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OREGON PLACES

An Expensive Stable

The Value in Saving Portland's Ladd Carriage House

by Brandon Spencer-Hartle

AT DAYBREAK on October 25, 2008, Portland's South Park Blocks resonated with the sounds of an idling diesel engine and a creaking, 125-year-old, 267-ton building.1 For the second time in a year and a half, the Ladd Carriage House was traveling down the middle of SW Columbia Street. Creeping between brick building facades, dodging low tree limbs, and hovering above sidewalks, the Carriage House left the parking lot in which it had resided since June 2007. With low fall sun beaming through the canopy of trees, the stripped, sagging, and windowless relic was towed back to its original lot at the northwest corner of SW Broadway and Columbia streets. Faced with almost certain demolition just three years before, the temporary relocation of the Ladd Carriage House had been the solution of last resort, to allow the 1883 Victorian stable to survive into the future. By sunset, cars had regained their rightful place on Columbia Street, and the Carriage House had been lowered onto the site it had called home since 1883, albeit five feet to the northwest of its original foundation. 1
      Today, the Ladd Carriage House has been delicately rehabilitated and prepared for a new generation of stewards to occupy what was originally the home of "four-footed tenants."2 Resting above an underground parking garage and next to a new twenty-three-story tower, the intricate design of the wood stable presents a stark contrast to the contemporary architecture that now surrounds it. Built during an era of Portland history that was dominated by a small handful of powerful businessmen, the Carriage House is a physical reminder of the economic and social prosperity of one such power broker: William Sargent Ladd. At the time of Ladd's death in 1893, the Carriage House was just one in his portfolio of buildings and a mere contributor — albeit an elaborate one, given its utilitarian function — to a neighborhood of prominent domestic structures. Over time, both the neighborhood's residences and Ladd's namesake buildings were slowly demolished in favor of parking lots and new developments. The Carriage House has persisted, surviving ownership changes, successive remodels, a heated preservation campaign, and even a temporary relocation, so that the lonely service building can continue to remind Portlanders of Ladd, the neighborhood in which he lived, and an architectural legacy that was nearly lost from the city's built landscape. 2


 
Figure 1
    In October 2008, the Ladd Carriage House was returned to its original lot after spending sixteen months temporarily stored in a parking lot two blocks away.

    Courtesy of Brad Yazzolino, photographer
 


 
ON JULY 21, 1883, The North West News briefly reported that Portland banker William Sargent Ladd had recently commissioned the construction of a stable on Portland Block 205.3 An informative newspaper clipping dating from around the same period provides the earliest known details of the building's design:

An expensive stable. W.S. Ladd, Esq., has just commenced the erection of a new stable on stone basement on the corner of Seventh and Columbia, forty-eight feet wide and sixty-five feet long, two stories high, with coachman's residence three stories. Accommodations is [sic] provided for twelve horses. The building will be heated by steam, and will cost about $12,000, and is the best design for a building of this kind we have ever seen. The plans and specifications were prepared by Jos. Sherwin, architect.4
The Ladd Carriage House was completed sometime before the end of the year, as it is listed in the Oregonian's January 1, 1884, inventory of buildings constructed in 1883. The only domestic stable noted in the Oregonian's list, the Carriage House's $16,000 price tag came in higher than that of any commercial stabling facility completed during the year. And, while the $16,000 cost was already higher than the earlier $12,000 estimate, a 1926 Oregonian article reflected that the final construction price had apparently ballooned to a sum of $24,000, in part because Ladd personally selected the high-quality fir used in the building.5		 3
      Forty-eight feet in width and sixty-six feet in length, the completed Carriage House's rectangular footprint abutted the sidewalks on both SW Broadway and Columbia streets.6 The three-story building featured doors to both streets as well as a wide horse and carriage entrance in the building's easternmost facade bay along Columbia Street. Clad in wood siding, the Carriage House was accented by vertical pilasters, fishscale shingles, double-hung and portal windows, and ornate gable traceries — all elements that still characterize the building today. Decorative steel shingles patterned the Carriage House's signature sloping roof. Several of these diamond-shaped shingles withstood the test of time and were discovered in 2008, when the building's more recent composition roof was replaced. An elaborate steepled cupola at the center of the roof ridge, framed by two dormer windows, ventilated the building. A one-story projecting wing extending from the west facade of the Carriage House, and a small detached shed were also in the original design. The building was likely painted in a light shade of cream or white, and appears to have been repainted similarly in 1896, according to receipts found in Ladd's papers.7 4
      Inside, the Carriage House was partitioned into two distinct spaces. Three stories of domestic use existed in the third of the building nearest Broadway. While the exact original configuration of this section of the building is not known, architectural clues suggest the floors were connected by a stairwell and each floor divided into small rooms. With a door to Broadway, a chimney, and an abundance of windows, the residential portion was occupied by Ladd's gardener and possibly his coachman.8 German-born William Borsch, the head gardener for the Ladd estate and the only early Carriage House resident known by name, lived there with his wife and three children from 1887 until 1891.9 The western two-thirds of the building held the horses, carriages, and supplies on the ground floor and the feed in a vaulted hayloft that extended from the second floor to the underside of the roof. The ground floor, accessed primarily by the wide carriage doors on Columbia Street, featured a relatively open floorplan, interrupted only by wood posts and horse stalls. Small rectangular openings along the building's north wall may have allowed light and ventilation for the horses. The ceiling was of stained beadboard framed by sturdy fir beams. A narrow stair near the building's west wall led to the hayloft. With a tall gabled ceiling, the hayloft featured prominent exposed trusses and an abundance of natural light from windows and the cupola above. Hayloft doors, located directly above the street-level carriage doors, allowed for feed to be lifted into the space, likely via an exterior pulley system.10 5


 
Figure 2
    The Ladd Carriage House's hayloft originally featured an open floor plan, abundance of windows, exposed trusses, and a hayloft door. Although the space was significantly altered during the twentieth century, the hayloft has recently been brought back to its original scale.

