SOUTHEAST HISTORY
Restaurants, cafés, and the special of the day!
By DANA BECK
Special to THE BEE
The old town of Sellwood, and the newer community of Westmoreland, have seen a lot of changes from the days in 1882 when life revolved around the commercial district on Umatilla Street.
By the 1920s you could find a corner grocery on practically every block, and there were many meat markets to choose from. In the 1940s and 50s, when the automobile was king, you could find a gas station nearby, and sometimes more than one at a single intersection. Residents had many services to choose from in the early years – from furniture and clothing stores to pharmacies, from barber shops and bakeries to bars – you could even buy a new automobile along Milwaukie Avenue!
For entertainment, four movie theaters once existed in the neighborhood (we’ll get to them later). But who remembers any of the first restaurants? Were there any? And when exactly did they first arrive?
Traveling to downtown Portland via the Sellwood Ferry and back was usually an all-day affair – and when travelers returned, they were hungry. Mrs. Randall’s boarding house at the corner of S.E. 11th and Umatilla was then a preferred place to enjoy an evening meal – at least, if you were living there.
The boarding houses near Umatilla Street provided living quarters for many individuals, but they also could offer guests and visitors an overnight room, which included a morning and evening meal. For those needing lunch as well, they might have to buy a slice of meat and bread at the market, or pay an extra fee to the proprietor of the boarding house for the extra meal.
Temporary workers, and workers new to Sellwood, could also visit one of the saloons at the corner of 17th and Umatilla to find something to eat. Fredrick Clayton’s and Jules Rostian’s Saloons offered free food along with their drinks or spirits, and those who were checked in at the St. Charles across the street could also get meals there. In the late 1890s, there just weren’t any cafés or restaurants here. Most of Portland’s sit-down restaurants, then, were still only to be found on the west side of the Willamette River, and were mainly patronized by the wealthy or the upper-class. The working folks resorted to cheap and sparsely-furnished cafés with simple and conventional meals.
And so, Rostein’s and Clayton’s food offerings were nothing special in the culinary department – a light lunch might consist of cold cuts, yellow cheese, beans, stalks of celery, pretzels, rye bread – perhaps smoked herring; and occasionally a hard-boiled egg. In return for a free or cheap meal, patrons were expected to buy a few beers, liquor, or a glass of hard cider. Only boarding houses offered large farm-style meals of roasted meat, fried chicken, soups, mashed potatoes and gravy, and biscuits – and perhaps homemade pie, with non-alcoholic drinks like lemonade, tea, coffee, and water.
The second meal of the day in boarding houses was usually served between the hours of 2 and 5 p.m. – and you had to be prompt, or there wouldn’t be much left after the hungry men already there got served! When the dinner bell rang, people gathered in the common room, sat at twenty-foot-long tables with bench seats – referred to as communal tables – and sometimes they sat shoulder-to-shoulder with the boarding house’s owners’ own family members.
Menus weren’t offered; guests and boarders had to be content with whatever the cook brought to the table. Large platters of meat and mashed potatoes were passed around, and it was a free-for-all as hungry diners loaded their plates sky-high to ensure they got enough to eat. Eating was fast-paced, with little time for conversation. But there was always room for a large slice of apple pie and coffee afterward.
The only listed restaurant in Sellwood in the 1916 “Portland City Directory” was a café run by Mrs. E.E. Hoard. Mrs. Hoard set up her diner in what was once Mrs. M.E. Crane’s Millinery Shop. At an earlier time, that building was occupied by O.H. Wallberg’s Real Estate.
Hockinson and Herber’s Grocery was just across the street, so if Mrs. Hoard ran short of anything needed for the evening meal, she could simply send a boy across the road to buy it.
During this time, and indeed well into the Twentieth Century, restaurants only catered to men, couples, or a women accompanied by a man; it was unusual to find a single woman or a group of ladies sitting together in a diner or restaurant for an evening out. That probably would explain why Sellwood’s women’s “Lavender Club”, established in 1917 with close to 40 members, evidently never met at a café for their afternoon lunches.
