Longfellow's Books (Brian Libby)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
Recently, by sheer coincidence, I visited two former neighborhood grocery-store buildings in Southeast Portland, each dating to the early 20th century, and each the longtime compound of a particular kind of Portland dreamer.
For some 20 years now, I'd been walking past Longfellow's Books on Division Street. It's not that I'd never been inside; from time to time I'd browsed its stacks of old books and magazines. But Longfellow's wasn't the kind of place you went to find a new literary release, and from the outside it could seem a little, dare I say it, unwelcoming because all the windows were blocked so you couldn't see inside. There was a good reason for this: light can damage old tomes. But it reminded me of taverns when I was growing up, and how all of them seemed to have no windows, as if sunlight would endanger the night creatures huddled inside. Be it retail or food & drink, I like transparency.
Except one day a few weeks ago, walking past Longfellow's I stopped in my tracks when I noticed something had changed, for the first time in decades. All the clutter and screens were gone from the windows, allowing sunlight to pour into the suddenly mostly-empty store. I could finally see inside. But wait, where were the thousands of books?
Soon afterward I discovered that the longtime owner of Longfellow's, Jon Hagen, had recently passed away, and that the store was closing. Curious to learn more about the building's fate, I soon found myself having an audience with Hagen's son, Nile, who co-ran the store for the past decade.
Entering Longfellow's, I soon learned that Nile hadn't simply exposed the south-facing windows on the Division Street side. He'd also uncovered the original wood floors, and the massive old growth Douglas fir columns and ceiling beams. It turned out that this two-story building, dating to 1926, was a little gem waiting to be uncovered. The other primary wall, known for a delightfully amateurish mural depicting Alice in Wonderland, was actually covering even more windows. Then there was the skylight over the stairway in the apartment upstairs, also long covered, but now again unveiled. He said the renovation he pursued was practical—to learn just what kind of physical structure he had, and what value. "Before I started digging into the building itself, I thought it might not be able to stand," he said. "But it’s in good shape."
Inside Longfellow's mid-renovation and with a few books remaining (Brian Libby)
Yet the renovation also seemed to do something more: to provide a bit of catharsis as Nile mourned his father. "I just love sitting here in the sun," he told me. "To think this glass was here the whole time, it's crazy."
As I wrote in a recent Portland Tribune column about the store, this little building stands alone, a mixed-use structure that's not part of a retail high street. It's a unique triangle-shaped building thanks to the angular streets of the Ladd's Addition neighborhood it borders, erected in 1926 as a grocery store and butcher shop by the Crucciolla family, who, like the Hagens, lived upstairs. The patriarch, Mr. Crucciolla, passed away right there in the building, and Jon Hagen too lived out his final days there. It's as if those who occupy this structure become so part of the building that they become an inseparable part of its story.
As I got talking with Hagen, he made it clear that he intended to sell the building, but also that he was looking for a certain kind of buyer. In particular, he seemed to know that this structure could easily wiped away for the taller building that zoning allows. Its modest size means city-mandated seismic bracing isn't necessary, but only if you don't expand its modest 3,900 square feet. "The investor set doesn't get it," Nile Hagen says. "The magic is in the history."
Back in 1939, Longfellow's was the Crucciollas' grocery store (courtesy Nile Hagen)
Normally, I never write about buildings and properties that are for sale. I don't want my writing to become advertising for the transaction. But in the case of Longfellow's, I'm making an exception because the sale itself is tied to this 92-year-old building's fate.
I wondered why Hagen, a visual artist when he wasn't running his dad's store, had no interest in keeping Longfellow's going. After all, with light newly pouring in, I couldn't help but wonder how he could remake the store, perhaps changing up the selection to move from collectible old volumes toward a curated collection of more recent and classic books. But it turned out the issue wasn't that Nile wasn't the natural-born bookseller his machinist-turned-bibliophile father was, but instead that he'd been turned off by gentrification.
"It’s such an intimate space for me. This is sacred ground. But today Division is a tourist street. I find myself having interactions that I don’t find to be life-affirming. It just hasn’t felt like home. Eight or ten years ago, almost everybody who came in was interested in saying hello. Now it’s about two in ten." That's what his father liked too, and what kept Longfellow's going: the ongoing conversations between owners and regular patrons.
The Hagens outside Longfellow's, yesterday (Nile Hagen) and today (Jonathan House)
The modest but long existence of Longfellow's also says something about the neighborhood and such close-in neighborhoods in Portland: that their fundamental affordability was an attractive force for creative people and those disinclined toward the rat race. Eventually, neighborhoods like this have seen a lot of investment and many new businesses and buildings, which in many ways is great. But it's also meant the end of that affordability. "We were able to lead a bohemian life here because it wasn’t cool," Nile says. "It became cool so it became expensive, and so the cool moved out. It’s all cyclical."
