James and Flora Watt House (1490 Chemeketa St NE) Salem, Marion County, Oregon, USA

National Register Description

The following text is 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 for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.

Assessor's Map 26BA 7-3W Tax Lot 86010-020 Owners: William O. and Linda K. Courtney, 360 Lefelle Street, S, Salem, OR 97301 Primary Contributing

This Queen Anne/Eastlake style house includes a cross-gabled el with a slightly lower south-facing gabled wing, forming an approximate T. These gables are joined by a flat-topped, hipped roof on the southeast side.

To the rear is a one-story unit with an irregular roofline. All this results in a varied profile for the house as a whole. In addition, a southeast corner porch (noted on early Sanborn maps) has been replaced by a sloped-roofed modern addition housing a garage.

The house is of one-and-one-half stories and sits high on a daylight basement foundation. The tall, narrow windows are double-hung sash surrounded by decorative moldings, except in the south gable where a modern large window has been installed. On the east wall is a bay window with brackets. Brackets also occur at the corners of the eaves and, in smaller form, along the cornices under the overhangs. Intricately carved half sunbursts with a radial pattern are in the north and east gables.

This house was built the same year as the Rand House (#4) and the Witzel-Watters House (#8) and probably closely resembles what those houses looked like before they were extensively remodelled.

National Register History

The following text is 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 for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.

The Watt House stands on land originally owned by James Watt's father, Joseph Watt (d. 1867), whose holdings had been subdivided in 1871 as Joseph Watt Addition, reconfigured and enlarged as Watts Addition in May 1891.

In 1887, James Watt, a stock raiser, acquired from his family the lot on which this house stands (and in 1891 obtained the adjacent lot to the south). He had married Flora Parker in Jacksonville in 1878, and they had lived on Howell Prairie for the first nine years of their marriage, until 1887.

In Salem, they apparently lived first in the Watt cottage now numbered 1458 Chemeketa #124). According to the Oregon Statesman Illustrated Annual of 1893 (p. 7), James Watt then built a residence in Salem for $2500 in 1892. That house is presumed to be this one, on the southwest corner of Chemeketa and 15th Streets.

The City Directory of 1893 lists him at "16th NW corner Chemeketa" (clearly an error). By 1896, described as a "capitalist," he is listed at "15th sw corner Chemeketa," the correct address of this house.

James Watt was born in 1854 in Salem, one of four children of Joseph and Sarah Watt, the early owners of the land that became many of the lots in the west portion of the District.

Flora Parker was the youngest child of James Patch Parker and Sarah Parker, who crossed the plains in 1852 and settled first in Salem, where Flora's older brother, Charles, was born near what is now Chemeketa and 14th Streets in 1854.

The family later took up a donation land claim near Medford, and it was there that Flora was born in 1858. Though trained as a doctor, her father owned and operated a gristmill in southern Oregon and later built a sawmill and purchased land for raising livestock (for reminiscence of Flora Watt, see: Lockley, Oregon Journal, May 9, 1934, p. 10, and June 2, 1934, p. 4).

After her husband's death, Flora Watt lived in smaller family-owned houses nearby—at 1458 Chemeketa (#124) and later in what had been the barn for the big house (cf. commentary on #123). She sold the James and Flora Watt House in 1925.

For other houses built by the Watt family, see commentaries on #109 and #125.