James Joseph/G. W. Gray House (1309 Court St NE) Salem, Oregon
National Register of Historic Places Data
James Joseph/G. W. Gray House (1309 Court St NE) has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Court Street--Chemeketa Street Historic District. The following information has been imported from the National Register database and/or the Nomination Form . Please note that not all available data may be shown here, minor errors and/or formatting may have occurred during transcription, and some information may have become outdated since listing.
- National Register ID
- 87001373
- Date Listed
- August 26, 1987
- Name
- Court Street--Chemeketa Street Historic District
- Address
- An irregularly shaped area of appr. 38.57 acres bounded by the closures of Court Street & Chemeketa St. on the west, Mill Creek on the north & east, and on the south by the rear lot lines of properties on the south side of Court St.
- City/Town
- Salem
- County
- Marion
- State
- Oregon
- Category
- district
- Level of Sig.
- local
- Areas of Sig.
- EXPLORATION/SETTLEMENT; POLITICS/GOVERNMENT; ARCHITECTURE
Description
Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.
Located on the northeast corner of Court and 13th Streets (at the Court Street closure), this is a one-story Italianate Cottage on a brick foundation, virtually unchanged since it was built. It is an excellent example of the West Coast Hipped Roof Cottage (as described in The Old-House Journal, Feb. 1986, back cover).
It has a low-pitched pyramid roof and a full attached front (south) porch supported by four slender piers, the corner two of which are paralleled by pilasters on the wall. Carpentered brackets ornament both the top and bottom of the piers—the bottom ones joining the base of each pier with an enclosing porch baseboard. There is a second small porch at the 13th Street side entrance.
Windows are slender and double-hung with crown molding at the tops. A three-sided bay, with one of these windows on each face, projects from the east wall near the front of the house; beneath each window in the bay is a horizontal wood panel. To the left of the front door is a big-paned window with a row of six small panes above it.
The house is clad in simple drop siding with corner boards. Two corbelled chimneys accent the roofline. A low addition extends to the rear, and grafted to the northwest corner is a long, narrow garage said to have been moved here from the site of East School (the location of the current Safeway store two blocks north).
History
Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.
This house was probably one of the first built in the earliest East Salem subdivision (Roberts Addition, recorded 1865). It was built about 1870 by James Joseph, a stone cutter. He bought the lot and the next one to the east in 1868 from George Washington Gray.
In 1876, Mr. Joseph sold the east lot but continued living in this house until 1882, when he sold it to George Collins, who in turn sold it to W. B. Burnap the same year.
In 1885, Burnap sold the house to George Washington Gray, from whom James Joseph originally had bought the land. Gray's son Charles is listed at this address in 1886. Charles' son, George W. Gray, was born in 1886 in this house, according to the son's obituary (Capital Journal, July 2, 1956, p. 5).
The Grays were a prominent family, owning the Gray & Sons Oil works, makers of linseed oil. They also built the Gray Building (105 Liberty Street, NE) and the Gray-Pomeroy Building (378 State) and operated the major hardware store in Salem. The original Gray homestead was on State Street, between 13th and 14th. In 1891, Charles Gray sold this cottage to his sister, Jennie Gray.
Jennie Gray Kyle sold it to Daniel Grouse, a fruit grower and horticulturist, in 1904, and the Grouses lived in the house until 1928. It changed hands twice after that. The current owner inherited the property in 1971.
