Drive-by Astoria #17: Perspectives

Astoria, Oregon ~ September 15, 2012

Marine Drive

At the beginning of the drive-by series, starting with photo #2, we were tripping along Bond Street. Now we're heading back toward town on Marine Drive paralleling Bond, which is somewhere in the midst of the vegetation climbing this hill. I'm not sure which row of windows is street level on the white building ( believe it's the second row from the roof), but . . . (see below) . . . 

. . . this nearby tall building is the back of the apartment complex I showed in this post. The lower row of windows seen here is at street level on the other side. You can just see the top of the windows on the 4th floor, and there is one more below that - the apartment where I lived when I first moved here. From this angle, it looks like it wouldn't have much of a view, but it certainly did.

When I stepped out the back door and climbed half a dozen steps . . .

. . . the world opened up. These last two photos were taken August 7, 2001.

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Drive-by Astoria #16: The Butterfly Fleet

Astoria, Oregon ~ September 15, 2012

W. Marine Drive at Columbia Street and Bond

I was surprised a number of weeks ago to see a new mural in Astoria. Apparently it was unveiled about July 10th. I was no less surprised to learn about the butterfly fleet itself and these amazing sails that look like wings. At one time there were 2,500 of these boats in our coastal waters, but the Maritime Museum was not able to find a single one remaining. The mural was painted by local artist Dorothy Danielson on the side of the Wauna Credit Union building. There is a book called The Butterfly Fleet on Amazon.com. The cover is very similar, but I don't know the connection. The scroll on the mural reads:

THE BUTTERFLY FLEET

BEFORE ENGINES - THEY FISHED

IN BOATS POWERED BY THE WIND

IN THEIR SAILS & WERE CALLED

THE BUTTERFLY FLEET

THEY WERE AT THE MERCY

OF THE WIND & TIDES 

& AS SUCH IT WAS A VERY

DANGEROUS PROFESSION - THEY

DID NOT ALWAYS COME BACK -

THESE PREDOMINATELY SCANDINAVIAN

FISHERMEN & WOMEN PREFERRED 

USING GILLNETS - WHICH THE FISH

SWAM INTO & GOT HUNG UP. THERE

WERE DAY FISHERIES & NIGHT FISHERIES -

THE NIGHT ONES WERE LIKED AS THE

FISH HAD A DIFFICULT TIME SEEING

THE NET, SINCE THEY HAVE BEEN KNOWN

TO SWIM ALONG SIDE OR GO AROUND -

ON A GOOD TRIP THEY CAME HOME

LOADED TO THE GUNNELS --

Speaking of adventures, Lee Spangler is off on a new one. For anyone who would like to follow along, his blog is here.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Drive-by Astoria #5: Sleeping under the Bridge

Astoria, Oregon ~ September 15, 2012

Marine Drive

It looks like the bridge is sitting right on top of the Holiday Inn Express. Not exactly, but it's very close! Some of you may remember the series of photos I took from the hotel in 2010. One of the images was my favorite "Astoria Daily" photo of the year. Here is the rest of the series:

. View from the Lobby

. Gull's-eye View of the Cannery Pier Hotel

. Trolley from the Top

. A Point of Land with Benches

. Ship and Bridge: A Classic Astoria Scene

We've come down from the Bond Street hill to the intersection of Bond Street and Marine Drive. Does anyone remember the sign on the marquee from when the hotel was first built? It said, "Where Sleeping  under the Bridge is. . . . " and I can't remember the rest of it! The sign disappeared after awhile. Maybe somebody thought it was politically incorrect?

(Aha! Michael E. McDaniel found it on TripAsvisor. The sign read, "Where sleeping under the bridge is a good thing." Thanks, Michael!)

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Drive-by Astoria #4: "Oasis on Bond Street"

Astoria, Oregon ~ September 15, 2012

Bond Street Hill / Columbia View Apartments

Here we are at the top of the Bond Street hill. When I first came to Astoria from Colorado in the summer of 2001, there were about 6 or 7 apartments available in the entire city. Only the one in this building seemed remotely livable, and when I walked in I thought I'd found Heaven. It was affordable, it was clean, it was spacious, the building was secure, it had an incredible view of the river AND a back deck! 

The building actually has five floors. It has three on the street side, but since it's on a steep slope, there are two more floors down once you get inside. My apartment was the only one on the bottom floor, which was strange, because it didn't feel like a basement. One side of the apartment was dug into the hillside, which kept it from getting hot in summer, and the other side perched high above Marine drive and the shipping channel. It's one of the coolest places I've ever lived. The title of this post is what Erby called the place. She was the very efficient and friendly caretaker when I lived here.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Drive-by Astoria #3: A Finnish House

Astoria, Oregon ~ September 15, 2012

Bond Street Hill

This recently-painted house on Bond Street is in the Finnish style, lacking the Victorian elements seen in yesterday's post. Pat asked if Astoria was originally a Finnish town. Not entirely, but there were a lot of Scandinavians here working in the fishing industry - catching fish making boats, repairing nets and other equipment, and working in the canneries. Fishing was a huge enterprise here in earlier decades, and much of the tuna you ate as a kid probably came from Astoria.

