Those Places Thursday: Ewald Pape's First Portland Design?

A modest house at 2027 N. Skidmore Court in Portland, Oregon's older Overlook neighborhood may be one of the first, if not *the* first, house designed in Portland by my architect first-cousin-twice-removed Ewald Theodore Pape (1894-1976).  It is listed in the Oregon Historic Sites Database.

Above and below:  Photos of 2027 N. Skidmore Ct., Portland, Oregon, June 13, 2018

The English Cottage style house features shingle siding, a gable roof with an assymetrical gable front entrance, and a massive chimney.  The 1,449-square-foot single-story house has three bedrooms, one and a half baths, a gas fireplace, an unfinished basement, and a detached garage (the current one is a replacement for one there prior to 2003, although it might also not be original).  

The house was originally built for Guy Edward Jaques Sr., shortly after his marriage to Evalyn L. Bailey in Portland on June 24, 1925.  Here is its August 14, 1925 plumbing permit, from the PortlandMaps.com City site:

Guy Jaques is probably the bigger reason the house is in the Historic Sites database.  Jaques was born in Dowes, Iowa, in 1896, but by 1910 his family was in Washington state.  He graduated from the University of Washington in 1924 and worked for a steamship and logging company until 1926.  From 1926 to 1934 he was employed by various savings and loan companies in Portland.  In 1934, he founded Portland Federal Savings and Loan, later called Far West Federal.  He served on the Portland School Board, 1944-1948; as a director of the Federal Home Loan Bank, from 1944; and on the Portland Planning Commission.  He also started the Fifth Avenue Investment Company.  He died in 1978.

The original address for the home was 129 Griswold Avenue.  Jaques was living here still at the 1940 Census, along with his wife and son Guy Jr.  Later Guy Sr. moved to Lake Oswego, Oregon, but Guy Jr. continued to live in the house through 1956, then he also moved to Lake Oswego.  Interestingly, another architect, Simon G. Stanich (1920-1996), with Jacobberger Franks & Norman, lived in the house in at least 1962.  Likely longer, because nearby there is a very small park  with a monument, named for him because he was a community activist. 

 

The picture above was taken sometime around May 1981 and is from the City of Portland Historic Resources Inventory completed in 1984.


© Amanda Pape - 2018 - click here to e-mail me.