The Montavilla neighborhood has a rich history dating back to its time as a town outside Portland’s city limits. 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.
Montavilla History Questions Answered: Horse Ringbolts
Q – What are the metal rings in old Montavilla curbs? A – Ringbolts, as these were originally called, were placed in Portland sidewalk curbs in the early 20th century as hitches for horses to stop them from running off. Individual horse owners needed hitches for private use. Merchants needed them even more for home deliveries of fuel supplies, ice, groceries, etc. The iron ringbolts had the advantage of being more durable than the old wooden hitching posts and racks, which could decay. They also offered alternatives to the unfortunate use of trees as tethers. Tree-tethered horses liked to snack…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Bicycle Usage in Early Years
Q – Was cycling popular in Montavilla’s early years? A – Soon after the invention of the modern two-wheeler, the bicycle craze swept the country. It reached its peak in the 1890s and early 20th century. In Montavilla, there were not only local bicyclists but also Portlanders who liked to head for the countryside in east Multnomah County. A popular bicycle route, the Base Line Cycle Path, went right through Montavilla on what is now Stark Street. One sign of cycling’s rising popularity is the increase in bicycle sales in Portland. They grew from 2,000 in 1897 to between 14,000 and 18,000…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Streetcar Lines
Q – Did Montavilla ever have streetcar service? A – Montavilla was actually served by two separate lines, plus one very short-lived one. These routes were part of the expanding streetcar service east of the Willamette to provide transit for the Portland area’s rapidly growing population of the 1880s. Montavilla’s first subdivision—and its namesake Mount Tabor Villa Addition—went on the market in 1889. Buyers probably assumed that rail service would soon arrive. After all, advertising for the Addition included a map that showed a streetcar line to and from downtown Portland on Villa Avenue (now NE Glisan Street) and going directly through the subdivision.…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Vestal School’s Namesake
Q – Who is Montavilla’s Vestal School named after? A – Vestal School is named after John L. Vestal (1852-1925). In 1925, he bequeathed the vast majority of his estate to the Portland public school district. It was the largest donation ever given to the district, according to The American School Board Journal of May 1925. Vestal left assets then valued at $200,000—equivalent to nearly $3,700,000 today and twice the size of Simon Benson’s $100,000 gift to Benson Polytechnic School. Vestal‘s will did not stipulate how the school board should use his donation. He trusted the board of directors to put it to its…
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Possibly Montavilla’s Last Farm
In the days before Montavilla became a popular suburb in the early 1900s, it was largely farmland. Gradually, fruit, vegetables, nuts, and other crops were displaced by houses and commercial buildings. But as late as the 1920s, there were still pockets of arable land in sections of northeastern and southeastern Montavilla. I recently learned about the Newell and Matsen cut-flower farm on NE 87th Avenue that may deserve the distinction of being Montavilla’s last farm. Harry L. Newell (1891-1976) and Hank F. Matsen (1894-1962) established the business in 1922. Hank’s son, Kenneth H. Matsen (1921-2024), continued it until 1973. I…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Notable Residents Pt3
Q – Have any notable people lived in Montavilla? A – Yes. Movie Star Jewel Carmen. In the era of silent films, a beautiful face and expressive gestures could turn you into a matinee idol: enter Jewel Carmen. A 1916 edition of Moving Picture World magazine called her “a queen of blonds” and “the girl who photographs like a million dollars.” A year later, The Oregon Journal pronounced her “the belle of Montavilla.” Jewel Carmen was one of three professional names adopted by Florence Lavina Quick (1897-1984). She was born on July 13, 1897, in the rural town of Blaine…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Oregon Women’s Suffrage Movement
Q – Did Montavilla help women get the right to vote? A – Yes, there were both women and men in Montavilla who supported the effort to give women the right to vote. However, they entered the decades-long women’s suffrage campaign near its end. The battle commenced at the first American women’s rights convention in 1848. Oregon suffragists joined the effort in 1870. The first Montavilla suffrage group met for the first time in 1905. By then, an Oregon suffrage measure had been on the ballot in 1884 and 1900. It lost both times, although in 1900, by a mere 2,000 votes.…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Notable Residents Pt2
Q — Have any notable people lived in Montavilla? A — Yes. One truly admirable example is the eminent physician and civil rights champion Dr. DeNorval Unthank (1899-1977). Dr. Unthank lived in Portland from 1930 until his death in 1977. For a short time, in the early 1930s, he and his family made Montavilla their home. Dr. Unthank was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the son of a railroad and hotel cook and the grandson of North Carolina enslaved people. When his mother died in 1909, he was sent to live with his uncle, Dr. Thomas Unthank (1867-1932), a prominent doctor and civil…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Notable Residents Pt 1
Q — Have any notable people lived in Montavilla? A — Actually, several notable people have lived in Montavilla, and I will introduce them in several articles, beginning with Annie Miner Peterson. Annie Peterson (1860-1939) is remembered for her contribution to our knowledge of Northwestern indigenous cultures. She was the last living speaker of the Miluk and Hanis languages. She also remembered and shared her memories of tribal history and lore of the indigenous peoples of the southern Oregon coast. Although she lived in the Coos Bay area most of her life, she resided in Montavilla for about a dozen…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Christmas Gifts of the Early 1900s
