ANDY CRIPE | Gazette-Times Deb Kadas has decorated her 1920 craftsman bungalow in West College Hill with antiques, including this Edison phonograph.

With deep ties to the past, residents connect to area’s rich history


This is the second installment in the Gazette-Times’ yearlong series, “Where We Live,” focusing on Corvallis neighborhoods

Having a father who’s a journalist and avid photographer has distinct advantages, as evidenced by the albums upon albums of snapshots, cards and poems Barbara Weber has chronicling her childhood.

Weber, whose maiden name is Burtner, was born at Corvallis General Hospital in 1931. She grew up north of campus, in the area now considered College Hill.

“There were lots of children in the neighborhood. We all got along really well. We used to play games in the evenings, especially in the summertime. We played kick the can and jump rope,” said Weber, 75.

With its maple-lined streets, compact lots, pedestrian-friendly atmosphere and eclectic architecture ranging from Tudor to Colonial to bungalow to whatever was popular at the time, the area abutting campus to the north was as popular a place to raise a family decades ago as it is today.

Weber spent her first years living on Northwest 23rd Street and Jackson Avenue, which today falls within the North College Hill neighborhood boundary.

Her father is the late John C. Burtner, who taught journalism at Oregon State College, now Oregon State University, edited Extension Service publications and headed the campus news bureau. Her mother was Martha Hawley Burtner.

As Corvallis expanded westward, the Burtners were among the many faculty families moving into today’s College Hill and College Hill West neighborhoods.

The Burtners rented a home at 3105 N.W. Jackson Ave. from developer K.C. Reitsma until building their own home less than a block away in 1940. Weber recalls her parents paying Reitsma $40 a month — which seemed like a lot of money at the time.

Martha Burtner died soon after the new home was finished. Family friends Ed and Gertrude Yunker and their two children moved in with John, Barbara and Gordon, Barbara’s older brother, and they lived as an extended family until John died in 1950.

Weber recalls thinking of the Yunker children as siblings. The adults even sent out joint holiday cards with poems John wrote about the Burtner-Yunker merger.

It was a great place and time to grow up, according to Weber, who fondly remembers walking to Harding School with older brother Gordon, and playing with the Gilfillan and Oliver children.

Francois Gilfillan, OSC professor of chemistry, dean of science and acting president from 1941 to 1942, was intimidating, Weber recalls.

“He was very stern,” she said.

Weber enjoyed playing with his four daughters, sometimes getting into mischief.

“They had a fig tree. We were not supposed to eat the figs because they were being saved for the family, but Ellen (Gilfillan) and I would snitch one every once in awhile,” she said.

They never got caught stealing the forbidden fruit, but Weber still flashes back to those days whenever she eats a fig.

For fun, Weber would sit on the porch or backyard swing and tell ghost stories with friends once darkness fell. She also loved visiting her dad’s office in the Memorial Union, and going with him to the darkroom on campus.

A sense of history

Weber, who is an artist, married her college sweetheart, Len Weber, who is an OSU emeritus professor of electrical engineering.

A few years ago, while working in the Art of the Valley gallery, she overheard Deb Kadas talking about her historic home in College Hill West.

Turns out, Kadas’ 1920 craftsman bungalow is the same house Weber’s parents rented from Reitsma in the 1930s.

Kadas, a historic remodeling consultant, and her husband, Steve, invited Weber and her brothers to come visit the home, which they bought in 1995.

“We were so happy because it was so beautiful the way they had taken care of it,” Weber said.

The Kadases coveted the home for years before occupying it, and they weren’t the only ones. The former owner, the late Irene Saling, kept a waiting list of people who wanted to buy her home. After seven years on the list, the Kadases received a call from Saling letting them know she was ready to move into a retirement home.

Now the Kadases get people knocking on their door asking if they’re interested in selling.

“We should probably start making a list, but I plan on living here until I die,” said Deb Kadas, 48.

Kadas views herself, her husband and their three children, 17-year-old Spencer, 15-year-old Avery and 13-year-old Laurel, as “temporary stewards” of the historic home.

Even before the house, which falls within the boundaries of the College Hill West Historic District, was subject to the Historic Resources Commissions’ standards for preserving the original character of the neighborhood, Kadas was committed to keeping her bungalow as close to its 1920s condition as possible, while still allowing for modern conveniences.

Details common to bungalows of that era include wainscoting, built-in cabinetry, box-beam ceilings and sconces. Kadas has preserved or recreated these touches using local contractors and materials.

