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Inventory Form
NR Nomination

LOCATION AND PROPERTY NAME
address:4619 N Michigan Ave historic name:Patton Home
Portland, Multnomah County current/other names:Ecumenical Ministries; Patton Home for the Aged; Patton Home for the Friendless
assoc addresses:
block/lot/tax lot:
location descr: twnshp/rng/sect/qtr sect:1N 1E 22
PROPERTY CHARACTERISTICS
resource type:Building height (stories):2.5 total elig resources:1 total inelig resources:0
elig evaluation: eligible/significant NR Status: Individually Listed
prim constr date:1909 second date:1925 date indiv listed:02/10/2021
primary orig use: Sanitarium orig use comments:Domestic: Multiple Dwelling
second orig use: Religious Facility
primary style: Late 19th/20th Period Revivals: Other prim style comments:Revivals: Tudor Revival
secondary style: Colonial Revival sec style comments:
primary siding: Brick:Other/Undefined siding comments:
secondary siding: Wood:Other/Undefined
plan type: architect:Richard Martin Jr. (1909, 1926 wings)
builder:
comments/notes:
GROUPINGS / ASSOCIATIONS
Not associated with any surveys or groupings.
SHPO INFORMATION FOR THIS PROPERTY
NR date listed: 02/10/2021
ILS survey date:
RLS survey date:
106 Project(s)
SHPO Case Date Agency Effect Eval
03/16/1998
Federal Tax Program
Status Start Compl
Complete 06/01/2020  2021
Special Assess Project(s): None
ARCHITECTURAL / PROPERTY DESCRIPTION
(Includes expanded description of the building/property, setting, significant landscape features, outbuildings and alterations)
The Patton Home sits on a 200’ by 200’ city block within a residential area of Portland’s Humboldt Neighborhood. It is set back from the street and includes landscaping on the east and north sides. Patton Home is a multi-wing, 2.5-story building with a basement and has a total square footage of 46,072 sf. Patton Home began as a wood-framed building with sections that were significantly altered, replaced, and added onto from 1890 to 1926 to create the present-day multi-wing building. The building’s primary, east-facing façade is largely comprised of a wing designed in the Colonial Revival style in 1926. To the south, the oldest wing is wood-framed and designed in the Queen Anne style in 1894. Proceeding west, a 1909 masonry wing was designed in the Flemish Revival style. The northwest corner wing, also of masonry, was constructed in 1913 in the Jacobean style. The building’s exterior materials include a concrete foundation, brick walls, stucco, fiber cement siding, vinyl and wood windows, and a composition shingle roof. Architectural features include decorative brick patterning and quoins, a front porch with classical columns, a leaded-glass entry door surround, and Palladian and other decorative window types. Inside, the building floorplan is reflective of its institutional use as a retirement home. It features public spaces such as a lobby, parlor, and dining room near the front of the building. There is an original ramp to the second floor that provided accessibility in lieu of an elevator during the historic period. The rest of the building is characterized by double-loaded corridors that access small bedrooms. Historic interior features such as wood French doors and transoms are retained in the public spaces. Alterations to the building include the replacement of most one-over-one wood windows with one-over-one vinyl windows; replacement of wood lap siding with fiber cement lap siding; the addition of a sunroom on the east elevation; some reconfiguring to the 1894 wing to accommodate an accessible entrance and elevator, and interior alterations including removal of trim, doors, and the installation of new drop ceilings and lighting. While the building has been altered, it retains integrity to reflect its social history significance as a Progressive Era retirement home founded by the charitable-minded women of the Ladies Union Relief Society of Albina.
