The View From Steelhammer Road

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Up on Steelhammer Road, on the east side of Silverton, is the house I grew up in for most of my childhood in Silverton, which is at the south end of Steelhammer, just before it goes through a curve where it becomes Evans Valley Road.

That's all I'll say of it for now; the building still stands and is a private residence, and the property has been most lovingly and sumptuously treated. I took a few pictures, but I'll be keeping them to myself. But this, looking north on Steelhammer at its intersection with Reserve Street, is something sharable.

It's been more than a couple of decades since I saw this bit of road on a regular basis. Now, with the perspective age provides, here are a couple things I know now:

• The road was named for a family whose last notable relation ran a pharmacy on East Main between Water and First, next to the restaurant we then called The Towne House. My trauma-riddled memory kicked that back out when I saw a photo taken of East Main during the 1960's (it was probably Gus Frederick's fault I saw the photo, for which I'm grateful).
• On the horizon there you can see the shoulder of a butte-like hill. That's Mount Angel, the hill (as opposed to Mount Angel, the town, which is to the left and obscured by trees there). When I was a lad, I didn't realize that I could see the Benedictine Abbey from just a block away from my then-abode.
• Seeing this view point explains to me, and I didn't really realize it until I was last-year years old, why views like this transfix me so. There's a subtle thing about elevation and atmospheric perspective that makes the hills of eastern Marion County have a certain ineffable sparkle to them. The view across the rolling hills out near Shaw and along the Silver Falls Highway east of that are magical and otherworldly to me.
• One thing that hasn't changed is that the house that was at one time my home is still literally immediately outside of town. When I was small, the city line hugged the side of Steelhammer to Reserve and turned west again there. Today, the city limits go south to include the HOA neighborhood that fills the once brush-and-brambled gully just west of here south along East View Lane, but it executes a do-si-do around the property that is my eastwhile residence. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as them Frenchies say.
  

You Can Almost Hear The Train Whistle

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On South Water, in Silverton, at the end of the park that centers on the Library, there's a building that looks quite a bit like an old railroad depot.

That's because it is an old railroad depot. When I was a lad, this building stood on North Water on the north side of the train tracks. Even when I was a kid, though, the era of passenger train service had come and gone, and the building was just used as storage by then. Some time during the 1970s, some enterprising group moved it about half a mile south on Water Street, to where it is now. 

And it's now a museum of local history, because if there's one thing Silverton knows, it's her history

The signage is preserved on the gables of the the building.

The picture depict the end of the building that points toward Silver Creek. The end of the building that fronts on Water Street will tell you that Portland is 47 miles away. Which it is, more or less, though since the building's not where it once was, some negligible error has been introduced.

The idea of a passenger train connecting Silverton to The World Outside is so damned romantic, though. This is why people think they'd be happier born in an earlier era, or at least one reason. My experience as a child in Silverton was that the place, despite its nearness to Salem, was pretty isolated. It would have felt different if we'd had rail service, though. 

Margaret Plumb Paints the Wolf Building En Plein Air

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Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for that warm fall afternoon last year, when we larked to Silverton and stumbled into the Sidewak Shindig. We met Gary Quay there, and that was excellent in and of itself, but I did find this example if en plein air art in action and the memory still warms the heart.

It should be developing now that the Wolf Building in downtown Silverton is unique and beloved. It makes a fine subject for photography, and that I've proven. But plein air acrylic painting? Well, there could, I suppose, be a question, but really, if one has any common sense, that question should pretty much answer itself.

And if it doesn't, consider this:

The artist is a woman from the Eugene area named Margaret Plumb and what has become a fond memory is her allowing me, a still-aspiring artist, to look over her shoulder while she created this work. 

She's an impressionist, working in saturated colors which warm the eye and the heart (her Facebook page is here, her page at Lunaria Gallery, where she was standing in front of, is here). Most admirable technique and an accomplished talent. 

This one she was painting that day in front of Lunaria was sold, in short order, to a buyer in Virginia; testimony to that and the finished panting can be seen at this Facebook post. I had a great experience watching an artist create lovely art in real-time, and I'll ever be grateful to Margaret for allowing the house of Klein to invade her personal space, answer little questions about her process, and tolerate inane observations about what she did.

It can be problematic to get an artist to allow you to watch them create as they do it, so if you ever get the chance, savor this. Nothing quite like it, I can guarantee you. 

Silverton's Crows' Nest

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Even if you're in a town as modestly-sized as My Little Town of Silverton, you might miss something if you don't look up when you would otherwise be looking down, or sideways, or whatever.

