A stroll in South Portland with Polina Olsen, writer of ‘Stories from Jewish Portland’
Polina Olsen appears at a Lair Hill intersection and points towards the web web site the place where a Jewish bride that is mail-order Ukraine once lived along with her spouse, a Jewish farmer from Southern Dakota.
They lived maybe maybe perhaps not too much from a barn that housed the horses of many Jewish junk peddlers whom lived and plied their trade within the community. These recyclers that are early pile their wagons high with rags and containers and other things that they might find, then offer them towards the junk dealers whom lined Front Avenue.
South Portland’s populace “was one-third Jewish, one-third Italian and everyone that is one-third,” states Olsen, who has got written four publications in regards to the reputation for the area. Her latest, “
Before 1900, Olsen describes, there have been few, if any, Jews in Southern Portland. But by 1920, there have been about 6,000. Numerous were delivered right here because portal link of the Industrial Removal Organization, a charity that helped Jews keep the slum conditions of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in nyc.
When they surely got to Southern Portland — about 1 1/2 square kilometers stretching from approximately Southwest Hall Street and First Avenue within the north to Corbett Avenue between Lowell and Bancroft roads within the south — they setup synagogues, Hebrew schools, clinics, social solution agencies and a huge selection of organizations.
Olsen is just a retired software engineer whom relocated to Oregon through the East Coast in 1977. She writes history column, searching straight straight Back, for the
and also leads walking trips of Southwest Portland. She now spends her time as a researcher and author. “I think all this work has one thing regarding the fact we never ever asked my four immigrant grand-parents such a thing – it never ever took place for me. Later on, after having examined Jewish folklore at the University of Oregon, we felt an awful feeling of loss. It’s method of attempting to protect memories before it is too late. It is irrelevant that i did son’t mature here. Once I read about these folks we read about my grand-parents.”
Certainly one of Olsen’s key sources had been Gussie Reinhardt. “I came across her whenever she was just 96. She ended up being the grande dame associated with Jewish community,” says Olsen, incorporating that Reinhardt had a phenomenal memory. “I would personally check always every thing she said when you look at the town directories and she was constantly bang on.”
Use the whole tale of Minnie Berg, for instance. She was created in Canada in 1911 and lived at some point in a flat building in the part of Southwest Meade and 2nd Avenue.
Her dad owned one of several Southern Portland concert halls and she’d sing combined with the organist whom accompanied the quiet films. Later on she had been spotted by a skill scout at Kelly’s Beer Parlour downtown. He had been a numerologist who suggested that she be changed by her name to one thing luckier. Their recommendation? Mona Paulee, following the game, that has been highly popular during the time. She continued to become a mezzo-soprano during the Metropolitan Opera.
A block from Mona Paulee’s youth house is really what happens to be the Cedarwood Waldorf class. “This ended up being Neighborhood home,” Olsen claims, created as a sewing school in 1897 because of the nationwide Council of Jewish ladies. They relocated into this grand building that is new 3030 S.W. 2nd Ave. in 1910.
“this is the center of this community,” Olsen claims. It had been where newly arrived immigrants went along to learn English, where moms took children into the center, where junk peddlers held their relationship conferences and where in actuality the community Jewish children went to kindergarten and later, Hebrew college after the college time was over.
“Tales from Jewish Portland”
and Polina Olsen’s other publications can be obtained at Powells, Broadway Books, Annie Blooms, Everything Jewish while the Multnomah County Library.
As families became more affluent, quite a few relocated off to Laurelhurst or Irvington. Then when you look at the late ’50s and very very early ’60s, a number of highway jobs and Portland’s first metropolitan renewal system slice the community to shreds.
“The Portland developing Commission declared it a blighted community, ” Olsen states, and razed 54 obstructs. Many obstructs with what has become Lair Hill would have been laid also to waste or even when it comes to efforts of Gussie Reinhardt, whom for four years led a committee to prevent the destruction.
Olsen highlights two victorians that are beautiful First Avenue being nevertheless standing. Farther North, Mosler’s Bagel Shop and lots of other domiciles and companies weren’t therefore fortunate.
“Gussie’s daughter told me that their bagels were a lot better than ny bagels, but their recipe died with him. He didn’t wish their young ones to go fully into the bakery company.”
By the 1960s most families that are jewish relocated far from Southern Portland to communities farther west, Olsen claims. The variety of people who was raised within the neighborhood that is old dwindling, but Olsen is preserving their memories.
“People don’t understand,” she says, “how interesting their lives that are own.”