Hawthorne Park

Up until the early 1900’s a wooded park stood between Hawthorne and Taylor, and Se 9th and 12th avenues. Today not a single remnant of it remains but Hawthorne Park was one the East side’s nicest and historic parks.

The land in that area was originally a land plot owned by James Stephens. He owned much of the land that the inner-southeast neighborhoods are built on. Stephens donated 7 acres to Dr. J.C. Hawthorne so he could develop Oregon’s first mental hospital, Oregon Hospital for the Insane. The hospital began in 1862 and stood where 12th avenue runs today. The hospital and Mr. Hawthorne were highly regarded for the civil treatment of the patients and for the condition of the hospital as well as the grounds it laid on. By the late 1870s the asylum grounds encompassed 12 acres stretching from “N” St. (Morrison) to “T” St. (Asylum) and 12th to 5th avenues. The grounds featured fresh water streams as well as gardens. Oregon Hospital for the Insane was a major employer in East Portland (the city was still separate from the west side of Portland until 1891) and by 1873 18-20% of the population worked at the hospital.

from The West Shore - April 1880

The hospital and its patients were moved to Salem in 1883 as the Oregon State Insane Asylum was built. Dr. Hawthorne died in 1881 and the hospital was closed in 1883. The building was eventually razed but the area became a tree-lined park. His wife E.C. Hite took control of the grounds and kept the area as a park until the early 1900s. Around this time, the street called “Asylum Avenue” was changed to “Hawthorne” in honor of Dr. Hawthorne.

One of the organizers of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair, Harvey Scott, was in favor of having the fair on the grounds of Hawthorne Park. He had East side ties and thought that the pure water from Bull Run, the natural lagoons along shallow

OHS master file #04609

streams, and streetcar access across the Madison and Morrison bridges would make the area ideal. The other organizers were in favor of a much more costly construction of the fair in the NW area Guild’s Lake and in North Portland, but the organizers decided on Guild’s Lake.

Through 1908, Portland Parks and Recreation attempted to buy the land from Mrs. Hawthorne but the city was not in favor of it. Instead, Mrs. Hawthorne leased the grounds to the city for $100 dollars a year until PPR finally gave up on acquiring the land and the area was soon developed into an industrial, commercial and residential area. Advocates for the park around the turn of the century noted that the large fir trees, large ravine and natural spring, and the proximity to the nice residences to the east as well as the increasingly poor to the west make the park a central location for recreation and refuge. Today, that area of the district consists of mostly warehouses. One can only imagine what a treasure the park would be to the inner-southeast residents if were around today.

Sources:

• The Great Extravaganza by Carl Abbot – Oregon Historical Society Press 2004.

• Harvey Scott self published records on Lewis and Clark Exposition c.1906 -

Oregon Historical Society Library Archives

• Report of the Park Board, 1904 – Portland Parks and Recreation

• Other various sources compiled at the Oregon Historical Society Library Archives.

More Pictures:

OrHi 9263

OrHi 54371

MF OHS #06711

SE 28th Place near Hawthorne

Edit: I found a Sandborn map from 1924 which shows Kenilworth street. It is located just left of the mouse pointer.

If you look at the sidewalks South of Hawthorne on 28th Place, you will notice it says “Kenilworth Ave”. According to Portland Parks and Recreation, the name comes from a neighborhood to the South which includes Holgate and Gladstone streets called “Creston-Kenilworth”. The picture above is in front of a school near Division St. on 28th place, which doesn’t place it within the neighborhood. I can’t seem to find any old maps of the area (or anywhere else above 20th for that matter) which details how long of a street it originally was, but the street was renamed in 1931 to 28th Pl.

Supposedly, the name Kenilworth came from the title of a romantic book series by Sir Walter Scott. He wrote such hits as: Ivanhoe, Lady of the Lake, and Rob Roy. Here I was thinking that I may have stumbled upon another lesser known Portland merchant to research. Other streets within the district are named for characters by Scott.

Lone Fir Cemetery History

Lone Fir Cemetery – Portland, Oregon – written by Josh Steiner, December 2008

The Lone Fir Cemetery lies on 30.5 acres in SE Portland, between Morrison and Stark, and 20th and 26th. There are renovations currently planned to turn the SW corner of the cemetery into a a place to ponder and a memorial to the thousands of Chinese workers that were once buried there, sometimes in mass graves. Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery and Metro are heading the rejuvenation of the historic cemetery so current citizens of the city can come to touch some of Portland’s most important citizens of the past at “The Silent City of the Dead”.

