May 1909: Laurelhurst Lots

The Oregonian, 9 May 1909
Laurelhurst Lots
First Offered at Very Low Prices

"Laurelhurst," which was well and formerly known as "Hazel Fern Farms," is being platted into lots and blocks, no lot less than 50x100 feet in size.

The Laurelhurst Company will place these beautiful sites on the market at extremely low prices, and on very attractive terms. Several hundred lots will be at prices ranging from $600 to $1000. The building restrictions will be higher on the most desirable part of "Laurelhurst," and the prices will be in accordance with the choice location. It will pay every intending lot buy or home-builder to wait until this tract is platted and ready for sale, about the first of June, before buying elsewhere.

This will be sold by the Laurelhurst Company, whose temporary office is with Charles K. Henry & Son, 250 Stark Street, Portland Oregon.

Apr 1909: Ladd Farm Sold

Once upon a time, I posted a bunch of historic Oregonian articles on a Laurelhurst wiki, but it looks like that resource has been taken down. Sadly, I didn't grab a backup from it. (I'm not sure I could have, but I never really tried either.) Anyway, I do have some files still on my computer backup drives and I would like to do what I can to preserve that information in a searchable format. So, I will do my best over the next few months to republish interesting articles I found during my research of Laurelhurst several years ago. I'll pick it up near the beginning and try to publish the articles mostly in order.

Oregonian, 24 Apr 1909

Ladd Farm Sold for $2,000,000

Property Includes 462 Acres on East Side WILL BE OPENED FOR HOMES
Charles K. Henry Heads Syndicate in Big Deal
2880 LOTS CALLED FOR
Land Laid Out by Boston Firm in Ideal Building Locations--Will Probably Be Put on Market in Single Lots About July 1

Hazel Fern Farm, the magnificent tract of land consisting of 463 acres in the heart of the East Side, owned for many years by the Ladd Estate, has been acquired by Charles K. Henry and associates at a consideration of approximately $2,000,000.

Mr. Henry now has under consideration the formation of a syndicate to handle the vast property. With him in the initiative stage of the proceedings are associated Frank F. Mead and Paul C. Murphy, of Seattle, and H.R. Burke of Portland.

Hazel Fern Farm lies between the Barr Road on the north and the Base Line Road on the South and East 33rd and East 44th Streets east and west. Olmsted Brothers, of Boston, some months ago laid out the big tract in a parking system, preserving the higher portions for buildings with streets following the contour of the lands. This plan calls for 2880 lots and it is the intention of the new owners to place these on the market. Under the Olmsted plan the tract will be one of the most attractive in the country, lending itself to ornamental landscape gardening in its highest phases. As at present outlined, lots will sell from $800 upward, and building restrictions will range from $2000 to $5000 according to location.

Seattle Buyers Men of Experience 

Mr. Mead and Mr. Murphy, the two Seattle men interested with Mr. Henry are handling a suburban tract at Seattle known as Laurelhurst, which is pronounced to be one of the show places in the Sound city. They own lands near the Exposition grounds on Lake Washington and report good sales to people who intend to build fine residences.

Sandy Road cuts through the Ladd farm diagonally in the northwest corner, and an extension of East Glisan Street passes through the middle. There has been some movement on the East Side to have East Glisan made a wide street, either 80 or 100 feet, and the new owners said yesterday that if the

projectors of this wide street would assure them that the work would be taken up in the contiguous territory they believed no difficulty would be found in meeting such a proposition halfway.

Dec 1908: Tract Wanted for Park

The Oregonian, 19 Dec 1908
Tract Wanted For Park

Sunnyside Park Club Is After Ladd Farm of Forty Acres

The Sunnyside Push club, of which J.T. Wilson is president, is working actively to secure 40 acres of the Ladd farm, fronting on the Base Line road, for a public park, and has a committee of 14 representative citizens handling the matter. The tract is between East 31st and East 39th Street, and the north side of Base line, covered with fir timber. Charles Mautz, a prominent member of the club, said yesterday:

We want the entire 40-acre tract for park purposes. The land is centrally located, only a short distance from the carline, and will be accessible from practically the whole of the East Side. The land as it stands is now a park and will require little expense, only a few walks and other small improvements being necessary. It is covered with a natural growth of trees, which can be left standing, the land is rolling and is in every way fitted for park purposes. It is much nearer to the center of population than Mount Tabor, where it is to purchase 169 acres. People can walk to the tract in the Ladd farm.

There has already been some negotiation with the representative of the Ladd estate, and I believe there will be no great difficulty in securing the land for park purposes. It ought to be secured as soon as possible. Too much delay might mean its entire loss.

Shed Progress

The guys have made some progress on the coop/shed, but I've been too lazy to make it outside to take pictures. We are obviously on the take-all-summer building plan. Jeff and I need to go buy cedar bevel siding so they can do the next part.

Fortunately, the weather has cooled down. We continue to make slow progress on clearing out our basement.

Tomorrow, we are having a plumber out to install another spigot on the outside of the house. We're hoping it will make it more convenient to keep the backyard watered.

Roofing Installed

And they finally finished installing the shingles!

Some of the shingles appear tannish in color; that is because they have been sitting around unpackaged in our basement for around five years and they are dusty. They were leftover from our house reroofing. That discoloration will hopefully wash off in the next rain.

Our weather bounced up from the 60s to 70s last week to the 90s this week. Ugh. I had planned to have a garage sale this Saturday, but I cannot do it when it's that hot. I am barely functional when it gets over 85℉. You'll find me hiding out in the basement, hopefully sifting boxes for a later garage sale rather than playing Elder Scrolls.

Update: Here is where they stopped at the end of the day.

Allegedly, they are also planning to work on it tomorrow morning until it gets too hot.

Excavating the Basement

Ever since moving out of the storage back in 2014 our basement has been stuffed full and unusable.

Basement disaster we're trying to clean up

This is the mostly before photo

This summer we are finally trying to deal with the mess. Primarily, we need to sift boxes and get rid of stuff, but there is so much to deal with, it's quite overwhelming to even get started. The space in our front storage was used pretty inefficiently. We did some measuring and realized we could add several more racks so I ordered another five 4' racks.

We're still in the process of building shelves and shuffling boxes and tubs into the racks, but it's already getting better.

We are hoping to spend the summer shifting boxes into these shelves from other areas of the house and then start sifting them for what we need to get rid of. I'm hoping we have the energy to have a number of garage sales through the summer and then just donate what is left when it doesn't sell.

I'll share some more photos in a few days when we finally get the rest of the shelves built and get them filled up.

Not Much Progress

The last time Erik was out to work on our shed was Jun 2, but here it is Jun 18 and only half the roofing has been installed. In fairness, we had a bunch of rain last week and he, understandably, doesn't want to work on ladders when it's wet out. I assume he has some other more important job, but I'm not thrilled about having the tar paper getting rained on.

Aaron has been out a couple of times to help hang the plywood on the walls, but his bicycle business has gotten really busy this year so he hasn't been available much this spring.

On the bright side, with all this rain, our transplanted ferns are delighted.

And some of the new bleeding hearts from Breck's are looking like they'll make it. We probably won't see flowers until next year, but I'm glad they'll get established this year.