Q – What were some typical Christmas gifts in Montavilla in the early 1900s? A – With Christmas and Hanukkah just around the corner, the spirit of generosity is in the air, just as it was a hundred or more years ago in Montavilla. But where to find just the right item for the friends and relatives on your gift list? Luckily, Montavilla merchants ran ads in local newspapers with a myriad of suggestions. In 1906, a shopper could head to Dan McMillan’s dry goods store on SE Stark Street (then Base Line Road) and find a variety of inexpensive gifts…
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Montavilla’s Wild West Past
Q – Was Montavilla ever “a wild west” town? A – On the eve of Montavilla’s 100-year-anniversary celebration in 1989, Marguerite O’Donnell-Barnes told Oregonian reporter Suzanne Richards that her grandfather said, “No God-fearing man would go to Montavilla on a Saturday night.” It’s true that in Montavilla’s early days, the 1890s and the early 20th century, it may have looked like something from a Wild West movie. It still had dirt roads, plank sidewalks, saloons (until Montavilla finally went dry in 1905), blacksmith shops, and horse-drawn vehicles. But was it as rowdy as the O’Donnell-Barnes statement implies? In the early days, Montavillans worked to…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Stark Street Knitting Mill
Q – What was the Monticello Antique Marketplace building originally? A – This is a tricky question and one I’ve puzzled over for several years. When you look closely at the 8600 SE Stark Street building, you can see it was built in stages. I haven’t been able to date all the components, but the earliest one is the two-story building at the corner of Stark and 86th Avenue. If you enter the Marketplace here, you are standing in what was the Dehen Knitting Mills company, a manufacturer of knitted clothing. Just imagine this space filled with busy workers and the clattering…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: The Montavilla Library
Q – Whatever happened to the Montavilla Branch Library? A – I’ve often been asked this question. If you go looking for Montavilla’s branch library —as I did— you may have trouble finding it. But —believe it or not— the building still exists. The Montavilla Branch Library closed in November 1981 because of Multnomah County Libraries’ funding problems. There was an attempt to fund the Montavilla and Lombard branch libraries through a levy, but Portland voters turned it down, forcing those two branches to close. The Oregon State University Extension Service leased the Montavilla building until 2003. In 2005, the Multnomah County…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Milepost 5 Stone
Q – What is the milepost 5 stone on SE Stark Street? A – Here is the short answer. This obelisk-shaped stone is a wayfinding tool, also called a milestone or a milemarker. Historically, they were put up along roads to indicate the distance to or from a particular place. Here, the “P” stands for Portland, and the “5” stands for the distance from that place. This milepost is one of 15 erected at one-mile intervals along SE Stark Street. Nine survive, but not necessarily in their original locations. Milepost 5 may have been moved around during later street construction, but…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Misaligned Streets
Q – Why are there so many misaligned streets in Montavilla? A – I understand your puzzlement. I wondered the same thing when I moved to Montavilla. It was confusing. As a driver, I’d have to make two turns instead of driving straight ahead on the same street. As a pedestrian, I could not cross from corner to corner. The map above shows one example of Montavilla’s many jig-joggy streets. It would be easy to blame this on poor city planning. But it’s not. It’s one of those quirks of history. It’s because of how Montavilla developed, one subdivision at a time.…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Montavilla Pool
Q – When did the Montavilla Park swimming pool open? A – The public swimming pool in Montavilla Park formally opened on July 28, 1930, nine years after the park itself. In the park’s early years, other types of recreation took priority. Two baseball diamonds were built in 1921, a playground in 1925, and tennis courts in 1927. Of course, a pool and accompanying building were more expensive, costing $30,000. They were designed by Portland architect Roscoe Hemenway (1899-1959). At the time, Hemenway was just beginning his architectural career, but later, he became a favorite of Portland’s elite. His original…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Montavilla’s name
Q – How did Montavilla get its name? A – Two myths have been circulated regarding how Portland’s Montavilla neighborhood got its name. One is that it is a contraction of Mt. Tabor Village. The other is that it was shortened to fit on destination signs on Montavilla streetcars. Neither is true. Rather, Montavilla is a contraction of Mount Tabor Villa Addition, our neighborhood’s first subdivision. The lots, located between today’s SE Stark and NE Glisan Streets from 74th to 78th Avenues, went on sale in 1889. The first documented usage of the name Montavilla occurs in a U.S. Post Office ledger that records…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: The Granada Theatre
Q – I’ve heard that the Highland Christian Center, 7600 NE Glisan Street, used to be a movie theater. Is this true? A – This is partially true. A portion of the Highland Christian Center complex was once the Granada Theatre. You can still see where that 1924 theater used to be if you stand at the corner of NE Glisan Street and NE 78th. It’s the 1-1/2 story structure at the back. The one-story portion in the front originally housed several small shops. This building complex was designed in 1924 by architect Earl G. Cash for developer George S.…
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Montavilla History Questions Answered: Stark Street
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…
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A History of Saints Peter and Paul Church
Long a Montavilla landmark, the historic Saints Peter and Paul Episcopal Church is slated to be demolished to make room for a much-needed affordable housing complex. The Montavilla church became known as Saints Peter and Paul only in 1968, when the congregations of the Montavilla church, St. Peter’s, merged with the Lents church, St. Paul’s. But the history of the Montavilla church goes back more than 100 years. At its beginning, there was no church building, but the congregation had existed since at least 1915. At that time, Montavilla’s tiny Episcopalian community of some ten families gathered in homes or…
Keep readingFor even more about Montavilla History, please see our collection of articles that include historical information.