Eastham, Morey, Edward, Clara and Parker

Nestled into an arc of headstones at River View Cemetery is a fine marble monument that on its west face reads “Eastham” and on its east, “Morey.”  Historians of Portland, especially of Portland’s electrical utilities, may recognize those names and wonder why they are both found on one marker.  I certainly did.

Parker F. Morey was a mechanical engineer who arrived in Portland in about 1879 and, in 1884, started the United States Electric Lighting and Power Company, one of Portland’s earliest power utilities.  Edward L. Eastham was an attorney in Oregon City.  Prominent and successful, he was among the first to recognize the hydroelectric potential of Willamette Falls and began buying up water rights there with the idea of building a huge generation plant.  In 1888 Eastham, with his water rights, and Morey, with his knowledge and Portland customer base, joined forces and created the Willamette Falls Electric Company.  Eastham was named President.  The following year the new company transmit DC, Direct Current, power from their “Station A” at the Falls all the way to downtown Portland, a distance reported at either 12 or 14 miles, depending upon the source, but universally recognized as one of the first “long distance” transmission of electricity in the world.  The rest, as they say, is history.  The Willamette Falls Electric Company was wildly successful, began buying up its competition both in generation and electric trolleys.  Morey replaced Eastham as President, when the latter died in 1891, and by 1906 the company they founded emerged as the Portland Railway Light and Power Company.  Today that firm is better known as Portland General Electric, which still produces power at the Willamette Falls.

 But still, most business partners, even successful ones who may have had high respect and friendship between them, don't share a burial plot and there was no report that Eastham and Morey were otherwise related by blood or marriage.  In the normal sense, they weren’t. 

Edward Eastham, born in Oregon City in 1848, died on January 18, 1891, before he ever saw how successful his power company would become.  He left a widow, Clara, and six children, one just an infant.  Eastham, also a State Senator, was mourned as “Oregon City’s foremost citizen.

Parker Morey, born in Missouri in 1847, lived longer, though he was just 56 years old when he died.  He and his wife Maud had three children, two girls and boy, before Maud passed in 1888.  I’m not sure exactly when, but soon after Edward’s death, Clara and Parker joined their families into one, Clara inheriting three step-children and Parker six.  When Parker died, on July 7, 1904, the entire family was with him on their farm near Oregon City.

Clara Eastham Morey, died July 23, 1927, at the age of 72.  She was survived by two daughters and four sons, two stepdaughters and one stepson.  At River View Clara's modest headstone is at the center point of the Morey-Eastham monument.  It is flanked on the west by Edward.  Parker is on the east.

Macadam- The White House Road to River View Cemetery

River View Cemetery, located at the corner of Taylors Ferry and Macadam in south Portland, is a largely undocumented gem that I’ve written about here before.  Founded by three of the most influential Portlanders of the 19^th century, William S. Ladd, Henry Corbett and Henry Failing, and designed by the noted landscape architect Edward O. Schwagerl, River View’s construction began in 1879 and the cemetery’s governing Association was formed (in Ladd’s office) in December 1882.  For the past few weeks I’ve been writing up what will likely qualify as the most detailed history of River View, from its beginnings through all the changes over the past 130+ years.  This is a continuation of earlier work, all related to the construction that will replace the Sellwood Bridge, just east of the cemetery main entry gates.  Lately I've been researching transportation to River View.

Macadam Avenue, the road that runs the length of the cemetery, west of the river and the railroad line, has an interesting history.  Begun in 1863 by the creatively named Macadamizied Road Company, the route was initially a toll road, providing access to the Fulton House (later renamed the Red House) near Taylors Ferry, and then the White House (there’s that creativity again), which was located further to the south, toward Oswego (no "Lake" yet).  The color-coded houses were saloons of sorts (the White House had a racetrack too), and seem to have been semi-tolerated retreats of the type later called “speakeasys.”  Apparently there was enough traffic to justify what was considered the best roadbed in the Portland area and the road was often just called "The White House Road."  When the White House burned in a spectacular fire in July 1904, it was described as “a resort of sybaritic splendor” (!).  About 1880 the Macadam Road was sold to Multnomah County and the tolls were ended.