    Courtesy of Venerable Group, Inc. Sally Painter, photographer
 


 
      Little has been written of the Carriage House's architect, Joseph A. Sherwin. A native of England, Sherwin practiced in California's Bay Area during the late 1870s and then relocated to Portland in 1880. Designing the now-demolished George H. Williams Residence (and potentially the extant townhouses bearing Williams's name) in Northwest Portland; several structures in Tacoma, Washington; and at least two commercial buildings in Alameda, California, Sherwin had proven himself to be an adaptable architect by the early 1880s. The Queen Anne–Stick Style hybrid design of the Ladd Carriage House is proof of his ability to work with diverse styles, even under the constraints mandated by the utilitarian functions of a stable.11 On August 28, 1883, Sherwin died suddenly at the age of forty-six.12 The Carriage House may have been his last work. 6
      Ladd's stable was not the first prominent edifice to be constructed on the block. In 1851, Reverend C.S. Kingsley's two-and-a-half-story Portland Academy and Female Seminary opened at the center of Block 205, in what was then the extreme outskirts of the developing city of Portland. Clad in horizontal clapboard with symmetrical windows and a rectangular cupola, the Methodist school survived until declining enrollment caused it to close in 1878. Shortly after its closing, the structure was moved by the Methodist church from the center of the block to the northwest corner abutting SW Park and Jefferson streets, where it was used by Willamette University's medical department and later as a commercial livery stable.13 Following the relocation of the Academy building and the subdividing of the block by the Methodists, Ladd acquired Lot 4 of Portland Block 205 around 1880.14 Located at the southeast corner of the block, the parcel fronted fifty feet on Broadway and one hundred feet on Columbia Street. While Ladd had served as trustee-treasurer of the Portland Academy at the time of its opening, his interest in the Carriage House site likely stemmed from its proximity to his palatial mansion, located directly across Broadway to the east.15 7
      In 1859, Ladd hired architect E.M. Burton to design a two-story Italian Villa residence on the block bound by SW Sixth, Broadway, Columbia, and Jefferson streets. Little is known of Ladd's previous house, located at west Burnside and Fifth Streets, other than it was demolished shortly after the new home was completed. In 1878, Ladd added a third floor and constructed a tower above the main entrance, thereby transforming the Ladd House into a Second Empire–style mansion. Featuring large windows and doors, wide stairwells, and over thirty rooms, the Ladd House of the 1880s was an elegant structure surrounded by shrubbery, lawns, and large elm trees. A carriage driveway was located near the intersection of Jefferson and Broadway, as was an ornate glass greenhouse with a domed roof. The entire block was elevated above the surrounding sidewalks by a basalt and mortar retaining wall.16 8


 
Figure 3
    In the years following its construction, the Ladd Carriage House loomed over many of the prominent homes and churches of the South Park Blocks neighborhood. In this mid-1880s image, the Carriage House (center left), Ladd House (center), Dolph House (center right), and Ladd's earlier stable (right) can be seen from the southwest.

    OHS image CN 017530
 


 
      Ladd's mansion, although larger than many of the residences that surrounded it, was indicative of the domestic architecture that characterized the immediate neighborhood during the 1880s. Single-family, wood-frame houses of one, two, and three stories can be seen lining the streets near the Ladd mansion in photographs from the period. One such residence, a modest Italianate featuring a bay window and raised porch, was built immediately north of the Carriage House in the early 1880s.17 The Ladd House was neighbored across SW Sixth Avenue by the residence of Senator Joseph Dolph, whose 1881 Queen Anne mansion was, according to Classic Houses of Portland, Oregon, "known as the finest mansion in the city."18 Several blocks north of Dolph's residence were the mansions of Henry Failing and Henry Corbett, two of Ladd's peers in the Portland business community. Along the South Park Blocks, churches occasionally interrupted the continuity of residential edifices. One such institution was the First Christian Church, whose congregation located its church on the lot immediately west of the Carriage House in 1880. Although their earliest chapel was of simple wood construction, First Christian built successive sanctuaries over the years to meet its growing needs, the most recent being the 1923 brick and terra cotta structure that stands today. The neighborhood's streets were dirt, and the sidewalks, separated from the rudimentary curbs by means of planting strips, were wood. When the Ladd Carriage House was completed in 1883, the building's size and prominent projecting cupola competed with the scale of the surrounding buildings, and from Portland's West Hills appeared as prominent as any of the neighborhood's fine homes or churches.19 Why Ladd housed his horses and carriages in a Victorian palace as ornate as the mansions of senators and business elites may be best answered through an accounting of his extraverted architectural legacy and an understanding of his increased mobility needs. 9


 
Figure 4
    Before being demolished in 1927, Ladd's home was one of Portland's most recognizable residences. The Ladd Carriage House, located on the block west of (behind) the mansion, can be partially seen in this 1907 image.

