THE SPOKESMAN • TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2022 A9
OFFBEAT OREGON
McLoughlin House transitions
from White House to brothel house
T
o the average Oregon
City resident, there
wasn’t much to cele-
brate in the vacant, dilapidated
old house by the foot of Willa-
mette Falls.
The house had, until a few
years before, been known as
the Phoenix Hotel, and it had
been a very flagrant bordello.
Conveniently located right in
the heart of what was then Ore-
gon City’s industrial core, it had
been a handy place for workers
in the woolen mills, paper man-
ufacturers, sawmills, and other
operations that took advantage
of the plentiful waterpower of
the falls. No doubt it did an es-
pecially brisk business every
payday.
It can’t have been brisk
enough, though, because in
1906 the owners offered to sell
the building and land to the
city of Oregon City. There was
a brief flurry of interest and
mayor E.G. Caufield got very
excited about it.
But when the proposal was
put to a referendum, the vot-
ers quashed the deal, and the
old brothel was instead sold
to the Hawley Pulp and Paper
Co., which wanted the land to
expand some of its adjacent fa-
cilities.
When that happened, the
new mayor, W.E. Carll, dropped
by to talk to Mr. Hawley. He was
hoping to arrange some kind of
deal to save the house. Hawley
was willing to help. He said he’d
gladly donate the building to
the city if they could move it off
the property. Carll agreed to see
what he could do.
NO ORDINARY BUILDING
Now, this may seem like an
awful lot of trouble for people to
be going through to save an old
whorehouse from the wreck-
ing ball. The thing was, though,
the Phoenix Hotel had been no
ordinary whorehouse. It had
been built in 1846, before Ore-
gon was a state or even officially
an American territory, by the
“Father of Oregon” himself: Dr.
John McLoughlin, the head of
the Hudson’s Bay Company’s
Northwest operations.
McLoughlin had been posted
as Chief Factor for the com-
pany in Fort Vancouver in 1825,
when the Oregon Territory was
under joint occupancy and it
wasn’t clear whether it would
end up being part of the U.S.
or Canada. Later in the 1820s,
McLoughlin had staked a land
claim at Willamette Falls and
platted Oregon City.
As the Oregon Trail opened
up, it started becoming obvious
that the huge influx of Ameri-
can settlers was messing up the
U.S.-Britain joint occupancy
treaty, pushing the territory to-
ward full U.S. control by sheer
numbers. McLoughlin, of course,
was on the British side of things.
But when, in the mid-1840s,
American emigrants started stag-
gering into Fort Vancouver sick
and exhausted and starving from
the rigors of the Oregon Trail, he
took them in and gave them shel-
ter and supplies on credit. This
made him increasingly unpopu-
lar with his bosses back east, who
would have preferred a more
hard-nosed attitude toward the
emigrants.
So, to get rid of him, they
“promoted” McLoughlin to
another post east of the Rocky
Mountains.
This was checkmate for Mc-
Loughlin. If he accepted the
promotion, he’d have to aban-
don his land claim at Willamette
Falls, which was already very
valuable and only getting more
so. But the only way to decline
the promotion was to retire
from the Hudson’s Bay Com-
pany. Which, as they had ex-
pected, was the option he took.
He settled down at the falls and
applied for American citizen-
ship, which he received in 1851.
RELIGION CAUSES PROBLEMS
But by now, most of the Or-
egon City residents were Prot-
Photo courtesy Historic American Buildings Survey
The John McLoughlin House was moved from Second and Third Streets in Oregon City.
Wikipedia commons
The McLoughlin House in Oregon City, Oregon.
estants and McLoughlin was
Catholic. The Hudson’s Bay
Company employees were very
broadminded about such things
— half of them being French
voyageurs, after all — but plenty
of the American emigrants were
not.
To make things worse, there
had been an unfortunate inci-
dent eight years earlier when
McLoughlin had publicly at-
tacked and thrashed Fort Van-
couver’s Anglican chaplain,
Herbert Beaver, in the courtyard
at the fort. Beaver had referred
to McLoughlin’s wife, Margue-
rite, as “a female of notoriously
loose character” and McLough-
lin’s “kept mistress” (their mar-
riage ceremony had not been
an Anglican one) in an official
report. That report had passed
through McLoughlin’s hands
on its way east. But however de-
served this public drubbing may
or may not have been, it didn’t
do much for McLoughlin’s repu-
tation among Protestants.
So McLoughlin, although he
was the most prominent citi-
zen of Oregon City, had plenty
of enemies there, and some of
them got busy challenging his
land claims.
Some of those challenges
were successful, but enough was
left for McLoughlin to finish his
life in comfort — and to build
the biggest, nicest house in the
state for his wife and family.