The original acre plot of land that the cemetery now sits on was a farm owned by Emmor Stephens who received the land as a pioneer land grant in the 1840’s. Stephens died in 1846 and was buried in the NW corner of the plot by his son, James. In 1854 James sold the family farm to Colburn Barrell under the condition that Barrell maintain the area Emmor was buried at. The following year, a steamboat owned by Barrell called “Gazelle”, which operated between Portland and Oregon city exploded near Oregon City killing one passenger and Barrell’s business partner, Crawford Dobbins. The casualties of the boat explosion were buried near Emmor Stephens at the cemetery. Barrell then set aside 10 acres of the land as a cemetery and renamed the area “Mt. Crawford” in memoriam of his business partner and because the site sat on a hill. Barrell sold plots for $20 an adult, and $10 a child. It was known though that he was flexible with the price and allowed others to occupy the space for less money or no money at all. In 1862 the City Fire Department and Masons bought plots on the North side. Barrell bought an additional 10 acres in 1855, and added more in 1865 and 1866 – bringing the total acreage to today’s 30.5 acres. In 1857, Portland decided to exhume remains from the four largest cemeteries on city land on the west side and move them to Mt. Crawford. These cemeteries included the land on current Skidmore Fountain, 6th and Burnside, 10th and Washington, 11th and Burnside, and two in South Portland.

In 1867, Barrell tried proposed to sell the cemetery to the City of Portland for $4000 but the city declined citing that the land was too far outside the city and that a funeral procession to the site would take a full day from Portland and that many would not want to grieve for that long. Instead, At this time much of East Portland was still wooded forest and even the cemetery site was surrounded by forest. A trip to the cemetery required a trip on the Stark Street Ferry and a long trip on dirt roads to the site. Later that year, a group of investors including Robert Pittock agreed to buy the land and a wife of one of the investors proposed to re-name the cemetery “Lone Fir Cemetery” because of a single fir tree that lied near the original plot. The name was changed and has remained the name to today.

Around the 1860s, the Oregon Hospital for the Insane operated by James C. Hawthorne was located between SE 9th and 12th, and Morrison and Hawthorne (U street, Asylum street), land donated by James Stephens. It was the largest of mental hospitals in Oregon and was well funded by the state. An estimated 200 patients were buried at the Lone Fir Cemetery, many unmarked and in mass graves, and is said to lay beneath the current entrance to the cemetery on 21st and Morrison. It is not known how many other citizens lie in the grounds because there are no records for the first 17 years of operation and many of the grave markers have disappeared because of weather, grass fires, lack of a desire for extravagance, and time. However, an estimated 25,000-30,000 lie there with records for 14,700.

In 1877 the MacLeay Family Crypt was built by Don MacLeay for at a cost of $10,000. The Gothic crypt was meant as a mourning chapel as well as a family plot. It is now closed off to visitors. In the fall of 1903 the Soldier’s Monument was built by the funding of 500 local citizens at a total cost of $3,500. This is a monument to the soldiers of the civil, Spanish-American, Mexican, and Indian wars.

By the 1920s, the cemetery had deteriorated and had become overgrown with bushes. Many of the grave markings had fallen over or had disintegrated . Some in the community proposed that the bodies be exhumed and that the land be turned into a public park or playground. The idea faced huge criticism and was turned down. A few local committees were started to provide funding to the cemetery to maintain the grounds. In 1928 the State of Oregon granted control and maintenance of the land to Multnomah County. By this time there were streetcars running down Morrison Street and there was a stop on the campus of Lone Fir. It was also a popular picnic spot for people traveling east to Mt. Tabor.

The county decided to construct a county building in the SW corner of the land called the Morrison Building. 265 graves were exhumed for the construction; many were Chinese laborers that had been buried there without identification and were technically outside the grounds of the original cemetery because the Chinese were not allowed inside. Around this time the county relinquished the cemetery to the Metropolitan Services District, except for the building which remained property of Multnomah County. In 2002 the Morrison Building closed and planned to sell the site and connect the area to the main portion of the cemetery. Under suspicion that there may still be bodies buried under the site, in 2004 archaeologists excavated under a parking lot and found human remains. Metro gained control of the land in January 2007 and the complex and parking lot were removed in August 2007.The area is currently vacant but plans are currently in the works to redevelop the area.

Notable burials:

John Couch, Dr. James Hawthorne, Asa Lovejoy, Frank Dekum, George Law Curry, William Wallace Thaver, Daniel Lownsdale, James Stephens, Emmor Stephens, William Ladd, Thomas Dryer, Harry Lane, J.A Chapman, Henry Rowe.

Sources: Compiled from information at the Oregon Historical Society Archives-  Portland, Oregon.