    OHS digital no. bb00367
 


 
LADD'S PORTLAND story began on April 8, 1851, when he arrived in the frontier town on the steamer S.S. Columbia. Of the two hundred passengers onboard the ship, Ladd is characterized by historian E. Kimbark MacColl as having come "ashore with a small consignment of liquor, a character reference from his Congregational minister, a hole in his shoe, and cash to survive for two weeks."20 Born in Holland, Vermont, on October 10, 1826, young Ladd came to the Pacific Northwest with the intent of establishing a mercantile enterprise. A series of serendipitous events gave him a quick foothold in Portland's infant economy, allowing him to engage in the purchase and sale of goods at a storefront he rented on Front Street.21 The new city of Portland absorbed a wave of these young entrepreneurs in 1851. Ladd, Henry Corbett, Cicero Lewis, and Josiah Failing all arrived that spring, each establishing stores on Portland's rugged Front Street. The story of Portland's "Front Street merchants" and their rise to economic and social prominence has been documented in many histories of the city. Merchants, Money, and Power, the most comprehensive work on Portland's nineteenth-century business establishment, identifies Ladd as the "first among equals."22 10
      In 1852, Ladd partnered with his boyhood friend Charles Tilton to expand his general store under the name W.S. Ladd & Company. Ladd made his first significant contribution to Portland's built environment the following year, when he commissioned the erection of the city's first brick commercial edifice, the Ladd Building, to house his mercantile business. He hired architect A.B. Hallock to design the simple single-story structure located on Front between Washington and Stark streets. Around 1858, Hallock received a second commission from Ladd — adding cast-iron columns and a second story to the Ladd Building.23 11
      Ladd's interest in Portland was not limited to the world of business, as evidenced by his 1854 campaign for the office of Portland mayor. Receiving 57 percent of the vote, the twenty-seven-year-old Ladd was elected to serve a one-year term. On October 17 of that year, Ladd married Caroline Ames Elliott, who would remain his partner until his death in 1893. In 1857, Ladd ran for the office of mayor a second time, after the previous mayor left town mid-term without the permission of the council. Ladd was elected by a margin of two votes, serving out the remaining five months of Mayor James O'Neill's term.24 Although Ladd served two effective stints as mayor, he never sought higher office, opting instead to enhance Portland's social and physical growth as a private businessman and investor. 12
      In 1859, Ladd suggested to Tilton a new venture: establishing the West's first bank north of San Francisco. The Ladd and Tilton Bank opened on June 1, 1859, in the rudimentary Ladd Building. By the end of that year, nearly fifty thousand dollars had been deposited with the bank.25 Over the ensuing decades, the bank would continue to grow larger and more prosperous under the guidance of the two owners. In a history of the Ladd and Tilton Bank, the two founders' "rare psychological powers of discernment, prudent judgment, and faith in his fellowman" were cited, however hyperbolic, as the reason for the bank's success.26 As the institution grew, the owners decided to commission for it a signature building, perhaps to inspire confidence in their investors. In 1868, architect John Nestor designed a two-story, cast-iron-fronted building at the corner of SW First and Stark streets to house the bank. While cast-iron facades came to dominate Portland's downtown by the close of the 1800s, the Ladd and Tilton Bank Building was different. Nestor brought a piece of Venice to Portland, patterning the building after Italy's sixteenth-century Libreria Vecchia. Following its completion, "it was said," notes architectural historian William Hawkins, "that, 'Taking the rooms as a whole, it surpassed any building on the coast in costliness and elegance of finish. Nothing can be said of the structure that will not reflect credit on the architect and the public spiritedness of the owners'."27 13
      Despite the success of the bank, Ladd invested in numerous additional business enterprises across the region. In 1860, he became the second largest contributor in establishing the Oregon Steam Navigation Company. In December 1867, he played a prominent role, along with such elites as Simeon Reed, Lewis Starr, Alexander Ankeny, and Henry Failing, in creating an all-male social organization, the Arlington Club. When a devastating fire burned much of Portland's waterfront in 1873, business savvy Ladd seized the opportunity, establishing the Oregon Furniture Manufacturing Company to provide furniture for the buildings constructed after the conflagration.28 As his interests became more varied, in 1881, Ladd commissioned architect Justus Krumbein to design a modern, gothic-style building at the corner of SW First and Columbia streets. The three-story Ladd Block, featuring arched windows, cast-iron columns, and a bold cornice, was just one of Ladd's investment buildings. In addition to the building, bank, and block bearing his name, Ladd had a hand in constructing the now-demolished Portland Hotel and extant Concord Building in Portland as well as the Ladd and Bush Bank building in Salem, which still stands today.29 14
      With Ladd's power came property. His accumulation of real estate was so vast that he earned the reputation of being "a taxpayer in every county in Oregon, Washington and Idaho."30 One such tract was near present-day NE Thirty-ninth and Glisan streets, where Ladd commissioned a complex of buildings at the center of his Hazel Fern Farm. Among the buildings at the farm were a two-story farmhouse and what was reported by a 1910 newspaper article to be the largest barn on the West Coast. Both buildings were designed by Portland architect William Stokes, Sr. The barn, built in 1884, was destroyed by fire in 1892.31 Immediately following the fire, "someone built one a trifle larger."32 Possibly for sake of having the honor, Ladd rebuilt his barn larger than that of the rival barn, thereby reinstating his title. The excessive size of the barns may also have been due to the fact that Ladd imported Clydesdale and Cleveland Bay horses, and he is credited by historian Hubert Howe Bancroft with initiating a general interest in the breeding of quality horses in Oregon as early as 1870. The 1892 barn could hold upwards of thirty of his horses as well as the farm's two hundred cows.33 Another parcel owned by Ladd, and probably the most familiar contemporary application of his name, was a 128-acre farm in Southeast Portland, now known as the Ladd's Addition neighborhood. According to Portland Names and Neighborhoods, Ladd personally drew the district's signature geometric street design when infrastructure and new housing developments began to encroach around the farm. Although platted in 1891, no residences were built in the neighborhood until several years after Ladd's death.34 In addition to owning several other tracts, Ladd commissioned a large vacation residence near the town of Seaview, Washington, in 1880.35 15


