Connecting past and present in Portland s historic homes buildings and neighborhoods
The turret house at 3880 NE Wistaria, built in 1928, has been through hard times the last 30 years. A Portland brother and sister duo who restore old homes purchased the house in February 2026 and are underway with restoration. New owners of the turret house at 3880 NE Wistaria have begun restoration work on [ ]
It s been a busy winter preparing history studies for properties all over Portland, working on the historic newspaper project and some other deep dives, and making presentations on local history topics. It’s what we love to do, so we’re happily busy. But all that work has borrowed time from the blog, which has been on [ ]
Rose City Herald front page, August 29, 1930 The Rose City Herald was a weekly broadsheet newspaper published from 1922-1944 covering the middle neighborhoods of Northeast Portland: Rose City Park, Gregory Heights, Irvington, Alameda, Beaumont, Wilshire, Sullivan’s Gulch and Kerns. That far back, the name “Hollywood” had not yet been coined: that would have to [ ]
Planning for spring and summer season guided history walks is underway: I’ll be leading four walks for the Architectural Heritage Center through Northeast Portland neighborhoods. Registration (and fee) with AHC is required for these, and they’ll send you meet-up details as well. Coming right up on Friday, March 6th at 5:00, I’m doing a free [ ]
Recently, we had a chance to visit with Jennie Fennelle, a northeast Portland resident and old house dweller who also runs an interesting podcast called Echoes from the Attic. Jennie wanted to talk about the discovery, intrigue and challenge of researching old houses and the notion that every house has a story (so many stories) [ ]
From the Oregon Journal, July 10, 1910 Our research into Portland’s early homebuilders continues, with three more profiles which illustrate the range and type of people and companies who built our homes in the early years of the 20th century. These three join more than 40 other builder profiles on The Builders page, including mom-and-pop [ ]
It’s always been a visual landmark on NE Wistaria Drive: the 1928 turreted English Tudor style house that anchors the big downhill bend at the confluence of Wistaria, NE 41st and Cedar Chavez Boulevard. The tower with its tip-top weather vane, 360-degree windows and tent-like roof dormers. The prominent gable ends and half-timbering. The brick, [ ]
Sleuthing old photos to determine location, context and insights is a favorite thing to do; the Photo Detective category here on the blog is testament. But sometimes, the biggest mystery is just finding the old photo. Such was the case recently when a reader wrote seeking an assist in locating a photograph of a house [ ]
In our continuing quest to learn more about the people who designed and built Portland s neighborhoods and homes, we re adding nine more builder biographies bringing our total number of homebuilder and architect profiles to 41. You can find these profiles under The Builder s tab here on the AH blog. Between them, these nine builders were [ ]
Swimmers at Windemuth. Angelus Studio photographs, 1880s-1940s, University of Oregon, Oregon Digital. PH037_b012_AG00052 News just in from the Oregon Encyclopedia that our entry on Portland’s once-great swimming platform afloat in the Willamette River known as Windemuth, and its on-shore predecessor Bundy’s Baths, has been published. Here’s a link, go take a look. If you haven’t [ ]