 

Macadam, named after Scottish engineer John Macadam, was a mixture of tar and small gravel, compacted into a state-of-the-art smooth surface.  Mr. Macadam called it “Tarmac,” essentially a predecessor to today’s common asphalt road surface.  The White House Road, with its long straight-aways along the riverfront, quickly became the favorite hangout of Portland’s horse set, attracting races between the city’s fastest carriages.  The Multnomah Driving Club, unimpressed by the County's maintenance of the road, actually raised its own funds to periodically grade and water the route (to reduce dust) so that they could race in style.  It’s not hard to envision grudge matches a’la American Graffiti, with the loser buying everyone a round at the White House.

The route along the river was a logical place for new forms of transport too.  River View was located where it was, at least partially, because it avoided the ferry across the river to Lone Fir Cemetery.  River View built its own wharf, where steamboats with funeral corteges could tie up before the carriage ride up the hill to the gravesite, but the day's of steamboats were numbered.  One of Portland’s first electric trolley lines led from downtown to River View (and the Greenwood Hills Cemetery, nearby).  That line, completed by mid-October 1889, was called the Fulton-Cemeteries Line.  It was among the city's most popular, and beautiful, rides, cruising along the river, with views to Mt. Hood, and the cemetery itself.  People would take weekend excursions to River View, both to visit the dead and have a picnic lunch under the trees.  By the turn-of-the-century the City & Suburban Railway Company was running special “funeral cars” directly to the cemetery, after building a depot within its grounds.  The Southern Pacific Railroad (built upon a narrow gauge route developed by the Portland & Willamette Valley RR), also had a line running parallel to Macadam.  When SP built a standard gauge line for its trains, it converted the earlier route for use by its Red Electric Interurbans.  And finally, as carriages and trolleys gave way to automobiles, the old Macadam Road was widened and upgraded again and emerges as a portion of Oregon’s Pacific Highway, later US Highway 99, the major route along the entire west coast of the nation.

 

While River View’s history inside the gate is fascinating, and certainly worthy of the extended study it’s finally getting, there’s a lot of transportation history just to the east.  Next time you drive down what is now SW Macadam Avenue, imagine yourself in a fine carriage, pulled by a fast pair.  Maybe you can stop somewhere had have a beer.

Research Kismet - River View Cemetery

Among the other projects floating around is a more comprehensive historic report on the wonderful River View Cemetery, in Portland.  This facility, established in 1881, was termed Portland’s verdant “City of the Dead” upon its opening, quickly becoming both a tourist destination (the trolley stop ended here for Sunday excursions) and the favored burial ground for the city’s elite.  Walking under the large trees and meandering through River View’s well-maintained, naturalistic, curving roads and paths, one can visit the final resting spots of a virtual Who Was Who of early Oregon, including numerous governors, mayors, senators and other notables like Harvey Scott, Abigail Scott Duniway and Henry Weinhard.  And then there are parts of the cemetery that read like a roadmap of downtown, with all the familiar names. 

As connected to Portland history as River View has been from the start, documentation on its history is unusually sparse.  There were a few laudatory reports in the Oregonian about “God’s Acre” before the turn of the century, and the occasional mention in the multiple subscription histories pioneer families published to celebrate their roles in founding the state and city, but nobody has ever sat down and actually written up “the” history of River View Cemetery.

When I started out on this project I assumed that River View, which has always had a fine sense of the importance of its design (they hired architects from Ellis Lawrence, to A.E. Doyle and Pietro Belluschi, among others) would have a fairly complete archive and that putting their story together would simply be a matter of camping out, developing the context, and arranging the pieces.  And while that is partially true (River View has the minutes of the organization’s management committee, along with copies of many of the building plans for the structures built after about 1930), the ONE thing that they didn’t have was the original plan, by German-American landscape architect Edward Otto Schwagerl (1843-1910).  Schwagerl was an interesting, and prolific, designer who worked all over the country, with important works in Ohio, Washington, Missouri and South Carolina (where he designed the grounds of the state capitol building)  The Oregonian made flowering mention of a public display of Schwagerl’s “..large and elaborate maps” in December 1879, but River View had nothing and neither, it seemed, did anyone else.

