houses – Page 6 – Out & About

Say goodbye to two houses and easy street parking.

My neighbor who knows what’s going on in the neighborhood told me the sad news. There’s going to be a development of mixed-use apartments like we saw with the site of the former City of Roses Motel. I don’t have specifications yet, but I’m guessing there won’t be parking, or much parking included. Given that this is one block north of our house, Matt and I can probably say goodbye to easy street parking.

And we shall soon say goodbye to three structures including this beautiful duplex, which is still in great shape. No word on if the tree will survive.

Here’s the duplex from the other side. One of the tenants, now long gone, was the first person to welcome me to the neighborhood, back in 2007.

The commercial building will also go. I had some plans to tear it down and make a big garden. 🙂 But that won’t be happening.

And this pretty little house, which my neighbor says is also really nice inside.

Which means we will also lose this lilac tree.

Again, I must be careful in my lamenting as my current duplex residence also replaced a single family house. And it didn’t include parking either. I’ve been thinking more about this issue lately because the City Club just did a study about affordable housing and the membership voted to amend the report to re-zone single family neighborhoods to increase density. And there was this very intriguing interview with Sonja Trauss of SF BARF saying yes, big projects should be built. I found myself agreeing with her logic, but also resisting because I hate to see houses that are well cared for destroyed for something big and ugly and usually hugely over-priced.

Some observations of neighborhood houses.

Love, love, LOVE this vintage pickup truck and the strange reverse tent-trailer it’s pulling. They match! And it looks like they’ve matched for decades!

I love this house, because the guy who owns it is the guy I aspire to be, keeping everything neat as a pin. The shrubbery is trimmed just so, the grass is clipped, the driveway is shiny clean and I’d be willing to bet not a single maintenance task inside has been deferred. Sadly, I am nowhere near this accomplished.

I went out of town for a week and a house disappeared. Here is what has replaced it. Two huge houses with no yard and costing much more than I’ll ever be able to afford. (Not that I would want a house that big.)

Here’s the view from the back.

And today’s “Only in Portland” sighting:

Neither unit rented? Hmmm.

Such is the state of the housing market in Portland that I begin to get nervous when a house is vacant for too long, especially in this hot rental market. This beautiful specimen is one block north of me and has two rental units. They’ve always been occupied and the property has been kept up very well.

Right now they are not occupied and haven’t been for a few months. Judging from past rental notices posted the house is managed by an individual owner, not a property management service. The rates have always seemed quite reasonable for the neighborhood which makes me worry that whoever owned this property has died and the heirs are looking to make a killing selling the lot for someone to tear down what is there and build a monstrosity. I mean, really, look at how big the lot is! You could fit an 8-plex in there, easy. Plus, see how they’ve covered something up with raw plywood? Another not-good sign. If the house has to go, I hope the huge oak tree survives.

I just looked up the property on PortlandMaps.com. It’s owned by a trust. Grrrr. Not a good sign at all. Also? Frank A Morse bought the house in 1988 for $29,000. That trust is going to be making some money there. Sigh.

Let’s revisit 1536 N. Schofield St.

This lot, you might remember, is for sale and has a really great tree on it. Walking by today, I noticed some signs, and wandered back to investigate.

Good job, Lindsey & Dan, for doing your part to save the tree.

They’ve attached a sign to the fence between their property and the lot and put a sign on the tree.

Until this year, the back part of the property had a garden. I suspect it was the house behind that tended it, given the gate.

Looking out from the back of the lot toward the street you can see the walnut tree, the former garden and the holly tree.

Making some money.

House on Fremont street, for sale by owner. The lot next door has recently been cleared of its former house.

I did a triple take when looking at the price. $1,375,000 about $458,000 per lot. I mean, it’s Fremont Street, but it seems high to me.

I go away for a week and a house is poof gone!

1807 N. Kilpatrick.

It’s not unusual for houses to disappear, but this one was not for sale, and the last time I saw it, people were living there. And not the type of living where you disappear in the middle of the night, but where you have an entire carport full of stuff with a flapping tarp hanging down to make a sort of door.

The house wasn’t in great shape, but it wasn’t falling down. Not that the state of the house makes any difference as to its fate.

This is a smaller lot, so it was fence, house, bit of a front yard. They had tall fir trees with empty bird feeders.

They had barky dogs that would often run past the fir trees to the fence.

According to Portland Maps (link at the top of the post) Royal Custom Homes Inc owns the lot/house as of 5/4/15 with a recorded sale price of $262,000. The home was built in 1946.

Here’s a photo I grabbed. We shall see what comes next.

photo from: http://www.sunriverrealty.com/s/or/multnomah-county/portland/97217/1807-n-kilpatrick-st/dmgid_95719376.html

What will appear here?

This shot was taken from the alley (and I can no longer remember why I was walking down the alley) instead of the street. I’m intrigued though. It’s where a blue house used to sit. I took a picture of it a few months ago and good thing, because it’s gone, baby. Gone. But what are they building here? Two skinny houses with a shared driveway? That was my initial thought, but I’ve been by since I took this photo and seen six water shut-off boxes. So maybe this will be six separate units?

Corner of Morrison and 20th unrecognizable.

On my way to Lone Fir Cemetery to see Portland Actors Ensemble’s production of Macbeth, I did a triple take at the changes that have occurred since Matt lived in this neighborhood and we regularly drove through this intersection.

On the Southwest corner, this four-story mixed use building. I couldn’t remember what used to be here and the portlandmaps.com 2013 aerial photo told me it was an empty lot. Actually, if you look at this aerial photo from 2004 you can see the intersection as I usually saw it, albeit from a street level.

This corner had a few two-story buildings, one of which held a recording studio or music-type place.

This was an empty lot. It’s now a big condo complex.

And here’s the corner that hasn’t changed. Because it can’t. Because it has a cemetery.

Down the street where these tall condos were, there were single family homes.

Ch-ch-ch-changes. It was weird how the place where one’s eye finds the sky had shot so dramatically upward in my absence.

Sites of New Ulm

After that Turner Hall dinner, we needed a walk. New Ulm provided us with fun things to photograph.

Here they are in no particular order:

Most of the downtown buildings had great bones, but had undergone some unfortunate street-level renovations probably in the 60s and 70s. This hardware store looks good though. I would probably re-do the awning, but other than that.

Sara posing with a cutout of someone. I forgot to take a picture of the sign, though.

The famous New Ulm glockenspiel from the back.

And the front.

And the closeup.

And some info. We missed seeing the glockenspiel, arriving after 5:00 pm. And we had to leave the next day before noon, so the glockenspiel will just have to wait.

The Wanda Gag house. (Gag is pronounced Gogg) You might remember her 1928 children’s book Millions of Cats. This is where she grew up. (Houses & Homes theme!!!)

Awesome cutout detail on the second story of this house.

The John Lind House.

You know I love this wrought iron.

We spent a lot of time looking at this fabulous house. First, the turret.

Front view.

Carriage house.

Roof detail.

Widow’s walk and roof detail.

Back side of the carriage house. There was also a converted barn.

Moving on to another house we find some yard decor.

The New Ulm Witness Tree in silhouette.

Explanation. One of our problems with New Ulm was the constant references to the “Dakota Uprising” without a lot of contextualizing the Indian side of the conflict. This was a very large oversight in our minds.