Now, I will cop to a bit of disingenuity here. As we are finding out about one of The Most Oregon Places That Ever Existed, Silverton has enough architectural quirkitude and charm for a town many times its size; that's what happens when you let the old buildings stay and don't break your neck trying to remake the place in a fashionable mode (yes, Eugene Field School is no longer there, but that was a sad necessity). Indeed, Silverton's architectural vicissitudes are east to spot ... but sometimes, you do have to trouble yourself to take a moment and look up

The facade of the Palace Theatre, with its Art Deco detail comes immediately to mind, but a half-block south of that, on the same side of North Water Street, there's, this:

Stand in front of Mac's Place, turn south, and look up, and there is this enigmatic cupola perched on the northwest corner of the Wolf Building, which I've mentioned before, just a few articles ago.

Now, I was born in Silverton, and lived there until my early teens. And I knew the Wolf Building, remembered Hande Hardware and its wood floors. I was borne of ancestors who had lived in the area since the 19th Century. I guess I knew Silverton about well as any kid would, but it wasn't until I was an adult that I knew that crows' nest even existed. 

And now I'm hungry for a look out those windows. And I know of no other town that can claim a weather vane on the peak of the tallest building in town, but there it is. Silverton, you never stop surprising even this jaded former resident. 

It's true; Silverton contains enough architectural wonder of more than one Silverton, but the Wolf Building contains enough design interest for one Silverton, one Molalla, a Gervais and about half a Scotts Mills.

The Wolf Building, The Antique Heart of Silverton

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I've picted this building before, but it was a Creative-Commons pict. This one is copyright mine, mine, ALL MINE. 

Adolf Wolf is another one of Silverton's small gods. Silverton's city center is loaded with historic architecture and the more I think about it, the more this building must be considered one of Silverton's crown jewels that way. It has immaculate cast iron detail (which I enthused about here). It was erected in 1891 which, I think, makes it the oldest extant building in Silverton:

I remember it as a boy for Carl Hande Hardware, continuing the mercantile tradition Wolf started and marketing implements to the little farming metropolis Silverton was at the time. Of course, just like every charming old building in Oregon currently, there's a bisro there, so there's that.

The biggest charm in this image is the lovingly-preserved painted ad on the Water Street side there. 

And I might be a little sarcastic about it all, but if I wanted to open some creative concern and brand it with Silverton's charm and quirk, I'd certainly consider the second floor of that building. 

The Back Stairs To Silver Creek

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We return to Silverton to get to know Silver Creek a little better. It's changed and gotten incredibly charming, and deserves the tarry.

Along West Main Street, just the other side of the creek from the center of town and Water and Main, is a park, Town Square Park. Quite a lovely place and with it I'm rather smitten. It is roughly square in shape, fronting West Main between the end of the bridge and Fiske Street, with a small parking lot at the corner and a charming public toilet (Portland has its Loos, but leave it to Silverton to make a public convenience charming), and at the south side of the park, the pedestrian path winds past a war memorial to cross a covered footbridge over Silver Creek that'll connect you back to Water Street a block south of Main.

If you stand on the bridge ... which has ample room for those who want to take it slow and absorb the charm ... and look upstream, in the general southward direction, you see this, a property on Fiske Street backing up to the creek itself and this stairway from that property going right down to the creek bank which is all so adorable I say, without trace of irony, that I can't even here.

It has occurred to me that the owner of that property is quite the fortunate person. 

It, and the presence of Riverfront Park in Salem, speak of a quantum leap in how Valley communities relate to the streams that flow through them. In Salem, as I said earlier, downtown ended for most of us at Commercial Street, Front Street was a railway-laced nightmare for your car's chassis, and riverfront access for downtown Salem was the veriest of oxymoronic things to say. Silverton's relationship with Silver Creek was similar though not as brutal; an unbroken line of buildings along the west side of Water Street made the creek a thing you glanced in passing over the bridge.

No longer. Silver Creek is still screened from downtown Silverton by the buildings but there are more and more personal ways to get closer, and Town Square Park, a lovely thing, which allows one to come right down to the side of the stream that inspired Silverton's name. 

The Church at Second and A

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The subtraction of the century-old Eugene Field School building from the landscape of city-center Silverton has opened up sight lines that young me never even comprehended existed.

If you look grid-east and a s'kosh north from the corner of Park and Water Streets, the lack of a rather substantial building opens a line of sight two city blocks long.

The big white historic-looking building, which is the Trinity Lutheran Church, is at the corner of N. 2nd and A Streets. Google Maps says this is at a range of about six-hundred and thirty feet from Yours Truly, the photographer. N. 1st Street crosses the middleground at where that chain link fence is. The red brick building wit the multi-colored windows is the First Christian Church. The green space in the foreground is the lawn on the south end of the new Civic Center block.