A few weeks ago while in Portland to use the OHS Library I was disappointed to discover they were closed for some annual cleaning.  Undaunted, I headed over to the PSU library, where I found some excellent journal articles on the history of the “Rural Cemetery” movement.  At noon, as I headed off for a quick bite before another meeting, I recalled that the City of Portland Archives had relocated to the PSU campus.  Finding they opened at 12:00 (and having had some earlier correspondence with the archivists regarding River View), I thought I’d pop in for 30 minutes and take a look.  The incredible staff as the Archives took up my mission with zeal, and brought out files and references in record time (Thank you Brian and Mary!) There, although mis-dated as “circa 1900” we were absolutely thrilled to find what I am pretty confidant is at least a sheet from the original Schwagerl plan for River View (it's not signed, sadly).  Along with its 19th century graphic quality and materials, the plan has one very interesting feature that places it pretty early in Portland’s history.  At the bottom of the design there is a wharf, for river-deliveries.

Schomburg's Painted Fish on the Clackamas

Back in the day private and public utilities made a point of providing innovative amenities as part of their projects, allowing the populations they served to appreciate the scale and creativity that went into providing them with water and electricity on a reliable basis.  Some companies took that role to heart.  Few have done a better job over the years than Portland General Electric, PGE, the pioneer power provider that serves most of Portland’s northern Willamette Valley including Portland and Salem.

PGE’s Trojan Nuclear Power Project included this really phenomenal “Visitor Information Center,” a futuristic building complete with cool staff uniforms that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Starship Enterprise.  There was a high-tech video-tour inside the atom and even an electric powered shuttle that took visitors and school groups right into the massive powerhouse.  Ah, the days before 911, when we didn’t have to treat infrastructure as a security risk.

  

PGE's hydro side wasn't slacking off either.  On the Clackamas River, PGE developed a “Fish Viewing Station” adjacent to the North Fork Fish Ladder, at 1.9 miles long once the longest such feature in the world.  The Viewing Station, a little boxy building that looks all the world like a truck-mounted storage container, has three large windows cut into the side of the ladder, so you can see the fish swimming by.  And for the back wall, PGE hired Alex Schomburg to paint a mural, identifying the various fish species that used the ladder in incredibly realistic detail.  Installed in 1963 (as near as I can tell at this point), the viewing station and the mural were focal points for any number of school tours, as Clackamas and Multnomah county children toured the project and learned a little about how power is made, and how fish runs were protected in the process.

Now, what is interesting about this is that Alex Schomburg wasn’t just some guy off the street.  Born in Puerto Rico in 1905, Schomburg was a hugely influential artist, mostly remembered for the artwork for hundreds and hundreds of 1930-1950s comic books and science fiction magazines.  His work included everything from Captain America to concept drawings for Stanley Kubrick’s famed 2001: A Space Odyssey.  “A portfolio of Alex Schomburg’s work is a visual diary of 20^th century illustration art and popular culture,” wrote Amy Wagner, in The Fantastic Art of Alex Schomburg, an article published in Illustration magazine.  You can read more about Schomburg, and see more of his fantastic art, at http://www.alexschomburg.com/ a site that is maintained by Mr. Schomburg's estate.  There has even a been a book, shown above, about his artwork.

 

 

 

Schomburg moved to Hillsboro, Oregon in 1962, after having come west, to Spokane, to live near his son.  A year later, though nobody seems to know how, he connected with PGE and lent his considerable skill to the fish of Clackamas, a far cry from his normal comic and science fiction subjects.  Today, half a century later, that mural is still there, even if it’s no longer accessible to the public.  I think we’ll try to do something about that.