From mother of pearl push-button lights to an antique Edison record player to leaded glass windows with a vintage Glasgow Rose design, Kadas tried to keep the home similar to how it might have looked when the Burtners lived there.

Part of what attracted Kadas to College Hill was the neighborhood’s sense of history.

“Most of us who live here love old things. Most of us collect something old,” said Kadas, herself a collector of vintage clothing and telephones and antique furniture.

Her kids have mixed feelings about living in an old home.

“It’s fun sometimes, most of the time,” said Laurel, “but sometimes it’s annoying. The floors squeak a lot, and there’s always something that has to be redone or fixed.”

Most of Laurel’s friends covet those creaks and quirks, Kadas said.

“I love her house. I want her house,” concurred Emma Kate Schaake, 13, who lives in a newer home.

Crowning campus

The area north of campus is actually made up of several distinct neighborhoods. While they share some of the same priorities, attributes and concerns, each is different.

The area that’s now considered the College Hill neighborhood (bordered on the east by Arnold Way, the west by 35th Street, the north by Harrison Boulevard and the south by OSU) was part of a donation land claim secured by Charles Johnson in June 1852. He came from Jackson County, Mo. His wife, Keziah Trapp, died of cholera on the Oregon Trail.

College Hill West, listed as a district on the National Register of Historic Places since 2002, overlaps with the College Hill Neighborhood. The district is shaped like a jigsaw puzzle piece.

It’s bordered on the east at a diagonal by Arnold Way and 27th Street. It’s bordered on the south by Johnson Avenue. On the west its border runs between 31st and 32nd streets, before jagging farther west down Jackson to 33rd Street, then down Harrison Boulevard to 36th Street. The western boundary then runs along 36th from Harrison to Polk. The northern boundary stretches across Polk Avenue to 31st Street, then steps its way southeast to Arnold Way.

Part of College Hill West falls under the Johnson claim, and part is included in the Joseph P. Friedley donation land claim. He and his wife, Amanda, came from Pennsylvania and secured their claim in October 1847.

The North College Hill Neighborhood is bordered on the south by Monroe Avenue, the north by Tyler Avenue, the west by 23rd Street and the east by 14th Street. Part of this area falls under the Friedley claim, and part is included in the William F. Dixon claim.

Dixon came from Maryland. He and wife Julia Ann secured their claim in October of 1846.

This section of town has been called simply College Hill in the past, but the neighborhood association changed its name to North College Hill after property owners farther west began calling their neighborhood College Hill.

Cedarhurst developed as Corvallis expanded westward. It’s bordered on the east by 35th Street, on the west by OSU’s agricultural property and the city limits, the south by OSU and the north by Harrison Boulevard.

Cedarhurst falls under the Frederick August Horning land claim. He and wife Mary Ann secured their claim in June 1851. The first houses in the area were built by T.J. Starker beginning in the late 1930s and continuing through the ’50s.

Starker, an Oregon Agricultural College (OSU) School of Forestry alumnus, taught at the university from 1922 to 1942. He was a professional forester, and founded Starker Forests, a family-owned tree farming company still in operation today.

Jean Roth, T.J. and Margaret Starker’s daughter, spent her earliest years in a home on Northwest 23rd Street between Van Buren Avenue and Harrison Boulevard.

Then her father decided to develop the land west of 35th Street, what’s now called Cedarhurst.

“Everyone thought my father had a hole in his head to build way out in the country,” recalls Roth, 87. Roth recently received the Corvallis Senior First Citizen Award for her philanthropic efforts.

Starker used to draw house plans on the back of envelopes, then he’d build them during the summer when the university wasn’t in session, Roth said.

Roth married her late husband, Kermit, and moved to Portland for several years, but she returned in 1952 and built a house on Jackson Avenue between 38th and 39th streets, where they raised their four children.

Roth lived there for 35 years, before moving to Witham Hill. The house is now occupied by the Keim family.

Living through changes

Roth attended Harding School from 1926 to 1928, before the boundary changed and she was transferred to Franklin. She recalls revolting with a group of friends, and saying they wouldn’t leave.

She’s not the only one who misses Harding.

The school, which was completed in 1924 and was originally called College Hill School, served the families living north of campus until the Corvallis School District closed it in 2002 as a cost-cutting move.

The district still owns the building, which now houses Harding Center.