 
Figure 5
    As a boy, William S. Ladd suffered a spinal injury that would eventually leave him paralyzed from the waist down. With investments across the Pacific Northwest, after 1876, Ladd was dependant on a body servant, crutches, and horse-drawn carriages. With his grandson Elliot Corbett and coachman Mr. Miller, Ladd is seen in this image at his vacation home in Seaview, Washington, around 1890.

    OHS image CN 019079
 


 
      As with his other namesake buildings, the Ladd Carriage House of 1883 was certainly a physical manifestation of Ladd's wealth and influence. The building's Victorian detailing masked the fact that the structure's functions were actually quite utilitarian. In addition to a commitment to eclectic architecture, Ladd's decision to commission the Carriage House may be further explained by a sudden change in his mobility needs at the close of the 1870s. As a young man, Ladd had suffered a spinal injury, though the accident did little to hinder his mobility at the time. That changed in 1875, when Ladd was returning from a year-long trip to the East Coast. After leaving Chicago for Portland, he became ill and lost much of the motion in his legs, likely due to the lasting effects of his earlier injury. Ladd's condition worsened, and in late 1876, his physician recommended he go to Philadelphia to seek the assistance of Dr. S. Wier Mitchell, a national authority on paralysis. Although he received treatment in Philadelphia, Ladd became permanently paralyzed from the waist down. For the remainder of his life, Ladd would be dependant on crutches, a body servant, and a buckboard, a light-weight skeleton of a carriage.36 At the time of his death, the Oregonian noted that Ladd riding in his carriage was a Portland mainstay: "Nearly every day, after business hours, he has been driven out, and his portly form, kindly features, and roomy, comfortable buckboard were familiarly known to nearly every citizen."37 Replacing a smaller stable on the block south of his mansion that Ladd used prior to 1883, the exaggerated design of the Carriage House may have signaled to the Portland business community that, even though Ladd had a permanent disability, his influence would not be diminished because of it.38 16
      Ladd died at the age of sixty-six, on January 6, 1893. His estate was valued in excess of $5 million, much of which was eventually donated to charitable organizations.39 He was survived by his wife Caroline and their five children. Hubert Howe Bancroft's 1889 character study of Ladd glowingly stated: "He was clearly recognized as the most prominent figure in the northwestern states, possessing greater resources and power, and capable of exercising greater influence and control than any other citizen in that section."40 17
      The Carriage House remained in the Ladd family for twenty-two years following William Sargent Ladd's death. A series of minor changes slightly altered the building during those two decades: the horses were replaced by automobiles, portions of the building were used for a prize fight arena, and many of the rooms reverted to use as storage space. The projecting wing and detached shed west of the building were altered beyond recognition and enclosed by a single-story addition that extended the Carriage House to the lot's west property line. For reasons unknown, the cupola and roof dormers were removed sometime between 1914 and 1921.41 By the 1920s, the aging Carriage House had outlived its usefulness to the Ladd family, especially as new buildings replaced the residential character of the neighborhood.42 18


 
Figure 6
    In the twenty-five years following the completion of the Ladd Carriage House, the Ladd family commissioned several additions to the west of the original stable, as seen in these Sanborn Fire Insurance maps from 1885 and 1898 (top to bottom). The 1909 Sanborn map (not pictured) shows the "Buggy Ho." doubled in size, marked "auto.," and fully entending to the left-hand boudary of the above drawings. The additions on the west were removed before the Ladd Carriage House was temporarily relocted in the spring of 2007.

    OHS collections
 


 
IN 1925, HELEN Ladd Corbett, Ladd's daughter, sold the Ladd Carriage House to the Wauna Land Company. Julia Hoffman had created the Wauna Land Company in 1903 to administer the properties owned by her husband Lee Hoffman, who had died eight years earlier. On September 20, 1926, Lee Hawley Hoffman, son of Julia and Lee, filed a permit to perform a $3,000 remodel of the building.43 The Oregonian described the changes:

Complete remodeling of both interior and exterior, the installation of a heating system through which heat will be supplied by the steam heating plant of the Northwestern Electric Company, and thoroughly modern plumbing arrangements. The exterior will imitate the old English shop, with its sharply sloping gables and many-paned windows. A large number of windows have been planned to allow abundance of light.44
Portland architect Morris Whitehouse prepared the plans. Whitehouse partitioned the Carriage House's ground floor into artist and office studios, refurbished the hayloft for use as a dance floor, and converted the residential third of the building into arts-oriented living space.45 While the interior was updated for modern uses, with the exception of several door and window alterations, the exterior of the Carriage House generally retained its form as "one of the most familiar structures yet remaining from the early period of Portland's history," according to the Oregonian.46 In January 1927, just months after the Carriage House was remodeled, Helen Ladd Corbett sold the Ladd House to a syndicate owned by C.S. Jensen. The mansion was demolished that spring, and while the site of the home was intended by the purchasers to become a hotel, it sat vacant for two decades, serving as a miniature golf course and parking lot before the existing Oregonian Building was constructed there in 1948.47		 19


 
Figure 7
    In October 1926, the Ladd Carriage House was transformed from an underutilized and obsolete barn into a hub of commercial and creative activities. The October 3, 1926, Oregonian referred to the building as "Portland's Greenwich Village."

