Salem Heritage Network
Old Eola School, built in 1858, at the present 2nd & Mill Streets in West Salem, was a community center for over a hundred years. A photograph in the Salem Public Library Historical Collection shows a student and two teachers/advisors posing on the occasion of the May 28,1958 graduation of the 100th graduating class...
West Salem was incorporated in 1914, but this community building was not constructed until 1936. It served the municipality until 1949 when the city was incorporated into Salem itself. Chemeketa College held its first classes here. (West Salem)..
In 1885 Robert Wallace took the advice of his doctor to give up his stressful life as a commodity broker in Chicago and moved to Salem. In 1889, he built this home for his family at the orchard in Polk Country which is still an integral part of the Salemtowne buildings...
This attractive and spacious 1926 home, has had several former owners including the Olds, Speckerman and Schindler families. The present owners have made some landscape changes, but the house retains its original appearance and its site is relatively undisturbed although housing developments have grown up to the left (east) side of the property...
This oldest house in West Salem has been extensively remodeled. Originally an 1858 log cabin, it was built by Jessie and Julia Harritt. Jessie so profited by his California gold mining, that he was able to build his wife this Colonial style house reminiscent of the plantation homes in her native Kentucky...
At the present time, there is no known information about the original owners of this property, built circa 1910, or this vernacular residence. (West Salem)..
Thomas and Mary Fennell were West Salem farmers who owned the property in 1905 and probably built the south addition with a kitchen and bathroom in 1910. They sold the house and some land to Ellsworth Pickel in 1913, but bought the property back six months later...
This lot was sold in 1920 for $300.00 and again in 1922 to G. E. and Lura Tandy who lived there for the next 25 years. More information about this c.1915 house or owners and residents has not been researched. (West Salem)..
The original owner of this 1905 bungalow, Grace Breckenridge, worked for nearly 40 years as a bookkeeper for the State Board of Control retiring in 1956. When she died in January 1965, her will revealed that all but $2,000 of her $23,000 estate was bequeathed to the State of Oregon...
Edward and Kathryn Piasecki were the original owners of this period style English Cottage, one of the first houses built in the Kingwood Heights area of West Salem. The Piaseckis moved to West Salem in 1920 when the house was built. A boating tragedy on the Oregon coast near Newport claimed the life of Edward and another Salem attorney in August of 1952 when he was 72 years old...