(Chamber of) Commerce Building (1892-1934)

It was 1890 or so, & wunderkind George B. Markle Jr., the Pennsylvanian transplant who had, shortly after his arrival in Portland, been instrumental in the revival & completion of building the Hotel Portland (aka, "Villard's ruins"), convinced the Portland Chamber of Commerce they should build a new HQ on the north side of west Stark street between 3rd & 4th Avenues.¹ Markle pledged his 2 banks as street-level tenants & secured a mortgage from New York Life Ins. Co. for its construction.

Ground was broken Sept. 2, 1890, but costs quickly accumulated, w/ overages to the tune of $170,000.² Undeterred, Markle personally secured funding to complete construction. The 8-floor Chamber of Commerce Building, designed by Isaac Hodgson, Jr., opened to the public in September of 1892.


Hailed as the NW's premiere office space (love that circa 1890-1910 Portland boosterism!), the Commerce Building (as it was called in later days) boasted the aforementioned banks, an auditorium, "the prestigious Commercial Club," a bowling alley, saloons, & a billiard room.³

However, the completion of the Commerce Building happened to neatly coincide w/ the run on gold, which lowered U.S. federal reserves to their statutory minimums. The Panic of 1893 was in full swing. Markle's banks closed for good before they could ever set up shop at their new location. New York Life foreclosed on the Commerce Building mortgage. Markle eventually returned to Pennsylvania.

In 1906 NYLife sold the building to the Spokane Portland & Seattle Railroad. A few years later, deeming the Commerce Building "too old fashioned" the SP&S then its local offices to the newer American Bank Building (completed in 1913). In the shadow of the Great Depression, SP&S, citing the tax & maintenance costs, & claiming that a remodel would be "too expensive & impractical," had the building demolished in 1934.⁴ The lot was used, & is still used, as a parking lot.

So when you pass Stark at 3rd & 4th, stand in wonder at that 70+ year-old parking lot.⁵

-d.d.



¹ Furthermore, he was key role in organizing the N. Pacific Industrial Assoc., Portland Tanning, Columbia Fire & Marine Insurance, Portland Traction, the Commercial Bank of Vancouver, NW Loan & Trust, & the Oregon National Bank, to name a few, all amply assisted by his father's fortune. Markle Sr. was the founder of Jeddo-Highland Coal in the Scranton area &, along w/ Thomas Edison, built the 1st 2 coal-fired electrical power plants in the U.S.A. Markle Jr. came to Portland because he felt it was the young city that was going somewhere. For more on Markle see MacColl, E. Kimbark, The Shaping of a City: Business & Politics in Portland, Oregon 1885 to 1915 (Georgian Press Co., Portland 1976), p. 81-108.
² MacColl, p. 85. $170,000 in 1890 is about, say, maybe, $29,000,000.
³ ibid.
⁴ ibid., p. 88
⁵ Seriously. I mean, Portland has its share of parking lots where once-proud buildings stood, for sure. But the majority of those buildings, as far as I know, were demolished in the late 40s & early 50s, for which I can't really blame anyone - that was the price of progress, then. But 70+ years, a parking lot?!?

The Boss Saloon: A Den of Scullduggery. (1870s-1940s)

The Boss Saloon in later, less scandalous times.
Before the Willamette was bridged, river crossing was via ferry. One such ferry, beginning around 1870, ran from Flanders St. on the west bank to a spot where the current Steel Bridge makes landfall on the east bank.¹ On the west side, between Davis & Flanders, stood a 2-story waiting room building of the "flatiron" design: triangular w/ 3 sides.

In 1888, when ferry service ended after the 1st Steel Bridge was completed, the building became a saloon, moonlighting as a hiring hall for sailors to serve the grain ships which docked nearby. Not suprisingly, it was also, purportedly, a hotbed for shanghai-ing.²


Portland harbor in 1906.
According to legend, the Portland Merchants Exchange was birthed at the Boss.

a bartender, tired of answering questions, put up a blackboard behind his bar to list incoming ships and their berths for the information of sailors and waterfront gentry.

The exchange was organized and incorporated in 1879, the same year the O&CRR Ferry No. 2 was launched, and moved "uptown" to First and Ankeny streets.³

In later years the saloon became a simple eatery, "Boss Lunch."

I'm sure it was demolished no later than the 1940s to make way for Harbor Drive (subsequently transformed into Waterfront Park).

-d.d.



¹ This ferry was essentially a shuttle service to the terminal of Henry Villard's (& subsequently Ben Holladay's) Oregon & California RR, which also owned the ferry. Holladay would later build Portland's 1st horse-drawn steetcar line to shuttle RR/ferry passengers south into "downtown" Portland.
² Perhaps more of a nerve center for Portland's shanghai system. Famous crimper Jim Turk used it as a base. Turk, reportedly, shanghai-ed his own son!! By the Willie Week (great article, btw), Turk is buried

Close by the corner of 20th and Morrison one finds the grave of hard-drinking Jim Turk, one of Portland's most infamous shanghai specialists, who sent many a drunk and unconscious lumberman to sea via the mildewed tunnels beneath Old Town; in death, Turk masquerades as little more than a wealthy pillar of local industry.

Further tales of Turk & fellow crimpers Larry Sullivan & Jim 'Bunco' Kelly include Kelly (who crimped 50 men in 3 hours, once) discovering 20 dead men who

had apparently found a keg in the cellar of a saloon and drunk heartily. It turned out, however, that they were actually in the mortuary next door and had drunk embalming fluid (formaldehyde) instead! Not a man to waste an opportunity, Kelly sold the bodies to an unsuspecting captain for $52 each ($2.00 over the going rate) because he had managed to get the men so “dead drunk” that they surely wouldn’t awaken until well out at sea.

Of course, if your are familiar w/ Portland in the end of the 1800s none of this should come as a surprise. Still, you should read this comic.
³ You can read about the Boss, & mainly abt what became of the 2nd ferry for which people awaited at the Boss, here.