Pamplin Media Group - Furniture factories and stores of early Southeast

From the establishment of the town of Saywood in 1883 (which lasted only a few years, until Saywood found it was more economical to become a part of Portland) to today’s thriving community in the inland Southeast Portland, our community has always depended on their support. Business district. Many shops and industries have come and gone-these shops and industries have helped shape our metropolis into what it is today.

From the Worcester Wools Mill in Oregon, which employed more than 300 employees in the 1910s to the 1960s, to the Seywood Washing Company, which provided women with new job opportunities in the 1920s and before the Great Depression, many diversified and innovative companies contributed to the company’s Growth and success have contributed to part of our Rose City.

In 1910, when the Oregon Hydropower and Railroad Bureau decided to build a major streetcar repair center on SE 13th Avenue and Linn Street, Seywood had already developed by leaps and bounds. The construction of the Seywood Automobile Barn, commonly known as Seywood, started a population and construction boom, and brought new residents into the area. From the southern part of Serrett Street to Ochoco, many early boarding houses and family residences still exist. At least for now, survivors are still working hard-at least new houses should be used to replace old-fashioned bungalows and four square meters Mi's residence. Those early houses built between the 1890s and the 1940s are an important part of the heritage of all neighborhoods in southeastern Inner Mongolia.

Many people living in Southeast Portland today are part of the second and third generations of early residents who work at the Eastside Lumber Mill at the foot of Spellane Bridge and Tacoma Streets, most of the time before Sellwood Bridge the work. This is a very important business-until the bridge is closed when it is built.

From the early 1960s until the 21st century, Sellwood had a new interest in residents and businesses. Around the turn of the 21st century, SE 13th Avenue was an "antique shop" in the area, and other houses or commercial buildings along the street had antique shops or home decoration shops. As many antique businesses later shifted to online sales, more and more restaurants and businesses replaced many antiques on that street.

These are companies and regions that are important to South Sosat Satellite. But did you know that Westmoreland and Sellwood also hosted thriving furniture factories and furniture stores? (Of course, until recently, Woodstock was the home of The Joinery, which has inherited the tradition of exquisite handmade furniture-even though it is now from the St. Johns community.)

In the early years, when Sellwood was still growing on the waterfront of the Willamette River, the sound of hammering and band saw bands came from the wood factory in the village of Willamette, in the new community Reverberating.

Moreover, at the intersection of Tacoma Street and McLaughlin Boulevard in Southeast Portland is Schindler Furniture Manufacturing Company. It is here that Gabriel Shindler and his partner FS Chadbourne started producing room kits, chairs, tables and school furniture in their factory.

In 1877, Shindler and Chadbourne purchased the furniture factory previously owned by Donly, Beard and Powers, which had been struggling for five years. Early furniture was simple and plain, usually made of oak, and could last a lifetime. But in the late 19th century, high-end chairs and tables purchased in stores were too expensive for ordinary families.

Therefore, Gabriel Shindler (Gabriel Shindler) decided to target a rich market and mass-produce furniture made of northwest oak, maple and ash to suit the western side of Portland. The high class of Portland residents, he thinks it can be affordable. He also produced a large amount of office furniture for shops, banks, schools, houses, hotels and churches. He believes that the prosperous businesses in Portland need a large amount of furniture and provide it in time.

For the elites in the west, there are luxurious chisels, sideboards, rolling hand-carved chairs, bedroom and living room combined tables, sofas, and elegant furniture, previously only available on the East Coast or San Francisco. Shindler specializes in processing custom orders and encourages customers to browse in its showroom. Custom mantels, fancy doors, metal screens and grilles made of copper or brass are also available-usually must be ordered from a coppersmith or metal expert.

Shindler ensures that his employees have skilled craftsmen and carpenters to provide customers with quality products. For Shindler Furniture Company, no order is too big or too small! In 1878, his factory ordered 600 desks from a school in Washington State. In the same year, he provided furnishings for the opening of two new hotels-one in Durres and the other in Lewiston, Idaho.

By 1890, this factory had an experienced workforce of more than forty craftsmen, mainly cabinet makers, varnish workers and wood turners. These workers earn two to three dollars a day, which is a high salary in this era.