    Courtesy of the Oregonian. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
 


 
      Following the modernization of the Carriage House, Julia Hoffman's Arts and Crafts Society moved in, occupying a portion of the building from 1927 until 1930. When the organization moved out, the Portland Civic Theatre took its place. Using the hayloft and portions of the second floor as a studio and office, the theatre's headquarters remained in the building until 1936. Despite the acting practices that were taking place in the hayloft, an Oregon Journal article recalled that hay was still being discovered there into the 1930s. Also housing a delicatessen, electrical supply store, real estate firm, and art goods business, the Carriage House of the early 1930s was a bustling mixed-use building.48 20


 
Figure 8
    By the 1950s, much of the Ladd Carriage House's nineteenth-century context had been lost. An 1880s Italianate residence, immediately north of the stable and on the right of this photograph, burned in 1968, thirteen years after this image was taken.

    University of Oregon Special Collections and Archives
 


 
      In 1932, Lee Hawley Hoffman's Hoffman Construction company moved its offices into the building. While headquartered in the former stable, the company oversaw the construction of many of Portland's most recognizable mid-century building projects, ranging from the Oregonian Building to Memorial Coliseum. Two prominent Portland architects also had offices in the building during this time. In 1938, Van Evera Bailey located in the Carriage House. The following year, at the request of Hoffman, Bailey designed a small second-story addition above the projecting west wing of the building. The architect remained in the Carriage House for eleven years, during which he designed a number of modernist residences around Portland. In 1950, Walter Gordon, another designer of modernist houses, took Bailey's position as the Carriage House's resident architect.49 21
      The Carriage House saw a few minor changes during the 1950s and 1960s. The light paint gave way to blue with white trim. The hayloft space was bisected by the construction of a third floor. The summer of 1966 brought the replacement of the original steel shingles.50 And in 1968, the neighboring Italianate residence burned, causing slight damage to the Carriage House's north facade. Hoffman Construction, as stewards of the building, made the necessary repairs to bring the Carriage House back to "just as it was," according to Hoffman employee Al Stromberg.51 22
      In 1971, Hoffman moved out and the neighboring First Christian Church bought the building.52 Through a series of land swaps and purchases, the church gained control of the entire block. Pastor Daniel Kechel told the Oregonian that, although the church was considering reconfiguring the block, "we are not interested in tearing down historical sites."53 During the ensuing thirty years, the congregation leased portions of the Carriage House to a variety of tenants, had the stable listed in the National Register of Historic Places, lost many of its parishioners to the suburbs, and watched downtown Portland grow up around it.54 23
      When it was listed in the National Register in 1980, the Carriage House was Ladd's only namesake Portland building to have stood the test of time. In 1910, the Hazel Fern Farm complex was dismantled to make way for the development of the Laurelhurst neighborhood. Photographic historian Donald Nelson identified that the farmhouse may have been moved north to Sandy Boulevard, and later used for apartments. As for the largest barn on the West Coast? A 1910 newspaper account states the building was moved north on NE Thirty-ninth at rate of eight hundred feet a day. On the mile-and-a-half journey to a new site at NE Thirteenth and Holladay streets, the barn was destroyed by fire.55 Ladd's Seaview, Washington, home also became the victim of fire when it accidentally burned in 1964.56 And although architectural historian William Hawkins said of Ladd, "to him accrues the honor of being the single most significant contributor to the development of cast-iron architecture in Portland," the three Portland cast-iron buildings bearing Ladd's name had also all been demolished.57 First to go was the 1853 Ladd Building, which was razed in 1940. Next, the Ladd and Tilton Bank came down in 1954. Preservationist Eric Ladd (no family relation to William Sargent Ladd) salvaged the elaborate cast-iron facade of the Portland bank and kept the pieces stored for a decade. A new home for the cast-iron was found in 1967, at the corner of State and Commercial streets in Salem as an addition to the Ladd and Bush Bank building. The Ladd Block was the last to come down, being a victim of demolition by "midnight disappearance" in 1965. Boyd Coffee Company, owners of the 1881 building, razed the structure to make way for a warehouse that was never built.58 And even Ladd's remains, like his buildings, were not left undisturbed by the passing of time. In May 1897, a gardener found that Ladd's body had been excavated from its Riverview Cemetery resting place. The headstone and body were exhumed and dragged to the Willamette River by robbers hoping to extort ransom from Ladd's heirs. After a police investigation, four suspects were caught and incarcerated in the state penitentiary. The body was found buried in sand along the river and was returned to the cemetery.59 With the Ladd Carriage House as Portland's last standing direct connection to William Sargent Ladd, any demolition threat to the landmark would certainly be noticed by the preservation community. In 2004, that alarm was sounded.