Harding Center is home to the Central Instructional Media Center, which serves the educational needs of school district staff, and College Hill, an alternative school for high school students who need to work at a different pace.

Students who would have attended Harding School are now split between Adams, Garfield and Jefferson Elementary Schools. Most of the older kids attend Linus Pauling Middle School and Corvallis High School.

The neighborhood’s landscape in general has changed over the years as new needs arose and past uses became obsolete. After World War II, for example, the area was peppered with housing for veterans coming to OSU on the GI Bill.

City records show Chintimini Park, added to the parks system in 1954, was once part of Corvallis’ veterans’ housing project. And today’s site of the Corvallis Senior Center was once a fire station.

A hallmark of the old neighborhood was mom-and-pop grocery stores, such as the Superette and the College Crest Grocery.

Around 1920, Alva and Pearl Whaley Newton opened the College Crest Grocery on Monroe Avenue near the corner of 26th Street.

This was back in a time when stores delivered. Many families only had one car, and often the husbands would take the vehicles to get to work while the wives stayed home with the kids. Delivery services allowed women to get groceries when they didn’t have a way of getting to the store.

Gertrude Newton Lunde-Cropsey, Alva and Pearl’s daughter, donated her memoir to the Benton County Historical Museum. In these writings she chronicles the family business and life in College Hill:

“As I grew up, I thought it was a great privilege for my parents to own such a store, for we could have all the candy and pastries we wanted, and the day they bought the ice cream unit was heavenly!” she wrote.

American Dream now occupies the space where the store was once, and Alva Newton’s first and middle initials and last name can still be seen embedded in the tile entrance.

Stewards of time

Most of the OSU buildings on campus are named after people who lived in the College Hill vicinity.

Amory T. “Slats” Gill, J.A. and daughter Helen Gilkey, August Strand and Ernest Wiegand, inventor of the maraschino cherry, all lived in what’s now College Hill West.

Though these homes have had several owners since, the presence of past residents is still felt.

“You don’t really live in your house,” said Christine Stillger, who, along with her husband, Jock Mills, and their two children, lives in the home once owned by Dr. Kurt Aumann, a founder of the Corvallis Clinic.

“I’ll forever live in the Aumann house. It will never be the Stillger-Mills house. And I love that,” she said.

Willi Unsoeld, an Oregon State student and professor, lived in the historic district. He’s most remembered as one of the five first Americans to climb Mount Everest.

The house on Northwest 29th Street where he once lived is now owned by Marlan and Angela Carlson. Marlan is chairman of OSU’s music department, where Angela also works as a senior instructor of music theory.

Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Bernard Malamud lived in three houses in the College Hill neighborhood.

He taught in the English department at OSU from 1949 to 1961. He touched a lot of nerves on campus when speculation arose that his supposedly fictional novel “A New Life,” set at a rural university in Cascadia, was perhaps autobiographical.

Like College Hill and College Hill West, what’s today called North College Hill also was home to many OSU notables, including Margaret Snell, Frank Magruder, T.J. Starker and George Peavy, although some of these people moved west as town expanded.

Coming home

Many homes in the area north of campus have been occupied by two or more generations of the same family.

Such is the case with the old Ball house, located on the corner of 28th Street and Jackson Avenue.

Physician Waldo Ball and wife Mabel, a nurse, bought the house in 1939.

There weren’t many other houses in the area at the time, recalls Whitney Ball, son of Waldo and Mabel and grandson of Billy and Dorothy Ball, founders of Ball Studio.

“The neighborhood was very interesting because it had been an apple orchard,” said Whitney Ball, 81.

At the time, most of the residents of College Hill were university faculty, although some were professionals like his father, Ball said. Before moving there from downtown, he thought everyone who lived in College Hill was a snob. After the move, Ball changed his mind.

“These people were all friends. The kids were in school with me. We had a real nice neighborhood,” according to Ball.

Ball founded Whitney Ball Insurance, which later became Corvallis Insurance Services. It’s now owned by his son, Peter, 56.

Ball’s daughter and son-in-law, Sally and Roger Haffner, bought the family home after Waldo Ball died at age 98.

The Haffners lived there for six years before selling it to Gary Angelo and his family.

Sally Haffner, 55, spent a lot of time at her grandparents’ house growing up, and was excited to live there.

“It was wonderful. It felt more like home than the home I’d grown up in,” she said. “Some of the old neighbors were still there, which was very special.”

Mary Ann Albright can be reached at maryann.albright@lee.net or 758-9518.

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