Shindler's partner Chadbourne is considered one of the largest furniture distributors in San Francisco, but Chadbourne began to lose interest in the Willsburg furniture business, especially because it seemed to him to be a small investment. Documents collected from the Milwaukie Museum show that in 1882, after Shindler paid $1,000 paid by Shindler for the part of the land owned by the furniture factory, Chadburn returned San Francisco. Further evidence of the termination of the partnership is that Gabriel Shindler subsequently appointed his sons Daniel A (Daniel A.) and Dodd D. (Dodd D.) as Schindler Furniture Company’s Director and secretary.

For the next thirteen years, the Schindler Furniture Factory provided furniture to people and businesses in Portland and surrounding communities. However, in 1895, profits disappeared, and when the Shindler Furniture Factory entered the bankruptcy management system, everything came to a halt due to the financial panic at the time and the influx of customized products. Furniture from the East swept the West Coast market and was sold at a cheaper price than that produced in Oregon. So Gabriel Shindler retired and returned to his vacation home in Long Beach, Washington, and the glory days of the Schindler furniture factory passed.

At the same time, George Albers started producing and selling chairs and tables at the new Sellwood Furniture Company at the foot of Umatilla Street in the Sellwood community. When the town of Sellwood was founded in 1883, real estate agent TE Woods wanted to keep the river water for industrial use only-so he helped Albers set up a furniture factory there and convinced Southwest Brown (SW Brown) built a small saw and planer in a nearby mill.

Albers can then order wood directly and conveniently from Brown's sawmill, saving the cost of transporting the wood to his factory. He only needs to worry about the cost of shipping the furniture to the customer.

Since Sellwood Furniture's furniture is not as refined as Shindler's furniture, the chairs and tables produced by its staff are simple-these items are usually more suitable for the general public and affordable. At that time, most profitable households did not have electricity or running water, and people often sat on benches, stools or handmade furniture made from leftover wood fragments.

With the improvement of living standards, people began to be able to buy dining tables, beds or one or two chairs. The experienced craftsmen of Sellwood Furniture Company not only earn good wages, but they can also buy things from the factory at a discount. At other times, they are allowed to take home discarded wooden boards from the company's inventory so that they can design their own violin chairs themselves-or gorgeous carved tables for personal use.

At the time, Portland had almost no fire protection regulations to deal with fire hazards in the workplace. On an unforgettable night, the dry wood piled around the wood factory shed of the Saywood Furniture Factory was set ablaze, and the building and its contents were burnt down. Two years after becoming one of Seywood's most promising companies, Seywood Furniture Factory ended.

The members of the Sellwood Trade Commission (a business association) faced the problem of how to make up for the loss of Shindler and Sellwood furniture business – when the Brown sawmill was temporarily closed, citizens were more worried about the future of Sellwood. But Jasper Young and Nils Sorenson took over the failed business, and under the name Sorenson and Young Lumber Mill Started to establish a profitable industry in the waterfront.

However, when the Willamette River was flooded in 1894 and all sawmills operating along the river were closed, the disaster happened again. The entire northwestern region is facing a massive shortage of wood until the sawmills can recover from the damage caused by the floods. Sorenson and Young Lumber Mill tried to replace the lost machine, but by 1900 they were forced to close because they did not have enough funds to rebuild.

In 1903, John P. Miller bought the damaged property of the Sorenson and Young timber factory and opened the "Eastern Timber Factory", employing 165 workers, all of whom lived near the factory.

Prior to this, on May 2, 1902, a grand celebration was held in Portwood to celebrate the owners of the Portland Woolen Mill. The Portland Woolen Mill has now occupied Schindler’s former site and is looking for employment. The beginning of men and women. This new manufacturing business.

A large number of young families moved to Westmoreland and Sellwood to operate spindle machines at Worsted, Oregon, or saws at Eastside Lumber Mill. After new immigrants settle in, they need to use modern furniture and convenient facilities to provide furniture for the new houses they buy. The working middle class wants the luxury items found in many high-end residences on the west side of the river, especially furniture.

At this time, it is normal to buy furniture suitable for different rooms in the house: the "corridor tree" is used to hang umbrellas and outdoor clothing at the entrance, while the wardrobe can be used to hang clothes in the bedroom because it is rarely used. The house has a closet large enough.