"It’s time to let someone else live their dreams here," he added. "But we’d like to find the right steward for the building." When that does happen, you can expect Nile Hagen to head south. He says the desert is calling him. But I want what Nile wants: for someone to buy this building with a dream of living above the store, in the old merchant tradition. Or failing that, at least let the building remain mixed-use; rent out the residence above and encourage any kind of retail that can't be rendered obsolete by Amazon. Or better yet, defy Amazon with the fact that as easy as an online click and a UPS delivery may be, or a download to your tablet, people still want to browse in bookstores. While most all bookstore chains other than Powell's have disappeared, in larger cities a number of brick-and-mortar bookstores are quietly starting to prosper again.
Meanwhile, last week I also visited another early 20th century former grocery store building, this one dating to 1913 and located on Southeast Lincoln Street near 54th Avenue: what's known as the Lincoln Street Kayak + Canoe Museum.
I had randomly passed the building a few months ago while reporting for another story, and immediately smiled at the sheer randomness of encountering a museum devoted to small watercraft tucked away in an otherwise purely residential setting. Like Longfellow's, there was no context of other mixed-use storefronts: just this little structure standing by itself on the corner.
The exterior of the Lincoln Street Kayak + Canoe Museum (Brian Libby)
Finally visiting a few days ago, I marveled at what must have been close to 50 kayaks and canoes inside. And they weren't just any kayaks and canoes. Each was a hand-built replica of a native watercraft, most of them belonging to tribes in cold climates of Alaska, Greenland and Scandinavia. It turns out the founder and proprietor of the Lincoln Street Kayak + Canoe Museum, Harvey Golden, is something of a self-taught expert on the history of native kayaks and canoes, having authored two books on the subject: Kayaks of Greenland and Kayaks of Alaska.
Talking with Golden, I was surprised that he was no outdoorsman growing up, and hadn't even caught his first fish until a few years ago. Instead, he got interested in arctic kayaks 20 years ago when he happened upon an exhibit of ancient Greenland kayaks at the Hull Maritime Museum in Humberside, England. Soon Golden was traveling to museums around Europe to learn more about these craft. Back at Evergreen College, he incorporated this newfound passion into his studies, getting credit for designing and hand-building replica craft.
And to his credit, Golden has managed to make the construction and study of arctic kayaks and canoes his living. The museum's inventory includes 76 different craft of Siberian, Unangan, and Inuit origin, all of which he built. In some cases, the materials cannot be completely faithful; Golden doesn't want to skin any seals for the waterproof exterior, for example, so he uses a replacement. But looking at them, you'd be hard-pressed to see them as anything but authentic. He also runs the publishing company behind the two books, White House Grocery Press, which occupies another early-20th-century neighborhood grocery store. Recently Golden added on to the Lincoln Street building, adding an apartment in back; while it's visible from certain angles, I don't think it compromises the integrity of the original structure.
Founder Harvey Golden and the museum's interior (Brian Libby)
These little retail buildings are dotted throughout Portland's so-called streetcar neighborhoods: the close-in districts especially on the east side that were built in the late 19th and especially the early 20th century. Zoning wasn't as explicit or extensive then, and many times people would incorporate small storefronts into their homes' properties, either in front or behind. On Hawthorne Boulevard at 42nd Avenue, for instance, not far away from the Lincoln Street Kayak + Canoe Museum, is a still-existing storefront that used to hold a barber shop operated by the father of longtime "Tonight Show" bandleader Doc Severinsen. They are anachronisms that would never be constructed today.
In many cases, it's a little surprising to see them still there, especially on what are now almost entirely commercial streets like Hawthorne. Yet just as they did for the original owners, they often provide opportunity to various entrepreneurs and nonprofiteers like Jon Hagen and Harvey Golden.
As the city journeys over these decades towards not just a much larger but also a denser place, there are small old houses and commercial buildings all over the city being torn down for structures newer and larger. Given that these little commercial buildings in particular are almost exclusively unreinforced masonry, they are the most vulnerable structures to earthquake, giving developers even more reason to raze them. Yet I keep rooting for buildings like these to remain.
In the case of the Lincoln Street Kayak + Canoe Museum, Golden actually invested in steel bracing a few years ago, so structurally it is particularly sound. But others are not (at least yet) so lucky. Even so, all the structures I've written about here are close in and are part of neighborhoods getting a lot of investment. With a little luck, maybe the gentrification that threatens them can also be a lifeline. I guess we'll see.
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