When it comes to church in Silverton, if you want it, you got it. More church than you can shake a steeple at.

In looking around the town of my youth, I'm amazed at how wide my perception of the world has become. These places are mere minutes away in a walk, but since I couldn't directly see them when I was young, they may as well have been halfway around the world. Perspective widens with the altitude of age; it opens the world at the same time drawing it closer in.

Escher would approve of that, I think.

The Hitching Post at Water and Park

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This is a thing that exists in Silverton that refuses to explain itself.

Located at the northeast corner of Water and Park streets, on the north edge of downtown, it keeps its own counsel. It saw Eugene Field School come and go; it's watching Silverton's new fancy Civic Center sprout from the former schoolyard. 

It appears to be of the same vintage, if one can read such a thing on a small concrete obelisk with a hitching ring embedded, as the Stark Street Milestones here in Portland, possibly a minimum of a century old.

It's the only one like it in Silverton. 

And it will not explain itself to you. It owes you no justifications or apologies.

It does kind of miss the school building, though, as do I.

Water Looking North From Main

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A look at Water Street, downtown Silverton, looking north from Main.

History still lives in small Oregon towns and, maybe I'm biased, but more so in Silverton than other Valley cities.

All these buildings were aging before anyone of us looking at it were even born. 

I had a pathetic childhood in Silverton that made me want to go elsewhere (eventually I got my wish). Well, time does heal wounds. Who wouldn't love this scene, or at least feel warmed to it? 

At the moment I can remain cozily in the midst of my beloved Portland and see Silverton when I can find the time. Best of both worlds, really.

Curly's Legacy Cooler

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On the west side of South Water Street there's a charming little coffee dive (and I mean that in the most affectionate way) called the Silverton Coffee Station. 

It occupies what was once a filling station and auto garage, but if you know what to look for, that shouldn't be a surprise. The gas pull-through and the garage are separate buildings on the west side and south side, respectively, of a cement platform which is one way these properties were situate on the right bank of Silver Creek, which runs behind all the buildings on the west side of Water Street downtown.

The current service area is inside of what was once the garage, and this is where I spotted a certain historical gem.

The wordmark on the front, Curly's Dairy, represents a bit of greater Salem history that, in Portland, is approximated by the not-late but still lamented Alpenrose, though Curly's never got as big as that, but as a local staple, it was every bit of present. 

The main office was along Mission Street SE, on the south side, around about 23rd St SE. I just visited the approximate place where it was on Google Street View just now, and there is no trace of the dairy; that whole corner of town has been redeveloped beyond of the recognition of anyone who grew up in that area between 1978 and 1982. 

One suspects Curly's no longer exists or, if it exists at all, as IP owned and marketed by some out of state company nobody's ever heard of an whose name you'd forget in an instate if you did hear of it. But this gem remains, and keeps ice creams cool in a coffee spot where you can also find Allan's Coffee, which also makes it a location of notable worth. 

Silverton's Small God

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This was seen on the property of the Silverton Coffee Company, on South Water at Lewis:

And this, on the doorstep of the Palace Theatre, which I have just rhapsodized about:

Know ye of Bobbie the Wonder Dog? 

In August of 1923, a Silverton family visited Indiana with their Scotch Collie/English Shepherd mix in tow. During that visit, the dog, as the legend has it, was attacked by other dogs and ran off. The family, not able to locate their pooch by the time they had to return, did so, undoubtedly with hearts heavy with the knowledge that they'd never see their dog again.

Except he turned up again in Silverton n February of 1924, showing every sign of having physically endured a trek of at least 2,500 miles just to get back home to Oregon.

I've always said Oregon has this pull on natives. But then, if I found myself in Indiana, the first thing I'd probably do is try to leave, so there's me for you.

Well, in the way that things went viral in the 1920s this did, and not only was Bobbie a local hero but became a national celebrity for a short time, and in doing so cemented his fuzzy visage indelibly into local history.

And, as one can see, not only is he celebrated in one of Silvertons many murals, but also in at least two figurines, one about two blocks away from the other in Downtown, and making himself an excellent candidate for the patron spirit of the area: Silverton's own charming and relatable small god.

Silverton: dog is their co-pilot.

The Palace Theatre, Silverton, At Dusk

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The gem of town shines out as it once did, brilliantly at dusk, at Oak and Water Streets in downtown Silverton, Oregon, the kind of theater that's still the kind of place were you can walk in and imagine kids streaming in to get imagination fuel, for adults to come for entertainment. 

This is the Palace Theatre, Silverton, Oregon, year 2024.

There has been some sort of entertainment venue on this corner for more than 100 years. Before the Palace, it was the Opera House, which was destroyed by fire in 1936. 

