Giddings-Cherrington House (1599 Court St NE) Salem, Oregon
National Register of Historic Places Data
The Giddings-Cherrington House (1599 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shown here, minor errors and/or formatting may have occurred during transcription, and some information may have become outdated since listing.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 Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.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 85850-110
Owner: Lena Cherrington, 1599 Court Street, NE, Salem, OR 97301
Primary Contributing
The Giddings-Cherrington residence is a large two-story American Foursquare (Craftsman) house with a pyramid roof and a shallow hipped-roofed wing to the rear of the west wall. It is one of several large houses built on Court Street c. 1910 that contribute strongly to the character of the street.
The roof flares out in wide overhangs supported by decorative, Italian Renaissance brackets. The brackets directly support horizontal beams which in turn support exposed, decoratively cut rafter ends. This arrangement is similar to the eave bracketing on other houses of the same period in the District, including the Holmes and Mills houses (#16 and #15). The shed roof of the attached, full front (south) porch is supported by three columns mounted on paneled square piers; a balustrade encloses the porch, and its skirting is lattice work. Siding for the house is clapboard with wide, beveled cornerboards. Windows are large double-hung sash with crown moldings.
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 house was built in 1910 by James and Mary Giddings. Mr.
Giddings was a retired merchant from Mapletown, Iowa, who came to Salem with his wife in 1903. They first lived in a very large house in the Highland district (illustrated in the Oregon Statesman, Jan. 1, 1905, p. 17), then built this house (#31) and lived in it from 1910 to 1921. In the twenties, the house was owned by Gerald and Grace Volk and then by Rose McNamee, a nurse, who apprently operated a "maternity home" here.
The house changed hands twice more in the twenties before being acquired in 1930 by Lena Cherrington, widow of the early day Salem photographer W. M. Cherrington. He and his brother had come from Ohio in 1890 and opened Cherrington Brothers Photography in Salem. The Oregon Statesman Illustrated Annual for 1893 reported that "Cherrington Bros, have the best equipped photography gallery on this coast north of San Francisco." W. M. Cherrington's photograph of East Salem, taken c. 1902 or earlier from the dome of the old Capitol, is and important document in reconstructing the history of the District.
The Cherringtons sold their photography equipment and negatives to Cronise Studio and W. M. Cherrington opened a piano store in Salem. His daughter, Pat, still lives in the house his widow bought on Court Street.
Pat Cherrington planted the large tulip trees that stand in front of the house and almost obscure it during the summer months. The tulip trees replace English walnuts, which Pat Cherrington also planted, having done so at the suggestion of Nora Anderson (cf. commentary on #28), who urged several Court Street property owners to plant English walnut trees along the street. The walnut trees in front of the Cherrington house were killed in a silver thaw (conversation with Pat Cherrington, January 1986).