 24
TWO-THOUSAND-FOUR was the year First Christian Church decided it was time to reconfigure Portland Block 205. The congregation partnered with developer Opus Northwest to prepare redevelopment plans that would preserve the church's sanctuary and provide dedicated on-site Sunday parking.60 Despite the church's promise from a generation before and a listing in the National Register, Pastor Rex Loy of First Christian Church informed the Oregonian: "We're in the business of saving souls, not saving buildings."61 The church filed an application for a permit to demolish the Carriage House on October 18, 2004. Exerting the power of demolition delay, the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission voted to halt the wrecking ball for the maximum extension possible — three hundred days. Hurriedly, Portland architects, historians, and preservationists, including myself, began searching for a solution that would save the Carriage House, the last reminder of what was once Ladd's grand estate surrounded by a neighborhood of wood-frame Victorians. With the clock ticking, a Friends of the Ladd Carriage House advocacy organization entered into conversations with First Christian Church and its development team. An idea to move the building to South Portland was explored, but growing challenges made that option seem infeasible to many members of the Friends. As negotiations continued, the demolition delay period passed.62 25
      Then, on January 17, 2006, a breakthrough came for those who had been trying so hard to see the building preserved. Several months before, Opus Northwest had partnered with seasoned Portland developer John Carroll to finalize a specific development program for the block. Although the church had the legal power to raze the Carriage House, Carroll announced a solution for the building: a temporary relocation.63 26
      During the remainder of 2006 and the first part of 2007, John Carroll and Opus Northwest worked with the Friends of Ladd Carriage House to solidify the relocation plans. Carroll, attending nearly every meeting of the Friends, crafted a proposal that would satisfy both the church and the activists. A blend of historic preservation, residential density, and mixed use, the new plan for the block called for retaining the Ladd Carriage House and First Christian Church buildings, providing parking under the block for parishioners, and constructing a residential tower to finance the changes. The Sixth Church of Christ, Scientist, owners of a surface parking lot two blocks west of the Carriage House, offered a temporary home for the stable.64 While a 1910 apartment building, the Rose Friends on the north half of Block 205, would be a causality of the new tower, the Friends of the Ladd Carriage House accepted the tradeoff and enthusiastically supported the revised development proposal. Once the necessary permits were secured by the development team, Carroll relinquished his interest in the project, and Opus Northwest prepared to break ground.65 27


 
Figure 9
    In the spring of 2007, the Ladd Carriage House's more-recent western additions (on the left) were removed to allow for the temporary relocation of the 1883 building.

    Courtesy of Brad Yazzolino, photographer
 


 
      In May 2007, the Carriage House was prepped for the sixteen-month journey. The west additions that had been built after Ladd's death were removed, the utilities were cut off, and the building was jacked into the air and set on wheels. On June 16, 2007, the Ladd Carriage House, now supported by 70,000 pounds of structural steel, was moved by Northwest Structural Moving up Columbia Street to the Sixth Church's parking lot at the southeast corner of SW Tenth and Columbia streets. As the Carriage House was inched off its original foundation, demolition crews tore down the Rose Friends Apartments and the 1950s First Christian Church Annex, the two buildings that occupied the north half of the block. After a day-long move that necessitated the difficult trimming of several tree limbs that overhung Columbia Street, the Carriage House was lowered onto wood cribbing and the temporary site fenced for its sixteen-month stay. With First Christian Church standing as the only building remaining on Block 205, four floors of underground parking were excavated under the vacated L-shaped portion of the block where the Carriage House, apartments, and annex once stood. A twenty-three-story apartment building, the Ladd Tower was built on the north half of the block, and the southeast quarter of the block's underground parking was capped and readied for the stable's comeback.66 28


 
Figure 10
    Seen here prepped for moving, the Ladd Carriage House received an extensive rehabilitation in 2008 and 2009. Work on the building began before its October 2008 return move.

    Courtesy of Brad Yazzolino, photographer
 


 
      When the Ladd Carriage House returned in October 2008, it was set back five feet from the Broadway and Columbia lot lines, in order to soften the building's relationship with the streets. A small courtyard separates the stable and the tower. Portland's Venerable Development, LLC, was hired by Opus Northwest to rehabilitate the Carriage House and began working on the building before the return move. Fully aware of the design precedents set by Hoffman, Bailey, Whitehouse, and Sherwin, architect Paul Falsetto prepared rehabilitation plans for the Carriage House. Falsetto returned windows and doors to their original openings, restoring the building's exterior symmetry to what it had been in Ladd's day. Character-defining building elements, such as the vertical pilasters and gable traceries, were repaired and the exterior painted in various shades of brown. Inside, the open ground floor of the Carriage House, complete with exposed posts and beams, was reintroduced after three-quarters of a century of partitioning and alterations. The more-recent third floor was removed, revealing the original grandeur of the vaulted hayloft. On May 14, 2009, the rehabilitation work was completed, a plaque commemorating Ladd installed, and the building put up for sale or lease.67

 29


 
Figure 11
    Resting above underground parking and next to the twenty-three-story Ladd Tower, the rehabilitated Ladd Carriage House retains almost all of the features that defined the building in 1883.

    Courtesy of Brad Yazzolino, photographer
 


 
OF WILLIAM SARGENT Ladd's namesake Portland buildings, only his Carriage House remains, now rehabilitated to an aesthetic state not seen since the Ladd family owned the building. In 1927, the Oregonian wrote, "the city's restless hands are forever reaching out, removing, building, rearranging, to make room, more and more, for its growing activities."68 While urban growth brought the demolition of the Ladd House in 1927, the "removing, building, and rearranging" of 2007 allowed for the preservation of the Ladd Carriage House. The nineteenth-century wood, brick, and stone fabric that once surrounded the stable has largely been replaced with glass, steel, and concrete modernity. Only a very small handful of homes and churches from the 1800s can be found in the downtown Portland of 2009. Gone are the mansions of Dolph, Corbett, and Failing; their stories are buried behind blocks of high-rise apartments, hotels, and offices. The streets have been paved, and the horses were long ago replaced by automobiles. Still, even though the Carriage House's original context has been lost, the wood stable stands as a reminder to Portlanders. A reminder that this was once a neighborhood of domestic buildings large and small. A reminder that one man's economic, civic, and architectural interests left a lasting imprint on the city. A reminder that even the unlikeliest building, one built for horses and carriages, can tell us of an era in Portland's past. The Ladd Carriage House is more powerful as a tangible, physical piece of history than as a mere memory, and recognition of that value is why the building is still with us today. 30