As advertised in THE BEE at that time by the Lavender Club, ladies were reminded not to forget to furnish their own teacup and spoon for their next luncheon get-together. It seems that respectable restaurants weren’t then expected to serve women.
Saloons and beer parlors profited from serving spirits and hard drinks, so when the Oregon Legislature implemented a statewide prohibition on the selling and serving of beer in 1916, it effectively closed down most of Oregon’s drinking establishments and beer joints. With only beverages like buttermilk or sarsaparilla to serve to patrons, taverns and bar room managers were expected also to serve enticing meals to satisfy their clientele.
Many of them weren’t up to the task; this was the beginning of Confectionaries and Sweet Shops. Flavored soft drinks and carbonated sodas started being served in place of alcoholic beverages, as soda fountains entered American history. These began showing up in residential neighborhoods, as a section of pharmacies around town, and serving as lunch counters in department stores downtown in big cities.
The varieties of soda flavors offered there were endless, and some customers came to a soda fountain just to watch the clerk behind the counter present an acrobatic display of mixing ingredients before the customers’ eyes – but confectionary owners knew they had to offer more to their patrons than just a few fizzy drinks. The resulting menu would include light lunches and daily specials, and soon they were attracting afternoon crowds, ladies’ socials, and especially the young people who gathered there to socialize with friends.
Pharmacies soon followed the trend that confectionaries had started, remodeling their stores to include a soda fountain counter for patrons; and soft drinks and noon lunches were added to drug store services. The Westmoreland Pharmacy and the Monarch Pharmacy, on opposite sides of the intersection of S.E. Milwaukie and Bybee Boulevard in Westmoreland, were packed every weekend with teenagers in the afternoon, and then couples and families in the evening – especially after the movie was over at the Moreland Theater, which today is still a neighborhood fixture half a block north.
The Livingston Pharmacy at 13th and S.E, Umatilla in Sellwood installed their own fountain counter, and offered lunch and light evening dinners to their own patrons. It quickly became a hangout for school children from Sellwood School (today, Sellwood Middle School), just two blocks away – who spent hours browsing the magazine section and consuming sodas.
As Sellwood’s population grew, so did its businesses and industries. Workers were being hired at the Eastside Lumber Company and at the Oregon Water Power and Railway Car Barns. The Oregon Worsted Plant (predecessor of today’s Mill Ends Store), south of Sellwood – and the Peerless Laundry Company along Tacoma Street – attracted as employees women who wanted a career beyond simply being a housewife.
The Sellwood Eastside Lumber Company, the Oregon Door Company, and the Eastside Box Factory employed between 300 and 500. With such a large amount of lumber being processed, John P. Miller – the owner of the Sellwood Mill – operated two shifts. Realizing that he needed to provide sufficient living quarters and meals for his workers, Miller built the Palatine Hotel at 7th and S.E. Tacoma, just a block from the industrial area. The Palatine Cafeteria, open on the street level of his hotel, was equipped to serve home-style breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for his hungry guests, day and night.
When the evening whistle blew at the end of the day at the Lumber Mill and Door Factory, the workers, and other hungry and thirsty laborers nearby, would trudge up Spokane Street for an evening dinner and a cold drink at the Leipzig Café on 13th Avenue. With only a few small dining tables and a long lunch counter, Peter and Helen opened “The Leipzig” in 1923, offering small meals like sandwiches, coffee, pies, and soft drinks. Teenagers frequented its lunch counter for sodas and ice cream during the midafternoons, while local residents often showed up later at the Leipzig after a night on the town.
Entertainment was plentiful in Sellwood in those days, with feature films playing at the Star, the Sellwood, and the Isis movie theaters. The Isis was on the corner of Spokane Street, near the Leipzig Café. The Moreland Theater outlasted them all and still is a neighborhood tradition in Westmoreland.
Other entertainments available might include an exhausting evening of dancing, playing cards, or just general socializing at the Griessen Building, or at Strahlman’s Hall. Almost every weekend there was some sort of event, music recital, or a festival being celebrated on 13th Avenue, and hundreds of people turned out for those.
Back in 1909 the Oregon Water Power and Railway Company built a seven-bay streetcar barn by Ochoco Street. Most of the crew worked evening and graveyard shifts, since the trolley cars and interurbans had to be in working order for the 7 a.m. start of light rail service the next morning.
