H.S. Gile House (1547 Court St NE) Salem, Oregon
National Register of Historic Places Data
The H.S. Gile House (1547 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shown here, minor errors and/or formatting may have occurred during transcription, and some information may have become outdated since listing.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 Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.
Assessor's Map 26BA 7-3W
Tax Lot 86010-260
Owners: Tom and Whiddon Stephens, 1547 Court Street, NE, Salem, OR 97301
Primary Contributing
The Gile House is a two-story Queen Anne style house that has remained essentially unchanged since it was illustrated, soon after it was built, in the Oregon Statesman for Jan. 1, 1905 (p. 13). It is a side-gabled house with a two-story dormered bay facing front (south). On the first story of this bay is the further projection of a large bay window. The siding is the original combination of clapboards, wooden belt courses, and shingles. A decorative wooden medallion is centered over the upstairs windows in the front bay. The front porch is covered by the slope of the main roof, and on the roof above the porch is a flat-roofed dormer. The house has a tall, corbelled cap interior brick chimney which provides a distinctive vertical accent toward the east side gable.
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.
The land on which this house stands was purchased by Herman S.
Gile, a leading Salem agriculturist, and his wife Minnie from the Watt family in 1902. They probably built the house during 1903, and by Jan. 1, 1905, the Statesman described it as "a beautiful new residence" owned by "one of the leading fruit buyers and shippers on this coast." Mr. Gile, the son of Reuben and Jane Gile, was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1860. The family moved in 1861 to Chicago, where the young Herman eventually was employed by the Wells Fargo Co. to be a messenger and agent in Iowa, Nebraska, and Colorado. He came to Salem in 1889 and in 1901, with Walter Jenks, organized the Willamette Valley Prune Association, later known as H. S. Gile and Co. Mr. Gile was one of the first to go east to introduce Oregon prunes to the U. S. domestic market and was given coverage at the time by The Saturday Evening Post (which, according to the entry on Gile in the History of Oregon, vol. 2, pp. 179-180, "devoted considerable space" to Gile and his "invading the east with his pockets bulging with prunes"). Mr. Gile later organized the Pheasant Fruit Juice Co., the name of which was changed twice to become the Northwest Fruit Products Co.
and later the Phez Co. The company manufactured apple cider and juice and loganberry juice. Gile was a candidate for mayor of Salem, president of the Salem Rotary Club in 1922, and active in the Calvary Baptist Church and the YMCA. He died in 1943 (obituary, Capital Journal Feb. 4, 1943, p. 12).
The Giles sold the house in 1910. In 1919, it was purchased by George and Elizabeth Ross. George Ross was born in Springbrook, Wise., in 1880. In 1901 he married Margaret Elizabeth Webster, also of Wisconsin. They moved in 1906 to Yakima, where he was chief clerk with the U. S. Reclamation Service. He was transferred to Bend on the Tumalo project and in 1912 came to Salem to enter law school at Willamette University. He was secretary and auditor for Oregon's first highway commission. He joined the army in 1918 and worked as a travelling auditor, rising to the rank of major. On his return to Salem in 1919, he and his wife purchased the former Gile House and he became the treasurer and auditor of the Phez Co. He later started his own firm as an auditor and public accountant and during this period wrote the book Cost Keeping and Construction Accounting, widely adopted as a guide by state governments and as a text in business courses. Mr. Ross died in 1927 (Clarke, vol. 2, pp. 441-442). In 1933, his widow sold the house.