NOTES

If not for the vision of Carroll Investments, First Christian Church, and Opus Northwest, the Ladd Carriage House would have been lost forever. It is thanks to Carleton Hart Architecture, Bremik Construction, and Venerable Development, LLC, that the Ladd Carriage House has been returned to its former glory.
      I would like to acknowledge Jessica Engeman and Robert Mercer for their assistance on this article, John Carroll for encouraging me to become actively involved with the Ladd Carriage House project, and all of the great Portlanders I've had the fortune of meeting during the four-year journey to save the building.

1.  Friends of Ladd Carriage House, "About the Moves," http://www.laddcarriagehouse.org/MoveNews.htm (accessed May 31, 2009).

2. North West News, July 21, 1883.

3.  Ibid.

4.  William Sargent Ladd, Biography, in Vertical File, Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Portland [hereafter OHS Research Library].

5. Oregonian, January 1, 1884; Oregonian, October 3, 1926.

6.  Broadway was known as Seventh Avenue prior to 1913.

7.  Jessica Engeman and Brandon Spencer-Hartle, "Ladd Carriage House," National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, 2009; Photographs, in Photograph Files 1508 and 1509, OHS Research Library; Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, 1885; William Sargent Ladd Papers, MSS 579, OHS Research Library, Portland.

8.  Engeman and Spencer-Hartle, "Ladd Carriage House."

9. Portland City Directory, 1887–1891; Bill Borsch, email to author, June 20, 2006.

10.  Engeman and Spencer-Hartle, "Ladd Carriage House."

11.  Woodruff Minor, "Probst, Louis and Maria, Building," State of California, Historic Resources Inventory, 1989; Portland City Directory, 1880–1883; Richard E. Ritz, Architects of Oregon (Portland, Ore.: Lair Hill Publishing, 2002), 358.

12. Oregonian, August 29, 1883.

13.  E. Kimbark MacColl with Harry H. Stein, Merchants, Money, and Power: The Portland Establishment, 1843–1913 (Portland, Ore.: The Georgian Press, 1988), 110; Donald Nelson, Progressive Portland — On the Move (Portland, Ore.: Donald R. Nelson, 2004), 8–11.

14.  While Assessor records show the Methodist Church subdivided the block and sold many of the parcels in 1880, no record of Ladd's acquisition could be found. First Christian Church, Seventy-Five Rewarding Years (Portland, Ore.: First Christian Church, 1955), 11–14; Multnomah County Assessor's office property records.

15.  MacColl with Stein, Merchants, Money, and Power, 110.

16. Oregonian, March 27, 1927; Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of the Life of William S. Ladd (San Francisco, Calif.: The History Company, 1890), 49; Nelson, Progressive Portland, 40–41.William L. Brewster, William Mead Ladd of Portland, Oregon (Portland, Ore.: Metropolitan Press, 1933), 6, 12.

17.  Photographs, in Photograph File 1505, OHS Research Library; Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, 1885.

18.  William J. Hawkins, III, and William F. Willingham, Classic Houses of Portland, Oregon: 1850–1950 (Portland, Ore.: Timber Press, 1999), 147.

19.  Ibid., 105, 109, 147; Image CN 017530, OHS Research Library, Portland; Nelson, Progressive Portland, 40–44; Photographs, in Photograph File 1505, OHS Research Library; First Christian Church, Seventy-Five Rewarding Years, 11–19, 47.

20.  MacColl with Stein, Merchants, Money, and Power, 1.

21.  Bancroft, History of the Life, 8, 20–24. Front Street is now known as Naito Parkway.

22.  MacColl with Stein, Merchants, Money, and Power, 20.

23.  William John Hawkins, III, The Grand Era of Cast-Iron Architecture in Portland (Portland, Ore.: Binford & Mort, 1976), 26; Bancroft, History of the Life, 19–23.

24.  Jewel Lansing, Portland: People, Politics, and Power, 1851–2001 (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2003), 66–67, 87; Bancroft, History of the Life, 26–27.

25.  Bancroft, History of the Life, 27; Martin Fitzgerald, ed., Sixty Milestones of Progress (1859–1919): Ladd and Tilton Bank (Portland, Ore.: James, Kerns, and Abbott, 1919), 7, 64.

26.  Fitzgerald, ed., Sixty Milestones, 17.

27.  Hawkins, The Grand Era, 44.

28.  Bancroft, History of the Life, 30–35; Lansing, Portland, 125.

29.  Hawkins, The Grand Era, 44, 116; George A. McMath, "Concord Building," National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, 1977.

30.  Fitzgerald, ed., Sixty Milestones, 48.

31.  Nelson, Progressive Portland, 88; "Old Landmark Removed," in George Himes Scrapbook Collection, Scrapbook 15, page 41, OHS Research Library; Ritz, Architects, 374.