A timekeepers’ structure was built in 1910, standing just west of the Sellwood Carbarns. Dispatch clerks and railway supervisors used the offices on the first floor, while a reading room, and billiard and card tables were available on the second floor for use by trolley car workers during their down time – after work, and between split shifts. Sleeping cots were provided in the basement for new hires who had yet to secure permanent living quarters.
Another café and eatery that catered to the working crowd was McClincy’s Restaurant, across the street from these Carbarns at 13th and S.E. Linn Street. Once the busy employees of the Springwater Interurban were done with work in the early morning, they could hop over to McClincy’s Cafe for a hearty breakfast and hot coffee or tea. This place was so successful that under various names the café continued serving residents and workmen through the 1930s and 1940s. By 1930, Charles Dellinger had taken over the restaurant, and changed its name to Dell’s Café. C.A. Miles became the next owner, when it was called the Beverly Ann Café. This went on to become not only a favorite breakfast place for streetcar workers, but also all the other residents of the Sellwood neighborhood, well into the late 1950s.
Early cafés had few amenities and simple food menus. First-time owners generally lacked marketing skills – both in the way their business looked, and in finding a memorable or catchy name for customers could remember. Maybe they were just too busy in the kitchen taking care of customer orders for any of that.
Oscar Miller operated his own café at 13th and S.E. Miller Street, and it was named just that – Oscar Miller’s. Nothing in the name Oscar Miller’s suggested to any potential customers what type of food was offered, or even indicated where the café was located. Patrons who frequented the place probably referred to it as “Oscar’s”.
Not far away, R.E. Ripley served lunch and dinner at his own café at 13th and S.E. Umatilla – and, by the 1960s, it had become the iconic “Black Cat Tavern”. Many Sellwood residents still remember spending a Saturday night at the Black Cat, but few have ever mentioned to me its predecessor – R.E. Ripley’s restaurant.
Speaking of the Black Cat, that café officially adopted the name in 1935, and originally was a celebrated lunch stop for merchants and business owners situated on the west side of 13th Avenue. Geraldine and Oliver Morgan later bought it, and moved the Black Cat Sandwich Shop back across the street to the northeast corner on Umatilla. By 1950, its latest new owner, William Larsen – who loved sports and drinking beer – enlarged it to twice its previous size, added three shuffleboard tables, included beer and wine on the food list, and called it the Black Cat Tavern.
That’s the name it carried until its recent closing and removal for the construction of the high-rise apartment building that now stands on that corner in its place.
The Maple Restaurant did have an appealing name for a diner in the 1920’s. It became a favorite place for families’ and fraternal organizations’ get-togethers. During the Holiday Season, reservations were required, and many community events were scheduled to take place there. When Sellwood’s semi-pro team won the greater Portland City baseball championship in 1927 a special dinner was prepared at the Maple Restaurant – free of charge – for these heroes of the neighborhood.
Two years later, as the Great Depression descended on the land (and really, the entire world), restaurants were hard-pressed to bring in enough customers to survive; it seemed that most of the workforce had become unemployed, and few had extra spending money for eating out. Consequently, eating places had to offer cheap meals to attract patrons. Some cafés – usually those located near unemployment offices, or work-relief headquarters – advertised meals at discount prices. Their menu specials, written on a chalkboard posted outside the front door, included such as Salmon Salad, American Cheese Sandwiches, Chopped Egg Salad, Rice Pudding, and Sardine Sandwiches – all for as little as a dime per item. Alas, sometimes the hungry person looking in the window couldn’t even afford that.
Westmoreland saw an upsurge in cafés in 1939, when the Great Depression was waning; and with the completion of the Oregon City Super 99 Highway. Motorists from all over east Portland could now travel down the newly-created McLoughlin Boulevard to their favorite stops in Milwaukie, Oregon City, and to the many destinations on “Highway 99” all the way down into California. The new “super highway” also provided fast and efficient transportation for residents who lived in Clackamas County, but worked in Portland. Once commuters began using this limited-access road to get home, restaurants and gas stations began popping up beside it. Motorists were enticed by such diners such as the Millstream Inn, the Brookside Restaurant, and Vic’s Drive-In.
