Gentle Stewards For A 1908 House

American Arts & Crafts architecture includes many examples that go “beyond the bungalow.” This one in Portland, Oregon, is a classic.

- Donna Pizzi

Taking a drive through the Nob Hill Terrace neighborhood one afternoon in 1993, Allen Tooke and Marcia Truman came upon an un-known dead-end street. They were delighted to discover a stately brick house with a bold mix of English and American Arts & Crafts, Colonial Revival, and Japanesque elements. Their excitement grew when they spied a collapsed for sale sign in the driveway. Allen called the number . . . it turned out the house next door was on the market, not this one.The owner, however, was recuperating from back surgery and had begun to consider selling. “John Wentland told us that he could sell the historic Harmon–Neils home only to a preservation-minded buyer,” Allen recalls.

The house was designed in 1908 by renowned architect A.E. Doyle. (His work includes Portland's Benson Hotel,Reed College, the Meier & Frank Building, and the Multnomah County Public Library.) Working with Doyle’s grandson, preservation notable George McMath, Wentworth had gotten the house listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The very first owner was E.L. Harmon, transferred from his native Michigan to Portland by Penn Mutual Life Insurance. Tragically, Harmon and his daughter Helen died in 1922 of “septic sore throat” from tainted milk delivered in the neighborhood. His widow, Elizabeth, sold the next year to Julius Neils of the important J. Neils Lumber Company. Neils died just 10 years later, but his daughter Anna stayed here until her death in 1980 at the age of 95. Wentland bought the property from Concordia College, to which it had been bequeathed in 1981.