32.  "Old Landmark Removed," in George Himes Scrapbook Collection, Scrapbook 15, page 41, OHS Research Library

33.  Ibid.; Bancroft, History of the Life, 30–32.

34.  Eugene E. Snyder, Portland Names and Neighborhoods: Their Historic Origins (Portland, Ore.: Binford and Mort, 1979), 38–43.

35. Oregonian, June 9, 1964.

36.  Brewster, William Mead Ladd, 19; Bancroft, History of the Life, 58–60; Ralph Straus, "Carriages and Coaches," (Philadelphia, Penn.: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1912), 276.

37. Oregonian, January 7, 1893.

38.  The earlier stable is visible on Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, 1879.

39.  MacColl with Stein, Merchants, Money, and Power, 305–306.

40.  Bancroft, History of the Life, 2.

41. Portland Evening Telegram, January 14, 1893; Oregonian, October 24, 1909; Oregonian, October 3, 1926; Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, 1889, 1895, 1901, 1909, 1926; Photographs, Photograph Files 1508, 1509, OHS Research Library.

42. Oregon Journal, December 5, 1926.

43. Oregon Journal, October 3, 1926; Oregonian, October 3, 1926; Stephen Dow Beckham, Hoffman Construction Company: 75 Years of Building (Portland, Ore.: Hoffman Corporation, 1995), 47–50; Permit Number 174560, 705 SW Columbia Street, Department of Public Works, Bureau of Buildings, City of Portland, Oregon.

44. Oregonian, October 3, 1926.

45.  Ibid.; Oregon Journal, October 3, 1926.

46. Oregonian, October 3, 1926.

47. Oregon Journal, March 27, 1927; Oregonian, March 27, 1927; Nelson, Progressive Portland, 40–41.

48. Portland City Directory, 1927–1935; Portland Civic Theatre, in Portland Civic Theatre Records, Mss 2965, OHS Research Library; Oregon Journal, May 31, 1968; Portland City Directory, 1927–1940. See also Richard S. Christen, "Julia Hoffman and the Arts and Crafts Society of Portland: An bbbbsthetic Response to Industrialization," Oregon Historical Quarterly 109:4 (Winter 2008).

49.  Beckham, Hoffman Construction Company, 94–110; Permit Number 245348, 701–19 SW Columbia Street, Department of Public Works, Bureau of Buildings, City of Portland, Oregon; Portland City Directory, 1938–1950; Ritz, Architects, 18–20, 152–54.

50.  Marion Dean Ross, "Photograph of the Ladd Carriage House, 1955," Visual Resources Collection, Architecture & Allied Arts Library, University of Oregon, http://boundless.uoregon.edu/u?/archpnw,9277 (accessed May 31, 2009); Marion Dean Ross, "Photograph of the Ladd Carriage House, 1971," Visual Resources Collection, Architecture & Allied Arts Library, University of Oregon. http://boundless.uoregon.edu/u?/archpnw,9267 (accessed May 31, 2009); Engeman and Spencer-Hartle. "Ladd Carriage House"; Oregonian, August 22, 1966.

51. Oregon Journal, May 31, 1968.

52. Oregonian, May 24, 1971; Oregonian, June 4, 1972.

53.  Ibid., May 24, 1971.

54.  Ibid.,, July 30, 1972, January 7, 2005.

55.  Nelson, Progressive Portland, 88; "Old Landmark Removed," in George Himes Scrapbook Collection, Scrapbook 15, page 41, OHS Research Library.

56. Oregon Journal, October 7, 1964.

57.  Hawkins, The Grand Era, 116.

58.  Ibid. 26, 44, 116; and William J. Hawkins, III, "Eric Ladd Cast-Iron Collection Evaluation." http://www.pdc.us/pdf/ura/dtwf/eric-ladd-cast-iron-collection-evaluation.pdf (accessed May 31, 2009). The Ladd and Bush Bank building still stands in Salem, but the building's original single purpose, compromised architectural integrity, and dominant association with Asahel Bush suggest the Ladd Carriage House, as a work of architecture, is more representative of Ladd's private life and biography. For more on the Ladd and Bush Bank, see Gail Evans, "Salem Historic Downtown District," National Register of Historic Places — District Nomination Form, 2001.

59.  MacColl with Stein, Merchants, Money, and Power, 306.

60. Oregonian, October 26, 2008; Oregonian, January 7, 2005.

61.  Ibid., October 7, 2004.

62.  Ibid., October 22, 2004; Portland Bureau of Development Services, Land Use Review 2004–055757–000–00-LU. http://www.portlandmaps.com/detail.cfm?action=Permits&folder=2394587&propertyid=R246408&state_id=1S1E04AD%20%20300&address_id=912534&intersection_id=&dynamic_point=
0&x=7642743.012&y=681379.308&place=1331%20SW%20BROADWAY%20&city=PORTLAND&neighborhood=DOWNTOWN&seg_id=116353 (accessed May 31, 2009).

63. Oregonian, February 20, 2006; Paul Falsetto, email to author, January 12, 2006.

64. Oregonian, June 17, 2007.

65.  During their advocacy campaign, the Friends of the Ladd Carriage House did not advocate for the preservation of the five-story brick Rose Friends apartments, in part because the building was not listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Some of the information within this paragraph comes from my personal experience of and notes from the work of the relocation and restoration.

66.  Friends of Ladd Carriage House, "About the Moves," http://www.laddcarriagehouse.org/MoveNews.htm (accessed May 31, 2009); Oregonian, October 26, 2008.

67.  Engeman and Spencer-Hartle, "Ladd Carriage House," National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, 2009; Personal Notes.

68. Oregonian, March 27, 1927.

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