“There it was that sailors rested from drunkenness, or held carousal, and slouching men of the woods played greasy cards on a greasy table. Only the ghost of laughter walks where once the nickelodeons blared their tunes into the night. It is the summary and long-delayed reformation of Burnside street. It is the finish of the North End, of which that very district was once the heart.”
— “The Reformation of Burnside,” The Oregonian, Nov. 1, 1923
IN A GROWING and evolving Portland, the Old Town of 2018 is changing rapidly. While firsthand accounts from a few decades ago are fine, perhaps a look at an epoch that no one living will recall will shed a little “Old Timey Portland” light to the topic at hand. What follows is a snapshot of a few block area of Portland’s past, from roughly 1880 to 1910.
Early in that time span, everyone called the space we know as Old Town by the name “Whitechapel.” This was with more than just a passing hat-tip to the London, England, neighborhood of the same name. Whitechapel was Portland’s vice district. The moniker was noteworthy, for “its derivation reflects the ocean-port flavor of Portland’s early waterfront as well as the lifestyles, perils, and sexual recreations the area offered,” urban historian Chris Sawyer wrote in his 1985 thesis, “From Whitechapel to Old Town: The Life and Death of the Skid Row District, Portland, Oregon.”
A short while later, this zone came to be more commonly called “the North End,” but also “the Bad Lands,” the disreputable district, or simply the tenderloin. It was “a suppressed underworld, where congregated the flotsam and jetsam of the under crust.” Portland’s elected officials and power elite (often one and the same) allowed the vice district to thrive within these confines, as all the immoral activity was good for business. Except for an occasional crusade spurred on by outraged citizens, the North End was “wide open” for decades.
As the Western United States became conquered and exploited, multitudes of laboring men were necessary to sustain the process. Brawn desired over brain. Cities with communication networks (rail junctions, waterfronts) became a nexus for temporary labor or “casual labor,” as it was termed. Urban districts developed in these towns, usually a few blocks from these terminus points, that catered to these working men. Cheap, transient housing, employment agencies and entertainment options that often-included vice settled in these districts. Portland was no different.
Laboring men came to Portland in scores to find work. Not necessarily jobs within the city, but often temporary gigs in the hinterlands of the Pacific Northwest.
FURTHER READING: The Portland IWW: Revolution and music
These jobs would typically be of a pretty low skill level but necessitating a high requirement of burliness. Resource extraction was the was the name of the game, and there were typically lots of employment opportunities across the region. Cutting grass and hay in eastern Washington. Canning salmon in Astoria. Working in a logging camp down by Roseburg. Hauling the rigging on a sailing ship.
The work would be seasonal, for long hours, and not for very much pay. But when the job concluded, the laboring man would have at least some cold hard cash, and he would likely head back to P-Town to find his next position. Many of these men secured work in the spring that kept them employed through the fall, when they would come back to Portland and winter over in the North End. The residents of the North End often had oodles of free time (and not much money) on their tired, calloused hands.
As one would expect, all manner of firms sprang up in the district like pretty little roses to help these hard-working men part with that hard-earned cash. Saloons. Pool halls. Card rooms. Beer halls. Bordellos. Variety shows. Oyster bars. Dance rooms. Cheap hotels and flop houses. Pawn shops. Shooting galleries. Many of these establishments that had operated in today’s Old Town provided an infrastructure that catered to these men’s wants, fantasies and desires, but also to their basic needs (food, shelter, community). But above all the rest, the institution of the saloon was integral to these men’s day-to-day life in Portland.
SAWYER WROTE, “In addition to liquid refreshments, the saloon provided a host of social and protective services for the urban poor, in general, and the homeless male, in particular.” Many saloons in Portland operated as “combination houses,” which included the booze serving area, little rooms (or “cribs”) where sleep or sex trade could take place, a dining option and a separate area for gambling or dancing or live music – all in the convenience of one establishment.
