Q – Who is SE Stark Street named for?
A – SE Stark Street is named after Benjamin Stark (1820-1898), one of Portland’s earliest entrepreneurs active in Portland from 1845 to 1862.
He was born in New Orleans and grew up in New London, Connecticut. In New York City, he studied law and worked in the shipping trade, traveling between the East Coast and the West Coast. He first stepped foot in Portland in 1845, as an agent in charge of cargo on the barque Toulon. With his share of the cargo’s profits, he bought land in what is now downtown Portland, the first of his many lucrative land and business investments in Portland.
Stark also had a brief career in politics during the Civil War years. In 1861, Governor John Whiteaker appointed him to the U. S. Senate, replacing Edward Baker, who had died in the Battle of Ball’s Bluff. Baker was a staunch Unionist, but Governor Whiteaker and Stark were Confederate sympathizers.
The Oregonian unleashed a stream of invective against Stark. In its November 11, 1861 edition, he was called “a secessionist of the rankest dye.”. In 1862, the Oregon legislature refused to confirm Stark and chose instead pro-Unionist Benjamin F. Harding to complete Baker’s term. After the embarrassment of being rejected as Oregon’s Senator, Stark moved himself and his family to his boyhood home of New London, Connecticut, where he died in 1898.
The original Stark Street only existed in downtown Portland. It defined the southern boundary of Stark’s 48-acre property between what are now Naito Parkway and Burnside. Today, this is Harvey Milk Street, renamed in 2018 to commemorate the first openly-gay elected official in the U. S., who was assassinated in 1978.
While the Stark Street name no longer exists on the west side of the Willamette, it continues on the east side. There it was originally called Base Line Road since it follows the base line meridian established in the 1851 Federal land survey of Oregon and Washington.
When the City of East Portland was incorporated into the City of Portland its K Street became East Stark Street.
In Montavilla, the continuation of the street continued to be called Base Line Road until 1909, when it became East Stark Street. In 1933—as part of Portland’s new comprehensive street-name plan–it was renamed SE Stark Street.
I can imagine that if Benjamin Stark could see a map of Multnomah County today, he would be surprised to see his short-namesake street in downtown Portland no longer there and to see a new Stark Street stretching from the Willamette to the Sandy River.
This is part of a new segment at Montavilla News called Montavilla History Questions Answered. If you have questions about Montavilla’s past that you’d like answered, local historian Patricia Sanders will investigate your question. Please email your questions to history@montavilla.net and we may feature it alongside Patricia Sanders’ research in a future post on this page.