Although the furniture showroom has become more accessible to the public, residents of the east town still have to take a tram to check the new beds, dressers, dining tables and sofas for their residences. Moreover, once a large piece of furniture (such as a porcelain cabinet or a piano) is purchased, customers usually have to pay an additional fee to transport it to their homes and indoors. A furniture delivery truck or van arriving nearby must have attracted a group of curious neighbors and young children.

Sellwood resident Harry Black founded Sellwood Furniture Company on 13th and Lexington in 1910. At this point, local residents do not have to spend time shopping in the city center on busy weekends. Shopping locally is getting easier. Harry made a lot of advertisements on THE BEE to attract customers, and the oil stove, bedroom and dining table were his most advertised products. One such ad suggests that smart housewives can buy a three-drawer princess dressing table with an oval mirror and curved drawers, decorated with exquisite carvings, for $18.50.

At the same time, Benton Furniture Company, located near the corner of 13th Avenue and Umatilla, provides workers with second-hand and affordable furniture, as well as "fine lines of lawn mowers and oil stoves." Other companies, such as the TF Bridges hardware and furniture store, provide complete furnishings-but advertisements for paint, wallpaper and builders' supplies indicate that they are actually more like a hardware store than a real furniture store.

In fact, living near furniture companies may make many residents feel uneasy, because in those days, Portland seems to have suffered a tragic fire. It is not uncommon for shops filled with wooden chairs, carpets, carpets, wood chips, varnish cleaners, and/or other flammable products to catch fire and threaten to burn down the entire community.

On the morning of Friday, September 6, 1918, Seywood witnessed such a catastrophic fire. Passengers waiting for the tram to reach 13th Street noticed smoke emanating from the back room of Saywood Furniture Company. Fortunately, the Sellwood Fire Station (Sellwood Fire Station) was only one block on the street and arrived within minutes. However, because there was no pump on hand and the water pressure of the fire hydrant was very low, the spread of the flame caused the fire chief to ask the other six fire stations for help.

Fire trucks and emergency vehicles responded from as far as No. 35 and southeast of Belmont, and an old carriage near Woodstock (Portland's last horse team) galloped up to help extinguish the flames. After the fire was put out, fearless spectators spent several hours transporting damaged livestock from the burnt building to a vacant store two blocks away. Obviously, not many people worried about inhaling dangerous smoke and smoke after a fire broke out at that time. Harry Black decided not to reopen his Seywood furniture store. Either he was discouraged by the delay in reconstruction, or he just found a cheap rental place. Although he and his wife continued to live in Sellwood, he opened a new store, Black's Furniture Store, in Lents on 92 and SE Foster Road (Lents).

However, in the second year, Seewood had a new furniture store, and the new owner Charles Shaw launched his own brand new "Chas. Shaw Furniture Store" with a flat glass storefront.

In the next 30 years, Chas. Shaw is a successful furniture store located at the southeast corner of 13 Tacoma Street and Southeast Tacoma Street, attracting motorists and commuters through busy intersections.

In 1949, the Shaw Furniture Store moved to Westmoreland, Charles' sons Robert and Kenneth took over the shares of "Chas. Shaw Furniture" until 1980 The final liquidation sale ended on January 30, and this store became the last scene of a conventional shopping destination in this ancient enterprise. This development led to Saywood’s pioneering furniture store owner Harry Black (Harry Black) decided to return from Lents to introduce "Black Sewood" to the public at the same corner of the 13th and Tacoma, but this time by his son Donald Black controls.

However, we haven't delved into this subject yet-because from the 1920s to the 1950s, in addition to Shaw's and Black's furniture stores, residents also had other choices of new and old furniture. Only a few of them are the Harvey Furniture Exchange (now called Spencer's Antiques) on 13th Street in Sellwood and the ideal furniture company run by Frank Busch along 17th Street. At the end of the discussion, we must point out that there is still a furniture store that has been opened in Sellwood so far-25 years old, and its name is familiar: Sellwood Furniture. It is located on SE 17 Street in Umatilla Street, next to the railroad tracks and spring trails. Nowadays, you can buy furniture in various shops around Portland...but is there nothing better than "local shopping"?

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