Pacific Northwest historian Peter Boag boasted in his 2003 book “Same-Sex Affairs” that “the saloon acted as the central institution of male working-class America.” He detailed the services: check cashing, entertainment including gambling and other games, free food and newspapers, public toilets, and a scuttlebutt of employment opportunities. For many men, it offered a chance to get out of the cramped and less than ideal conditions of the lodging houses they stayed in and have another space to spend their waking hours.
Life wasn’t all smiles and sunshine for the North End resident. There was darkness to be found in the drinking halls near Burnside. While the saloons could be something like a social service for these folks, they could also be guilty of abetting an alcoholic’s spiral deeper into their addiction. And this predatory preconception was associated with many of the “dives” of the North End.
“The class of trade the respectable liquor dealers turn away is the very class the dive-keepers want,” according to a 1998 Oregonian article. “A drunken man is to them a gold producer. His eyes are dazzled by all sorts of pay-your-dollar schemes, and if he does not yield to them his money is taken from him.”
The saloons also contributed to the enslavement of a number of Portland sex workers, and some were in near destitute conditions, with “hardly a dollar between themselves and starvation,” according to an Oregonian article in 1895.
The North End could be a dangerous place. Period descriptions detail a population “swarming with holdup men, petty larcenists, bunco men and crooks of every description.” Drunken men were often “rolled,” or beaten up, and all their money taken, particularly between the late hours of 1 and 5 a.m. Some sex workers robbed their clients. Some sex workers were assaulted and even killed by their clients.
During this period, there were some more formal social services available in the North End, but nothing like what would be required to support so many idle laboring men for months at a time. The Church of Sea and Land (later renamed the Seaman’s Bethel or Mariner’s Home) was an early institution that assisted sailors and kept them safe from the ever-present predatory Portlanders. They would be sheltered, and reading rooms were available – but at a hefty, proselytizing price. For those who didn’t have other options, the central police station would also provide a night or two of lodging and a hot meal at the jail – without an extra helping of John 3:16.
By 1894, the Salvation Army’s location on Fifth and West Burnside offered a soup kitchen, dormitory lodging and free bathing to homeless men. A few other operations developed for those affected by poverty and a lack of work between seasonal jobs. Even the city employed some men to assist with construction and general city maintenance projects. More missions were established in Whitechapel during that decade, but the laborer was largely left to his own resources for support. The saloon culture helped fill that void.
In the 1890s, a crowd of cheap restaurants were available to those without much dough in the space we call Old Town today. For 10 to 15 cents, a full meal with steak, pork chops, fish or a roast, potatoes, a vegetable, bread and butter, coffee, milk, and a dessert or doughnut could be easily obtained. Five-cent meals were available if one looked, and The Good Health Restaurant (operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church) concocted vegetarian meals and sold them for just 1 cent. Boag, the historian, has written that some residents supplemented their protein with fish they caught in the Willamette, which bordered the district.
An Oregonian reporter canvassed the North End in 1898, surveying all the cheap eateries and lodging options and other services available to Portland’s working poor population. He estimated that one could secure appropriate food and shelter to sustain oneself for about 30 cents a day (or roughly $9 a day in today’s money). It’s hard to imagine being able to survive in 2019 Portland with basic needs met, primarily by private businesses, for only $300 a month.
Not that the rooming accommodations for these laborers were top-notch. Lodging houses were one of the cheapest forms of shelter, and they could be miserable places. “Flop house” might be too strong a term for these Portland rooming options, but the connotations associated with the term should be considered. Stinky and crowded, the men were typically required to vacate the premises during the day, and only come back in the evening. The houses could be dangerous at night. Cubicle hotels or “cage” hotels were a common form of budget lodging that at least suggested a bit of privacy and security. The rooms were crafted by hanging flimsy wood partitions to create a space about 5 or 6 feet by 7 feet – just about big enough for a bed, some hooks for clothing and maybe a chair. Chicken wire was stapled over the open ceiling to prevent theft.