The Brookside Restaurant, just south of the Millstream, advertised the opportunity to dine on their patio on steaks, Southern Fried Chicken “just like mom made”, Fish and Chips, and hamburgers.
The Millstream Inn originally appeared as a family-friendly restaurant, complete with a children’s menu and a show-stopping giant water-pumping windmill that rotated outside the front door, to attract the attention of passers-by. But when night clubs became popular in the 1950s, the Millstream was the first local restaurant to change to one. The new Millstream offered dinners, live music, and cocktails for those over 21. Customers were treated to live bands and entertainment six nights a week; ladies were offered free gardenias; and the restaurant installed an electric organ, advertised as “the latest in musical instruments”. Chicken and steak dinners were their specialty.
Portland embraced the nightclub scene and cocktail clubs. They had fancy names like “Top O’ Scott”, on Sunnyside Road; “Forbidden City”, at 117th and N.E. Sandy; the “Tillicum Club”; and the “Division Street Corral”, which specialized in Country and Western live bands. The “Monte Carlo” offered dancing and Italian food; and some senior citizens still remember “Flanagan’s” at 82nd and S.E. Powell. Of course, the “Crystal Ballroom”, with its floating dance floor, was high on the list for expert dancers.
In Westmoreland, which was promoted as “Portland’s best place to eat in Southeast”, the “Jack N Box” restaurant and coffee shop opened to great fanfare. Located on the southwest corner of Glenwood Street and Milwaukie Avenue, the Jack N Box was unique – in that along with its brick façade, large display windows, and glass door, it had a 20-foot Jack N Box figurehead that greeted customers as they entered.
Lawrence Merriwether opened the Jack N Box primarily as a coffee shop, although from the start it also offered hamburgers and ham sandwiches as specialties on its menu. A café with such long hours is expensive to operate, and Merriwether struggled to make ends meet, eventually closing it for a time.
It reopened under new management: Clifford A. Borgan turned the coffee shop into a full-scale restaurant, adding breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus – opening as early as 6 a.m. and continuing until late at the night, closing at 2 a.m. A customer base never really materialized – and by the 1940’s the Jack N Box had closed for good and the building sported a neon sign announcing “Kinney’s Siberrian Cream and Coffee”. (Yes, Siberian was spelled that way on their sign.) Today, it is the location of Westmoreland Cleaners.
Westmoreland, and businesses along the commercial part of S.E. 17th Avenue, saw their share of cafés and small diners during World War II. The Ochoco Inn, and Frank and Jack’s Café near Harney Street, came and went. The Gottschalk Café, the Penguin Café, and Kay’s Café and Lounge on Milwaukie Avenue, all presented themselves as family sit-down restaurants when they first opened – but later found more success when they turned into bars serving beer, wine, and hard liquor. The signs for each changed to “Sellwood Saloon”, “Penguin Pub”, and “Kay’s Bar and Grill”.
Sellwood’s most iconic restaurant, “The Anchorage” overlooking the Willamette south of Tacoma Street, was touted citywide as “Portland’s only waterfront restaurant”. As the Oregonian newspaper reported, in 1945 an ex-tugboat captain and Portland policeman Roy Herlbert had bought a two-block section of property along the river from the Portland Rowing Club. Installing a new marina nearby within the following two years, Herlbert purchased a floating building to be a snack bar and coffee shop for boaters who moored their crafts near his docks.
With a wonderful view of the Willamette River, it wasn’t long before Roy and his wife decided to build a formal river-view restaurant. Designed by R.O. Marks, the 40 x 80-foot structure had large glass windows that ran the length of the 90-foot deck, offering stunning views of the Willamette and the watercraft upon it. There was a second-floor private dining room with seating available for up to one hundred, and over the next quarter century groups of from 160 to 180n filled the restaurant to capacity.
Herlberts’ “The Anchorage” was so successful that he added additional seating in 1955, covering the walls with decorative knotty pine. The old floating snack bar which started it all was sold to the Vancouver Yacht Club as a clubhouse, and was towed north to Vancouver.
