vintage House Plans
Though, less focused exclusively on Craftsman homes, it also has an extensive collection of old catalog images. I found my so-far favorite color scheme here. (And Fenner was a local-to-us company!)

Fenner Hickory

Finally, I found the mostly complete collection of Aladdin House Kit catalogs at the Clarke Historical Library.
Aladdin Company Annual Sales Catalogs

Sears' website has a select listing of their homes, but it's not complete. But here is the link:
Images of Sears Homes

Download Craftsman Magazine

I was really excited last night to run across a website where I could download many issues of The Craftsman magazine. I have spent several hours downloading the issues and now I'm browsing through them while I take a movie break this evening.

I wanted to share the link for those who are interested: Internet Archive. Just type "The Craftsman" in the search box and click Go!

I also found a Batchelder tile catalog and a Sears catalog from 1912. Very exciting!

I'm thinking I may spend some time taking the images I like out of the magazine and post them when I have time. Especially if they'll help for our remodel planning.














Alternately, you can look at "The Craftsman" magazine at this University of Wisconsin Digital Collections site. The quality of the scans is a little bit better, but it's a lot more difficult to grab images for personal use.

Walk to Breakfast

This morning we decided to walk to our favorite breakfast place—Stacks. It was roughly 1.7 miles each direction. We loaded the dog up with her backpack (which really just contained a couple of empty canvas bags, in case we went shopping on our way home) and off we went!

It turned out to be a very enjoyable walk. We found the most beautiful street! It was tree-lined, and filled with beautiful, historic houses! I'm so glad we walked, or we never would have found it! (Redwood City is really growing on me; I didn't realize how nice it was when we moved here last year.)


Last night, Jeff and I went square dancing again. We had a really good time dancing with the Katydid's down in Campbell. That's the club where Sharon's father and aunt dance, so it was fun to see family. We're really enjoying getting back into dancing again. (Oh well, the picture is a little blurry.)

The Katydid's is also the same club we started dancing with, way back in 1984, when we originally took a square dance class with a few friends. We're the only ones who have stuck with square dancing through the years; our friends all moved on to other hobbies.

We've got a pretty quiet weekend planned. Jeff is off to bed this afternoon for a nap (he tends to sleep a lot on the weekends). We'll also probably take a number of walks; it keeps the dog happy and helps me with my journey to better health. We're still debating about whether we will go to a round dance class on Sunday evening.