We're getting higher up on Bond Street now, and the hills in the background are across the Columbia river in Washington. Those wires that are a photographer's nemesis around here are also prominent.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Drive-by Astoria #2: Bond Street Buildings

Astoria, Oregon ~ September 15, 2012

West Bond Street

I love Astoria's houses. Almost every one has some sort of unique architectural detail, whether it be windows such as these with the long panes at the top, or simply the way the elements are combined. It looks like a small Victorian to me. I know our Finnish houses here are more austere and flat. What I don't know is what happened when the two styles met. Maybe this is it. The top story is pretty plain.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Cute White House

Call it cute, call it interesting. This is another of Astoria's unique wooden houses with unusual details. Although I haven't been inside this house on Bond Street, many of Astoria's older houses (and some of the brand new ones) have floor plans that can be categorized somewhere between quaint, bizarre, and extremely funky. Sometimes they are charming, sometimes you wonder what the builder was thinking. In their day, they must have made sense to someone. Now the funky layouts and interior spaces are conversation pieces as often as not. Most of the houses here have stories based solely on the plan or construction. Have you seen a house like that?

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Plenty of Green

June 16, 2010

Here's one of Astoria's delightful Craftsman style homes along with a tiny hillside garage so typical of this place. I love the Craftsman bungalows as much as the Victorians, and we have quite a few of them here. This one is on the Bond Street hill. (I had no idea until I looked it up that "bungalow" comes from "Bengali.")

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Madam?

The way I heard it, this lovely Italianate Victorian boarding house (now apartments) was actually the last operating brothel in Astoria. I don't know how late that was, but at one time Astoria was known for its brothels and boarding houses. As a port city with a lot of lonely workers in the docks and canneries, it's said to have had an extremely rowdy past.

I don't know much about the history of this building, and I didn't have time to do the research. If anyone can clue me in, I'll update the post.

One Ninety Three West Bond Street is about a block from the apartment at 40 West Bond where I lived for several years when I first came to Astoria in 2001. Someone told me after I'd rented it that Bond Street was "the bad part of town." (Notice I didn't say "in" the bad part of town - Bond street was the bad part of town. Limited.) Were they kidding? If this is bad, they need to take a look at a few more typical cities. I found Bond Street to be a great place to live. Or maybe things have cleaned up since Bond Street's disreputable days. I'm still a newcomer, and I know there are readers out there with stories.

Besides the comments below, there is lots of discussion about this building on the blog's Facebook page. Thanks, everyone!

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Houses on Hills

May 20, 2010

Here is the back of the house in yesterday's post along with its neighbor. They show two more adaptations to living on hills. The white building in the distance with the gray roof is the apartment building I lived in when I first arrived in Astoria. It has five stories, but only three are at or above street level. I lived on the bottom story, and even the back part of that was high above ground level. The hallway was buried in the hillside, and it kept the place cool on those rare hot days.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

What Remains

These charming sisters (see Midnight Mike's comment to this post for details) painted by Jo Brown remain on the door at the TLC Federal Credit Union, 85 W. Marine Drive, next door to the Mini Mart.

Here you can see them in situ, peering incongruously out of the sterile modern doorway. (The "badge" is actually part of the door.)

This bare wall on the west side of the building has replaced the creative and historically/culturally-interesting mural, also by Jo Brown, that used to be here. If you follow the link, you can see more than half of the mural, and you can use the teller window as a reference point. Unfortunately I didn't get photos of the whole thing before it was eradicated, but it stretched the length of the building. Was new siding really more important that preserving this pleasing bit of Astoriana?

On the right side of photo, you can see how the houses climb up the hill above Bond Street. There was a landslide here four years ago, and one of these days I'll show you what it looks like. I lived half a block away at the time.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Post Office and Plants

I want to thank Midnight Mike for loaning me several old postcards of Astoria for use on the blog. Above you can see an older post office building. It wasn't the first of Astoria's post offices, but it was older than our current building. The card was postmarked in 1907, but I don't know the date of the photo. I like the grace and style of the old stone building. It was in the same location as the current post office, but was smaller and left more space for grass and trees around it. There is another postcard in Mike's collection showing the building from a distance. It's from a different side, and I'll save it for another comparison. The other card is postmarked 1930, although I don't know when the photo was taken; I don't know when the old building was replaced by the new one.

Astoria's current post office (and there is only one) takes up the block bordered by 7th and 8th Streets, and Commercial and Bond. This is the entrance, on Commercial Street across from the County Courthouse. I originally took this photo (on March 16th) to show the huge rhododendron bush which is covered with buds and about ready to burst into flower. The cluster that's already in bloom is a separate bush underneath the big one.

The flowers are still trying to hang on even though recent storms have taken their toll.

And the buds on the large bush are almost ready to display the seasonal riot of color if the something-or-other that's been nibbling them doesn't finish them first. The purple azaleas I showed you on February 28th are out of sight behind the wheelchair ramp near the base of the flagpole.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

A lace cap for a long winter's night?

Since I happened to be in the neighborhood, I wanted to catch this fanciful scrollwork on the eaves of a house at 6th Street and Bond. It's too bad that the day wasn't brighter for a more glowing photo, but we're into the season now and there will be many, many cloudy and rainy days before we see much sun again.

The scrollwork is in a similar style to that on the steeple of St. Mary Star of the Sea, visible in this post from last May. I wonder if it was a local style or if it was done by one person. I've seen it on at least one or two more buildings, so it could possibly turn up on this blog someday :)

Decorated

Even under gray and drizzly skies, this house on Bond Street wishes everyone a fun and colorful Halloween. The sign next to the door reads, "Happy Fall, Y'all." This small Victorian home is one of Astoria's most colorful in any season.

The Hobson House on Bond Street

The Hobson House is one of the numerous historic houses in Astoria, Oregon, but it's also one of the best known, and it's on the National Register. I think it's also one of the most attractive of Astoria's venerable old Victorian ladies. As you walk around town, you see a wealth of unique detail. This house puts it all together beautifully.

In addition, this house has an unusual colored sign as well as the black and white plaque we've seen a few times before