There seemed to be a consistent collection of citizens, “the regular old-time rounders,” as an Oregonian reporter termed them in 1907, “who pick up a precarious living sponging on the various saloons of the district.” A significant portion of the population of the North End were men who were unable to work at all and had to live on handouts. There weren’t too many options for a logger who had been seriously injured on a woods work site, or an aged sailor whose body could no longer handle the rigors of the salty sea. The saloon provided a space for them.
The reporter visited a large North End saloon in 1907 and observed about 800 men inside, “the majority simply loafing around the halls.” He noted that some of them had money, but most were just hanging around to see the “moving pictures, listen to the canned music and, if their purses were not too low, buy an occasional drink.”
Many of the North End saloons offered a free lunch to their clientele. The business minded saw it as an opportunity to bring alcoholic-beverage-purchasing men into the saloons, have an excuse to keep them in the establishment for a few hours, and then provision them with suitably salty spread to encourage their thirst. The offerings at one saloon included a meat stew, rice soup, baked beans, cabbage, potato salad, bread and doughnuts. The buffet was so large that two workers were employed each day just to serve this free food. One establishment fed 5,800 patrons in one day.
While economic gain was obviously the intention of the free lunch, many of the North End saloons seemed to have had a soft spot for some of their neighbors who were more down on their luck. A proprietor of one of the larger saloons stated that there was no obligation for customers to purchase a drink to enjoy the spread.
“Some people have the impression that the free lunch counter is under the watchful eye of a bartender and the person who doesn’t buy a drink will be bounced from the saloon. That is not so,” according to the 1907 Oregonian article. “Anybody may come in, eat a full dinner and go out without buying a drink, and the bartender will never pay the least bit of attention. If a man is hungry and wants a meal, all he has to do is come here and he will get a free meal for nothing.”
And the men of the neighborhood weren’t the only ones who were partaking of a free lunch. Portland police patrol officers regularly stopped at saloons in the North End to enjoy a free lunch, usually with a complimentary whiskey or two or three to accompany their repast. This “bumming” had been a tradition for law enforcement for years and established a sort of tacit regulation and endorsement of the illicit activities that took place in the saloons.
The cozy arrangement became public in 1907. When Portland Mayor Harry Lane found out, he was concerned that free lunches and cocktails from saloon keepers might put his officers under obligations – which was a legitimate worry. But the progressive and judgy mayor also considered a derogatory and degrading denouncement of the dilemma.
“It’s the worst kind of bumming,” the mayor was quoted as saying. “Anybody that bums that way has no right to arrest a man for vagrancy!”
WITH TODAY'S Old Town now cluttered with Airbnb corporate offices, pour-over coffee shops, boutique hotels and their rooftop bars, and bright orange syringe caps all about the sidewalks, there are fewer of the reminders of the flavor of the older Old Town. But there is one vestige visible to the visitor of the neighborhood – the building that housed Erickson’s Saloon.
August Erickson (Gus) came to Portland in the 1880s determined to give the alcohol trade a shot. He created a monumental drinking establishment on the north side of West Burnside Street, between Second and Third. Erickson’s Saloon spanned an entire city block. Legend has it that the bar was 684 feet in length, but surely that’s all tall tales – nonetheless it was a really, really big bar. Three hundred drinkers could be served at the counter. It was an opulent location with ornate statuary and silver mirrors and giant gauche oil paintings of nudes hung about. It had the airs of an upmarket establishment, but Erickson really wanted to make it a resort for these working men in town, and his watering hole soon became known around the Pacific Northwest.
Remember, all these laboring men were eventually going to come to Portland, and by God, they would all stop in on Erickson’s Burnside concern. A 1905 reporter wrote, “Not to have visited Erickson’s Café is to have missed one of the sights of Portland.”