The Anchorage was a popular restaurant for business clubs, women’s auxiliary clubs, fashion shows, fraternal organizations’ festivities, wedding receptions, and even Chamber of Commerce events. The City of Portland and Clackamas County held annual meetings there. Governor Mark Hatfield was invited by the Christian Businessmen’s Committee to be the guest speaker at the Anchorage at their meeting in 1963.
But when he was not allowed to further expand his restaurant by the Portland City Planners, Roy Herlbert sold his property, and the site was demolished and built in its place was an 83-unit townhouse and apartment complex called “Portarbour Marina”. The former Anchorage Marina now boasts 157 new boat slips, and later – for a time – it provided a location for Salty’s Seafood Restaurant in the mid 1980’s.
But there is one diner I haven’t mentioned yet. How can I write about the restaurants of Sellwood and Westmoreland without mentioning Bertie Lou’s?
Bertie Lou’s opened in 1945 – a bit before World War II ended. At that time, over 97,000 men were still working on behalf of the “war effort” at the Kaiser Shipyards in North Portland. Because the City of Portland was short of housing for all these people, a new community – the Kellogg Creek Housing Development, with over a hundred new homes – was constructed just south of Sellwood, on the east side of S.E. 17th and just south of Ochoco Street, where the Goodwill store is now.
Many of the workers living in this development, and elsewhere in Clackamas County, traveled north through Sellwood on their way to work, and it wasn’t unusual for Bertie Lou’s to be their first stop before the start of day at the Yards. Bertie Lou’s was the center of what became a daily ritual – a breakfast and lunch stop for workers from the Kellogg Creek Housing Development, at all times of the day and night.
Lady workers at the Kaiser Yards were especially welcome at this little establishment. The luncheonette had only nine seats and a counter when it opened, with no tables available for extra seating. Customers were encouraged to order a brown bag lunch to go, to stop for a quick morning coffee to start the workday, or to stop by and end the evening with a piece of pie. According to local legend, H.E. Hall presented the dainty diner as a graduation present to his two daughters. The café was named after them – Bertie, and Lou.
The business survived the end of the rush from the workers at the Kaiser Shipyards at the end of the war, and it persists to this day at 8051 S.E. 17th Avenue in Sellwood. There still isn’t much seating inside, but there are a few tables on the sidewalk outside, and there’s a BEE newsstand there too.
The 1950s saw the start of local and franchised fast-food businesses; but most of those appeared elsewhere in Southeast. There was “The Speck”, attracting rowdy teenagers and their souped-up cars at the intersection of S.E. Foster Road and Powell Boulevard; and the Whiz Burger at 15th and Powell. Eastmoreland resident Robert W. Parks became part-owner and chef at the “Circle B Chuckwagon” restaurant at the eastern entrance of the Sellwood Bridge in 1957. Bob worked there for about six years, until he sold his half of it to Lloyd Jack Bruce.
However two notable fast-food emporiums did open and thrived in the Sellwood-Moreland neighborhood for many years; the first was Westmoreland’s Dairy Queen, at Tolman Street and Milwaukie Avenue – only very recently demolished to make way for a new branch of Chase Bank.
And then there was the iconic, locally-owned Mike’s Drive-In at Tenino and S.E. 17th – sold to a developer not long ago for construction of a large apartment complex that stands there now. But many in the neighborhood still make the short trip to Milwaukie to patronize Mike’s there, at Harrison and Highway 224. (It was closed last year by a catastrophic accident in which a car drove into the front of the building; but lengthy repairs have finally been completed, and it will soon reopen there, if it hasn’t already done so by the time this issue of THE BEE appears.)
Cafés and restaurants come and go, and people’s food tastes change. Sellwood was once bustling with coffee shops and antique stores; now its streets are filled with a wide variety of food choices. Everything from pizza, Italian, Thai, and barbeque – to food carts, bento food, fine wine, along with the taverns and cocktail joints which today are making a comeback.
But, if you will allow me a personal opinion to end my reminiscence this month, I still find that – for a taste of the neighborhood’s old-time restaurants – nothing beats breakfast at Bertie Lou’s, at S.E. 17th and Spokane.