Penstocks of the Past, and Future

Having spent most of mid-April dealing with the high style design issues of the Holly Theatre, this past week has seen a return to the more typical aspects of report writing, including covered bridges and compliance documentation.  Staring back at me from my computer screen at the moment is PGE’s Faraday Powerhouse, on the Clackamas River.  

“Penstocks” are the feeder tubes that connect a reservoir to the turbines that spin a generator to create electricity.  They are usually large concrete or steel pipes that drop significantly in elevation to create “head,” increasing the force of the water and spinning the turbines efficiently.  In more recent projects (post-WWII) penstocks are typically underwater, at the bottom of a dam, and so unseen.  But in an early hydro project, like that at Faraday (which was built in 1907-1909), the penstocks are exposed and become highly visible features, dropping from the crest of the dam, down an embankment, to the powerhouse.  Faraday's penstocks are typical, in that these early powerhouses tend to have multiple, smaller, generation units rather than one or two large ones, and so the penstock lines can be pretty dramatic through repetition. At Faraday there are six penstocks, five built by 1909 and one, Unit No. 6 (the larger one, at the extreme right above), that was added in 1956. 

Faraday’s original penstocks are of riveted steel, between eight and nine feet in diameter, and are supported by multiple concrete piers with small semi-circular “saddles” where they meet the steel penstock itself.  This has worked well for over a century, but where the concrete and the steel meet, water is trapped.  Steel and water are a bad mix, and one thing you surely do not want is a weak, rusted, spot in steel tube carrying 1/6 of the Clackamas River at high pressure.

PGE has creatively developed a solution to repair the damaged spots and then modify the top of the concrete piers to re-seat the penstocks with a steel-to-steel connection.  This will reduce the potential for damage and allow the Faraday penstocks to continue to operate into their second century. 

People tend to glaze over when I talk about my interest in hydroelectric generation, penstocks, flow lines and the like and many of these early projects are criticized as unnecessary and un-green.  That's another rant.  Last night I was amused, while watching NBC's filmed-in-Portland fantasy-drama show Grimm, to see that PGE's now-decommissioned Bull Run Powerhouse (built prior to WWI) played a major role.  It’s a shame, and an interesting comment on how our society has changed, that only few people still see the postcard potential in engineering marvels like these early, small scale, powerhouse projects.  Think about that during the next power outage, or when you drive through a sea of wind turbines.

Willamette Falls Industrial Area

For some years I have had multiple reasons to research, study, and write about the history of the Willamette Falls Industrial Area, a complex slice of Oregon at the Falls, lining both banks of the river between Oregon City and West Linn.  A few weeks ago I up there again, touring ‘round with a film crew for an upcoming documentary on one of Oregon’s most fascinating few acres.

Famed as “end of the Oregon Trail,” this area was also the start of Oregon industry.  Water power was a key element in city building in the 19^th century, a fact that wasn’t lost on John McLaughlin who started to carve a mill race out of the bedrock in 1829.  As the Oregon Territory grew, so did interest in the falls, which boosters soon envisioned as the Niagara Falls or the Lowell, of Oregon.  In 1865 one of Oregon’s first woolen mills opened here, followed by a pulp mill, and then, in 1873 a public-private partnership built the Willamette Falls Locks and Canal, breaking the shipping monopoly that had controlled freight shipments and stifled development for decades.  Another pulp mill, a more successful one, the Willamette Falls Pulp and Paper Company, started operation in 1883.

Beginning in the mid-1880s, an entrepreneur named Edward Eastham started to assemble property and water rights on both sides of the river with the idea of generating electricity to power Portland.  In June 1889 Eastham’s company, then called the Willamette Falls Electric Company, transmit DC power from the Falls to downtown Portland, a distance of 12 miles.  Not much to us, but historically significant as the first “long-distance” electrical transmission in the United States.  In 1890, having converted the plant, “Station A,” to Alternating Current, the company did it again, even though George Westinghouse, who manufactured the new AC generators, wasn’t sure it would work.  Five years later generation at the Falls was shifted across the river, to a huge new plant designed by Thomas W. Sullivan.  Dubbed “Station B,” that plant would provide virtually every watt of power in the Portland area for the next decade. 