The past few years for this old cinematic matron have been, if the news reports I've seen are an indication, a bit rocky. In 2012, fire seriously damaged the lobby. The venue got back on its feet, then the owners, one of them the inimitable Stu Rasmussen, had to give the business up. The succeeding owners were not able to keep the place alive and she closed again, and then the current owners came in and really pulled out the stops to get the place back into the swim.

The Palace re-opened for good this last winter with a run of the Timothee Chalamet Wonka film and has returned to stay.

The facade is a warm and cherished memory and, paint scheme tastefully highlighting its Art Deco design notwithstanding looks quite like it did when I was a lad, including the marquee ... although they do get bonus points from YT for that splendid sign centered in that facade. 

We much approve.

Falls Mural On Main St, Silverton

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Another Silverton mural, of which I'll have a few in the next several articles, which is found on the north side of East Main Street between the end of the bridge over Silver Creek and the intersection with Water Street:

Silver Falls State Park is the gem of the state parks system, the crown jewel, the largest single state park ... it's to Oregon State Parks what Yellowstone is to the National Park system as far as a star player goes, and if you're in Silverton, it's not just in your back yard, it is your back yard.

If it weren't for photographer June Drake getting the ball rolling back in 1902, it might never have been, but then ... Silverton was always a town for photographers.

Evans Valley Road, East of Silverton

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Please enjoy the following relatable, pastoral, colorful-and-brimming-with-life-and-all-the-good-feels, no-agenda, non-political, friendly view of a bit of Marion County countryside just east of Silverton with a stretch of Evans Valley Road running through it.

For those who like to know such things, that t-intersection just ahead is where Ike Mooney Road ties on.

Details of Silverton's Wolf Building Are Cast In Iron

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At the corner of East Main and North Water in downtown Silverton stands the Wolf Building. It was built in 1891, making it 133 years old at the time I'm writing these words. 

There's a district of Portland that this reminds me of, and it's the Skidmore/Old Town district. Decades before Portland began to grow into a Real Big Town, that area had architecture accented with wrought iron that was of exquisite detail; few examples still remain. The most prominent example is the New Market Theatre building. 

The Wolf Bulding looks this way:

The Wolf Building, 201-205 East Main St, Silverton Oregon.
Photo by Ian Poellet. Source.

The photo was taken by another photographer; I am surprised that I do not have one of the facade ... yet.

Adolf Wolf commissioned the building and set up a hardware and dry-goods concern. During my lifetime, it was the friendly, wooden-floored hardware store of one Carl Hande. Concordant with the general upscaling of Silverton over the years, it is now a stylish bistro. The upper floor currently has office space, if I understand correctly. 

Just as with many things of this nature, the eye is rewarded by closer inspection: at the bottom of those sunny yellow verticals in the facade are these fittings:

... all the way from St Louis, yet. Fancy.

The loving care with the facade continues over the sidewalk, too:

One thing about the local Kiwanis chapter; I think it's always met there.

That can be something out of Silverton Gothic: The Kiwanis Club meets Thursdays at 7:00 AM at the Wmlf Building. It has always met there.  

Silverton, Mac's Place, January 2008

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Third and last old pic for the night, and old is appropriate here, is this photo of downtown landmark Mac's Place. This tavern has existed in downtown Silverton since before then, no, even before that, recently revealed research suggests that it was founded either in the late Corduroy or the early Cretinous period (Ramblin' Rod, 1972), though a recent monograph published by Keeko the Clown in 1969 and found in a bootlegged edition of MAD magazine from August 1976 has garnered support for the founding actually being in the mid-Cantankerous period, after the impact of the great shaving cream bolide but before the first Republicans arrived in Oregon.

At any rate, enjoy.

Camera was, again, the ViviCam 3705.

Silverton Back Street, January 2008

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While Silverton isn't a large place, it does have back streets of its own that have a roguish charm.

This is North 3rd Street at Park Street, one block north of Oak. North 3rd is unpaved north of Oak and seems more an alley than a street from here on north the short remaining distance until it ends at B Street. 

The camera, as before, is the ViviCam 3705.

Downtown Silverton, January 2008

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Had the urge to post, but not much valuable or useful to say, so here's one of three old photos I have that caught my eye. The camera used in this one was a ViviCam 3705, not much by today's standards but when I got it it was more than $100 of income and 3.5 Mpx and digital zoom and boy was it liberating at the time ... a camera that just shot the picture in whatever light level I had? I've always had my misgivings about our headlong rush into the future but digital photography was certainly not one.

This is downtown Silverton, Oregon, the town of my birth, looking north on North Water Street from between East Main and Oak, taken during the afternoon of 1 January 2008.