A period commentator described the drinking at Erickson’s to be “the hectic, impulsive kind.” It was a bordello. Poker and roulette were the games most played at Erickson’s, and a bit of privacy could be afforded by utilizing the private rooms on the second floor. Pool tables were available, as was a barber shop and an ice cream parlor. You could post a letter to your forlorn mother back home from the saloon. There was music most hours of the day and night. The free buffet spread at Erickson’s was called “The Dainty Lunch,” and it was heavy with Scandinavian selections. August Erickson did everything he could to keep the men inside his establishment, spending all of their money. They did just that with a smile on their face.
Erickson was a complex capitalist. Many felt that Erickson “could understand hunger and pity it.” In his 1925 obituary in The Oregonian, one correspondent wrote: “A hungry man was never turned down by Erickson. In the days when the city was filled with jobless men, the free meals that the saloonist gave to the friendless cost him hundreds of dollars a day.” Another reporter penned that at Erickson’s, “the down and out found refuge.” In his thesis, Sawyer wrote that “the legendary ‘free lunches’ at Erickson’s and other establishments … saved many unemployed or transient males from starving.”
In 1905, it was written that the saloon provided “good, wholesome food free of charge.” The Oregonian writer speculated that hundreds of men in the North End would go to bed with empty stomachs every night if not for places like Erickson’s. In a three-month span of that year, it was noted that the lunch servers dispersed 4 tons of beans, 10 barrels of dill pickles, six sacks of peas, six barrels of pork and 28 boxes of crackers. The commentator pointed out that “few charitable organizations can make such a showing.”
Once tired of the glitz and glam of this celebrated saloon, right outside Erickson’s doors were even more options for our old timey neighbors. The Mug saloon was across the street, and games of chance were quite popular there. Fred Fritz and Eugene Blazier both worked at Erickson’s and later opened massive saloons across Burnside from Gus’ place that came close in size to his. But it wasn’t just entertainment; many casual employment agencies were entrenched in the North End, most centered near Second and Burnside – right by Erickson’s saloon.
Today, the Erickson building comprises 62 mixed-income apartment units. A property of Innovative Housing, the former pleasure hall was awarded Restore Oregon’s Art DeMuro Award in 2015, recognizing it as one of the state’s extraordinary historic preservation projects of the year. Not all change in our neighborhood is of the unwanted variety.
As we look at Old Town 120 years after the “height” of the North End days, we can see an almost seismic change in the neighborhood occurring right before our eyes. Bougie hair salons and tech bros and brand-new buildings are our new neighbors. Some of the old buildings have been repurposed into work spaces and university classrooms, and there’s even that Starbucks inside the 1880s hotel.
But other elements haven’t changed much. Many of our neighbors in the district are still facing housing instability in gentrifying Portland. Social services are still requested and utilized. Some of our neighbors have addiction issues. Many are unable to work. This is still their neighborhood, too, and they are facing many of the same issues and challenges that neighbors in the 1890s North End faced. That has stayed consistent in our timeline.
As an Oregonian reporter wrote in 1915: “Only one thing is sure, and that is the North End is going to change. In that respect, it will be nothing new, for it has survived many a change before, and who knows but what it can survive as many to come … it has forfeited its vitals before and survived.”
One hundred thirteen years later, and we are considering the same.
Doug Kenck-Crispin is a co-producer of the podcast Kick Ass Oregon History. He is writing a book of the same title, which will be published by Timer Press in 2020.
The research
Sources for this article include a number of historical newspaper articles, academic papers and books. Among them:
“Same Sex Affairs” by Peter Boag (University of California Press, 2003)
“From Whitechapel to Old Town; The Life and Death of the Skid Row District, Portland, Oregon” by Chris Sawyer, a doctoral thesis for Urban Studies at Portland State University, (1985)
“Nights of Heaven: A Social History of Saloon Culture in Portland, 1900-1904” by Christopher J. Head, a bachelor’s thesis for the Division of History and Social Sciences at Reed College (1980)
Doug Kenck-Crispin is the Resident Historian for the podcast Kick Ass Oregon History and holds a masters degree in history from Portland State University, where he focused on public and Pacific Northwest history.
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