By 1906 the Willamette Falls Electric Company, along with more than 30 other companies, would become the Portland Railway Light and Power Company.  Today the company is known as Portland General Electric.  And Station B, renamed the T.W. Sullivan Hydroelectric Project, still produces power at the Willamette Falls.  It’s the oldest continuously operated hydroelectric plant in the country.

It's Always the Windows

It’s always the windows, or so it seems.  There is no denying that the design and quality of windows play a huge role in the appearance of a building exterior.  They are both functional (who abhors natural light?) and character-defining.  Take any building, of any style, and fill the windows with wall and you will almost certainly destroy its character.  Sure, it’ll also be more energy efficient (windows, for all their positive attributes simply aren’t.  Period), but that’s another rant.

I have been writing about the re-creation of the long lost transom panels from the 1910-11 Sparta Building in Medford but there is another project, at the opposite end of I-5, that is looking to return a building full of windows to their original, historic, 1945 glory, of a much different, if still important, type.  Famed Portland architect Richard Sundeleaf designed the streamlined building at 300 NW 14^th for the General Electric Supply Corporation Building with 15-light industrial steel sash windows creating two complex bands of natural light along all three exterior elevations (the building has a party wall to the north).  In 1980 Sundeleaf, perhaps against his own better judgement, oversaw the remodel (remuddle?) of the building that infilled the entire bottom band with CMU and replaced the operable windows panels on the upper floor with fixed glass panels.  Tinted ones.  Sorry, Mr. Sundeleaf, but WHAT were you thinking?

Cut to 2011...new owners are in the planning process to entirely remove the existing ugly and replace it with custom manufactured, 15-light, steel sash, industrial windows on both the upper and lower floors.  Two strong, visually dense, bands of windows in place of the current 'single-story on a pedestal look"  will re-establish the character of the exterior.

Windows.  It’s always the windows.  In this case returning them to their original appearance and design will be a positive change for the corner, for the client, and for the history of the building.  I'd like to think, Mr. Sundeleaf would be pleased.

Picturesque River View

I’ve been thinking about cemeteries, River View Cemetery in Portland in particular.  The idea that would become River View, located in SE, off Macadam, at the west end of the Sellwood Bridge, starts in 1879 when Henry Corbett, W. S. Ladd and Henry Failing, among others, decided that the Lone Fir Cemetery, in what was still East Portland, wasn’t an acceptable burying spot for the up-and-coming of Portland.  They purchased 300+acres of wooded hillside and then went to Cleveland to hire Edward Otto Schwagerl, a skilled landscape architect who had designed several “rural” cemeteries, to transform the spot into a cemetery worthy of Portland.  “Rural” cemeteries, sometimes call pastoral cemeteries, were all the rage in the late Victorian era.  Nobody took death as seriously as the Victorians.

Schwagerl did a fine job and his plan over the years has been augmented by the work of a host of Portland architects, including Warren William, Ellis Lawrence, A. E. Doyle, and Pietro Belluschi.  Walking around River View is something like walking around Portland, with familiar names such as Terwilliger, Benson, Hoyt, Ladd and others all entombed here.  Harvey Scott, the longtime editor of the Oregonian is buried here, as is Henry Pittock, his boss.  Scott’s sister, Abigail Scott Duniway, who so fought for Women’s Suffrage in Oregon is here, near her brother who so opposed that concept.  The graves of many of Oregon’s governors, and Portland’s mayors, among other political leaders are here, as is Henry Weinhard and Virgil Earp, of OK Corral fame.

On behalf of Multnomah County I have been researching the history of River View, and will be preparing material that ultimately will provide for an interpretive site that helps explain the Cemetery’s important history.  In the meantime, it’s a beautiful place to visit, just as Schwagerl and his influential clients intended more than a 130 years ago.