HISTORY
(Chronological, descriptive history of the property from its construction through at least the historic period - preferably to the present)
The Patton Home is locally significant under National Register Criterion A for social history: women’s history, as an important Progressive Era retirement facility founded by women for women in Portland, Oregon. It also had an all-women board of directors managing the home until the 1960s. Considered to be the oldest continuously operating retirement home in Oregon, Patton Home was started by the Ladies Union Relief Society of Albina to provide supportive housing for elderly women in need. The first building on the site was constructed in 1890 and, as the demand for additional housing increased, new wings were added in 1894, 1909, 1913, and 1926. These four wings comprise the nominated property. In the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, private elder care homes came about as a means of providing seniors with dignified housing rather than spending their final years relegated to the poorhouse. These facilities also provided meals, activities, social and religious connections, and varying degrees of caregiving and medical support. Women’s charitable groups were some of the first to provide an alternative to the poorhouse for seniors. Historian Joseph Gaston described the “plucky women” of the Ladies Union Relief Society as having a difficult task raising money in Albina as there were few wealthy benefactors in this small town, which would later become part of Portland. The establishment and growth of Patton Home reflects the efforts of a determined group of charitable-minded, middleclass women to create an institution that would better the lives of vulnerable senior women in their community. The period of significance begins in 1894, which is associated with the construction of the building’s oldest extant wing. It closes in 1963—the ending of the biennial state appropriation that had been a funding source since 1893, as well as inclusion of men on the board of directors.
RESEARCH INFORMATION
Title Records Census Records Property Tax Records Local Histories
Sanborn Maps Biographical Sources SHPO Files Interviews
Obituaries Newspapers State Archives Historic Photographs
City Directories Building Permits State Library
Local Library: University Library:
Historical Society: Other Respository:Property owner
Bibliography:
Abramovitz, Mimi. Regulating the Lives of Women. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Homes for Aged in the United States. Washington DC, 1941. Coleman, Marilyn J. The Social History of the American Family. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2014. Commission, U.S. Sanitary. "Report Concerning the Women's Central Association of Relief at New York." 1861. Costa, Dora L. The Evolution of Retirement: An American Economic History, 1880-1990. Chicago: The Univeristy of Chicago Press, 1997. Foundation Aiding The Elderly. "The History of Nursing Homes." 2017. Gaston, Joseph. Portland, Oregon, Its History and Builders. Portland: S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1911. Haber, Carole. "The Old Folks At Home: The Development of Institutionalized Care for the Aged in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia." The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography CI, no. 2 (April 1977): 240-257. Haber, Carole, and Brian Gratton. Old Age and the Search for Security: An American Social History. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994. Kerber, Linda K. Toward An Intellectual History of Women. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Klooster, Karl. "The Patton Home: 100 Years of Helping." This Week , August 1, 1990: 12. Oregon Daily Journal. "Increased Demands on Patton Home Compel Enlargement of Insitution." September 28, 1913: 13. Oregon Daily Journal. "Increased Demands on Patton Home Compel Enlargement of Institution." September 26, 1913: 13. Oregonian. "Annual Event Celebrated at Patton Home." June 3, 1928: 14. Oregonian. "At The Patton Home." September 11, 1892: 8. Oregonian. "Building for City Hits Heavy Stride." July 18, 1926: 28. Oregonian. "Patton Home." December 16, 1892: 8. Oregonian. "Patton Home Matters." July 6, 1893: 8. Oregonian. "Patton Home: Finances are Low and Money is Needed for an Addition." November 14, 1904: 30. Oregonian. "Plans for Big Institution Complete." August 15, 1909: 8. Oregonian. "The Patton Home." March 18, 1893: 8. Oregonian. "The Patton Home." March 2, 1895: 8. Oregonian. "White-Haired Advisers and Comforters to be Adopted." December 9, 1923: 9. Oregonian. "Woman Soldier in Civil War Dies." September 5, 1911: 9. Roberston, Elizabeth. The Union’s “Other Army”: The Women of the United States Sanitary Commission. Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, n.d. Snyder, Charles. The Lady and the President: The Letters of Dorothea Dix and Millard Fillmore. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976. Sullivan, Ann. "Patton Home Carries Its Years With Pride." Oregonian, November 30, 1987: 85. The Capital Journal. "Work at Portland's Patton Home Emphasized After Tax Defeated." November 5, 1963: 9. The Women's Philanthropy Institute. A Sense of Place: A Short History of Women's Philanthropy in America. Indiana University, 2010. Voice. "Patton Home's Tradition of Caring." July 2000: 1-3. Wagner, David. The Poorhouse: America's Forgotten Institution. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005.