| Oswego Odd Fellows Hall, located at 295 Durham Street in the Old Town neighborhood of Lake Oswego, is a culturally and historically significant landmark of Lake Oswego. It is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. With a construction date of 1890, the simple two-story building is one of the few extant buildings from that time period in Old Town, a former commercial area in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which is now home to a mixture of early-twentieth-century and post-World War II housing. The building has some elements of the Italianate style, with its parapet and double-hung sash windows.
From 1890 until 1975, the Oswego Odd Fellows Hall was the meeting place for the Odd Fellows Lodge 93, formed on August 24, 1888, in Oswego (The Oregonian 1888). The land on which the Odd Fellows Hall stands was bought by Lodge 93 for $500 from Ernest “E.W.” Crichton and L.B. Seeley of the Oswego Iron Company, which had purchased the Oswego townsite at the company’s founding in 1877 (Kuo 2009; The Morning Oregonian 1889). An 1888 excursion on the steamboat Joseph Kellogg from Portland to Oswego helped raise funds to pay for the new hall, and the building was apparently constructed in 1890 by Schmali and Birkemier Contractors at a cost of $2,325 (Koler and Morrison 1989).
The Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization, dates back to seventeenth-century England, when members of various “odd” professions could join. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows was founded on the North American continent in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 26, 1819. The organization adopted the motto: Visit the sick, relieve the distress, bury the dead and educate the orphans. In 1851, the organization became the first national fraternity to include women with the Rebekah Degree (The Independent Order of Odd Fellows 2014). The Odd Fellows are also known as the “Three Link Fraternity.” Three intertwined rings, the organization’s symbol, stand for friendship, love, and truth; the three links adorn the building’s front façade (Colver 2012:38).
On November 26, 1890, the new hall was dedicated by its members (Horn and Elwyn 1979). The Oswego Odd Fellows Hall served the Oswego community of Odd Fellows for 85 years as their center for events and meetings. Many of these men were linked with the town’s early history, such as Henry Gans, Adam Shipley, and George W. Prosser. George Prosser was a general merchandiser with a store in Oswego and, later, a postmaster, a director for the town’s school district, and a local representative to the state assembly.
According to Herman Blanken, a long-time resident and one-time member of the Lake Oswego Odd Fellows chapter, who garnered his information from Carl Vose, its long-term secretary, the first floor of the hall was once occupied by Palmer’s Drug Store, as well as a doctor’s office (Blanken 1973). The Odd Fellows Hall was also a voting place for several years. As Blanken recalled:
“All the farmers south of here, and so forth, they all had to come to Oswego to vote. And I can remember real well that there was [sic] the Democrats down one side of the front door and Republicans on the other side of the door. And they questioned everybody then to find out if they really had a vote coming. (Blanken 1973)
The building has been used by other groups as well. The Freemasons’ Waluga Lodge No. 181, A.F.& A.M., held its first meetings at the Oswego Odd Fellows Hall after they were established in 1922 (Lake Oswego Freemasons 2012). The Order of the Eastern Star, the world’s largest fraternal organization, met there in the early 1920s, as did the American Legion in the 1950s (Koler and Morrison 1989). The Lake Oswego Community Theater made their home in the Odd Fellows Hall in the 1950s, putting on several productions including “Beloved Rake” by local playwright Jane Erickson (The Oregonian 1955).
The few remaining members of the Odd Fellows sold the Odd Fellows Hall in 1975 after years of dwindling membership and joined other area lodges (The Oregonian 1975). In 1990, vacant and in poor condition, the hall was restored by local Portland architectural firm DiLoreto Architecture, LLC, who complied with the Secretary of the Interior’s standards for historic preservation and inserted four apartments within the original shell, as well as adding a stylistically and materially compatible wing with four additional apartments (DiLoreto Architecture 2014). The Oswego Odd Fellows Hall retains its characteristically long, two-story form, shiplap siding, double-hung sash doors crowned by molding, and original exterior corbelled chimney. It is a high-integrity example of a late-nineteenth-century fraternal hall and an important cultural landmark in Lake Oswego. |