The house was a great big Co-
lonial-style two-story residence
with numerous rooms upstairs
for guests. These guest rooms,
of course, would be super use-
ful decades later, when the place
became the Phoenix Hotel.
LEGACY
John McLoughlin died in
1857. Marguerite followed three
years later, and after that for a
time other family members lived
in the house. But by 1867 they
had all died or moved out, and
the house was sold, and began
its transformation from White
House to whorehouse.
By 1908, when Hawley Pulp
and Paper bought the house,
John McLoughlin was univer-
sally recognized in Oregon City
as one of the most important fig-
ures in state history. But he was
not as universally loved. Plenty
of people in Oregon City wanted
nothing to do with him, or with
his old house.
Luckily for all of us, Eva Em-
ery Dye was not one of them.
Eva Dye was a famous au-
thor and the main power be-
hind the Gladstone Chautauqua.
Her most successful book had
been a biography of McLough-
lin, and when she learned what
was planned for his house, she
turned her considerable orga-
nizational skills into a bid to
save it.
At first things looked like
they’d be smooth sailing. The
state Legislature passed a bill
allocating funds to preserve
the house. But then Governor
George Chamberlain vetoed
it, putting everything back to
square one.
So the Oregon City city coun-
cil stepped up, offering to donate
the building and provide a spot
to which to move it, if private
donors would cover the trans-
portation and restoration costs.
The spot they picked was in the
city park at the top of Singer Hill.
Dye and her allies thought
Photo courtesy WIkimedia Commons
The graves of Margaret and John McLoughlin in Oregon City, Oregon.
that sounded just fine, and
promptly formed the McLough-
lin Memorial Association — one
of the first historic preservation
organizations in state history, if
not the first — to raise the neces-
sary money.
This appears to have been the
point at which Oregon City’s an-
ti-McLoughlin forces realized it
was really going to happen. It’s
not entirely clear why they cared
so deeply about the old house;
most likely it was a coalition of
residents who considered any
former whorehouse to be irre-
deemably tainted with sin, along
with others who hated Catholics
enough to oppose memorializ-
ing McLoughlin.
Whatever their motives, they
immediately got busy mounting
a fierce resistance to anything
short of demolition. First they
got an injunction barring the
building from being moved. The
association appealed to the local
court, the judge threw it out, and
work went on.
While the house was being
moved, the opposition appar-
ently bided its time. It probably
looked to them like the problem
was going to take care of itself
when the house reached the bot-
tom of Singer Hill. Singer Hill, as
you may know, is not really a hill
per se, but rather a narrow road-
bed cut into the side of the great
rocky bluff running through the
middle of downtown Oregon
City, towering hundreds of feet
over the river. It’s the same bluff
that Oregon City’s famous mu-
nicipal elevator serves, a block
and a half away to the south.
Looking back and forth from the
tiny, narrow roadway to the great
ramshackle house, most onlook-
ers must have thought there was
no way this would work.
But it did. Old photographs
show the process. The building
was winched up the hill, inch by
inch, using cables powered by a
capstan wheel turned by a single
horse. The house was consid-
erably wider than the road up
the hill, and at one point it was
sticking so far out over the edge
of the cliff that it nearly toppled
off to tumble down the hill. The
workers had to run down to
the river for sand and gravel to
dump on the floors of the in-
board side of the house, to keep
the center of gravity over land
instead of air.
When the house was finally
at the top — at a cost of $600! —
another injunction was served,
seeking to prevent it from be-
ing set on the foundation they’d
built for it in the park. This was
quickly dismissed, and the house
was placed there. Then a guard
had to be put on it, as anon-
ymous arson threats came in
from frustrated anti-McLough-
linites.
But eventually the drama sub-
sided, and on Sept. 5, 1909, the
house was officially dedicated
in a memorial service for Mc-
Loughlin.
Today, the John McLoughlin
House is something of a munici-
pal treasure for Oregon City, and
regularly attracts visitors from all
over the country. If you should
go and see it, which you abso-
lutely should, take a little detour
over onto Singer’s Hill afterward
and try to visualize that enor-
mous house being winched up
that narrow, rock-lined roadway
— by one single hard-working
horse!
█
Finn J.D. John teaches at Oregon
State University and writes about odd
tidbits of Oregon history. His book,
Heroes and Rascals of Old Oregon, was
recently published by Ouragan House
Publishers. To contact him or suggest a
topic: finn@offbeatoregon.com or 541-
357-2222.
Get great
service &
great rates.
Joe A Lochner Ins Acy Inc
Joe A Lochner, Agent
www.joelochner.com
Redmond, OR 97756
Bus: 541-548-6023