May-Cavanaugh House (1563 Court St NE) Salem, Oregon
National Register of Historic Places Data
The May-Cavanaugh House (1563 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shown here, minor errors and/or formatting may have occurred during transcription, and some information may have become outdated since listing.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 Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.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 26 BA 7-3W
Tax Lot 86010-27Q
Owners: Alan and Mary Ellen Long, 1563 Court Street, NE, Salem, OR 97301
Primary Contributing
The May-Cavanaugh House is a variation of the American Foursquare (Craftsman) house. It is a large two-story structure with a low-angled hipped roof accented by a front-facing dormer on the south face of the roof. The main and dormer roofs both have wide overhangs with decorative brackets in the eaves. The front entry is a porch recessed into the square of the house with a small decorative roof (also bracketed) over the front and side openings of the porch and extending back to crown the east-facing oriel window behind the porch. Another oriel window occurs on the west wall. A side entry on the east opens into a lower back addition. Siding is clapboard with wood shingles on the dormer. Most windows are multi-pane-over-one double-hung sash. Apart from the modern metal awnings, the house is unchanged on the exterior and in excellent condition.
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.
In 1902, this lot was purchased from George Watt by Walter T. Jenks, an employee of H. S. Gile who boarded at the Gile House, next door to the west (#24). In 1908, Walter and Edith Jenks sold the lot to H. L. May, a carpenter. May built the house in 1909 at a cost of $4000 (Oregon Statesman, Jan. 1, 1910, Section 4) and sold it to Lafayette and Eva Cavanaugh in 1910.
Mr. Cavanaugh was a stock dealer. He and his wife lived in the house until 1920, when they sold it to Reuben Marsters, a lawyer, and his wife, Lizzie. The Marsters owned it until 1925. Mr, Marsters was born in Illinois in 1876, and Lizzie Blain Marsters was born the same year in Roseburg, Ore. Reuben Marsters came to Oregon in 1888, attended school in Douglas County until 1895, and attended the College of Philomath for three years. In 1898, he married Lizzie Blain and in 1899 was elected Justice of the Peace for Coles Valley Precinct, Roseburg. During his term in office he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1904 (History of the Bench and Bar in Oregon, p. 183).
