Spaces Hold Stories
I love discovering the stories of spaces. Just like people, the buildings around us have their history. And the histories of houses and buildings unearths the histories of the people who built them, lived in them, and worked in them.
Do you know the story of your own house? Are you interested in learning the story of your house or a familiar storefront or commercial building? I would love to discover it with you.
Little Projects
Explore a curated collection of our little digs, requested by inquiry. If you have a photograph or something you can’t get to the bottom of, send an note over!
Unique Shoe Service Inc
A photograph on the wall of what is now a credit union. Digging into the reference materials and archival records at the Oregon Historical Society pinpointed a cobbler and shoe sales business named Unique Shoe Service Inc in the 1930s.
Kerns, Portland, Oregon
Bingo! Also not pictured an article from The Oregonian from 1932 announcing the opening of the store.The Blue Goose
An archival photo of a building that looks like The old Blue Goose with the same name - but which corner was the referenced building on? From plumbing permits to Sanborn maps, to local lore…
A beer tavern that also sold boiled eggs, The Trolley Inn, The Blue Goose Cafe, Esparzas… and now Moonshot Tavern - are they one and the same or different buildings? Questions remain.
Kerns, Portland, Oregon
Image from archives at Oregon Historical Society, Portland, OR
Old plumbing record for Beer Tavern and Otto Haraldsen as the applicant for an underground oil tank.Current Project
Coming soon. A personal story of space and place.
A tree-lined street in SE Portland, nestled off the bustling restaurant row of 28th Street in Kerns. Squeezed between Burnside and Stark Street, this is the street I raised my daughter on since our move from the chaos of apartment transitions in 2014. Surviving family construction and a few different relationships, it has now been twelve years on this street – in this house – and people who visit often say they know someone who used to live on this block. Adding, How wild is that, of all the streets in Portland?
It’s a special block. With long-time homeowners and renters alike, a mix of architecturally unique buildings zoned for mixed use, an annual block party, and a special energy, I felt the pull to the stories of the homes here. Not everything will be public in order to ensure privacy of residents. More to come.
View of the street to the west from my rooftop.
The front porch today of my home, one of the original houses on the block, built in 1929.An Ash tree.