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Hotels, Past and Present,
and a Yarn of Pioneer Days
::liritl.iltntlllliHtllilttlMi.tltinit
By Earl C. Brownlee
UIFTi years ago a rugged pio
neer, a modish little straw hat
on his curly head, tilted his chair '
against the front of Portland's ,
leading hotel and scraped a willow :
stick in the dust at the feet of
the horses that drew the hotel bus
an old Concord reclaimed from i
a thrifty overland stage line.
The pioneer was owner, manager, ;
bell boy, chief porter and "Greet-
er" at the hotel, rfis guests were
mo empire uutiuers wnose sowing
the state today is harvesting.
But the old hotel is grone. In its
place are sundry cliffs of masonry
with sundry' thousands of I rooms
where the newcomer - and tourist
first pauses to assemble his im
pressions of the city to which he
has been welcomed by one or more
of the 110 dapper young men who,
as trained hotel clerks and mem- i
bers of the Greeters of Oregon, pre- :
side behind marble topped hotel
desks in luxurious plush chaired
lobbies. . j . .
.In the new generation the cliff is;
owned by a group of capitalists; the
furnishings of the elaborate host
lery are owned by another, and still
'another, man bears the title of man-1
ager. officiating over the conduct
of the hotel by i several , hundred I
other men and women from his
place at a fine mahogany desk in
a private office, with private -. ste
nographers to barricade the door- !
ways against interruption, j
" " .
To the Greeter of 1920, whose
business it is to "sell" to the new
comer Portland's climate,' com
merce and charm, ! "Muckamuck"
Smith would be a story-book char
acter. Yet "Muckamuck" ( was a
very real person in Portland's ho
tel colony not many years ago, no
torious for his meals or the lack
Of thenu - '. s
. Could S. N. Arrigoni step from
3out the past to resume the place he
held in the '60's as the operator of
the finest hotel in the city, the
present-day Greeter would stare in
amazement. Tet Arrigoni was.
known to thousands who had visit
ed pioneer Portland and who had
enjoyed the hospitality and friend
liness of the Pioneer or Arrigon
hotels.
: TV
It was at the Pioneer hotel, said
to be the ancestor of Portland's
first-class hotels, .that Captain Sta
ples and Ferd Patterson met one
night in the early '.60'sv j
. Staples, a mariner, had tied his
little steamer at Portland's - dock
and dropped all care as, with two
companions, he strode up the. plank
walk to the city's foremost stop
ping place. . ; ; .
The trio had remained overlong
at Its cups In the Pioneer barroom
when Patterson, gambler, gentle
man and Southern states patriot,
came into the place for his evening
"nip," just before retiring.
A misshaped joke formed ir Sta
ples befuddled mind. :
"Hurrah for Honest Abe!-he
shouted toward Patterson, and by .
way of adding sting:
"Pooh, pooh for Jefferson Dav
is!" .
Those two exclamations were
costly. With Patterson,- "than
whom," an historian says, "no finer
fellow ever lived," the name of
"Jeff" Davis was sacred; - traduc
ing the name was a cardinal sin.
Patterson, it is attested, "played the
game straight" a gambler because
gambling was, in a measure, sanc
tioned by custom; a gentleman be
cause he had been reared as such,
and a Confederate patriot because
the cause of the Southland was in
his heart and blood.
The odious salutation from Sta
' pies struck home. Patterson
backed to the doorway before in
dignation completely overwhelmed
him. . Then he shouted out : the
glory of the Southern Confeder
acy. That was the battle signal. Sta
ples and his mates reeled after Pat
tersonthe latter mounting the
stairs toward liis room to -escape
Impending trouble. But trouble was
inevitable, spectators declare. Sta
ples', companions deserted him for
the shelter of the stair casing, but
the captaip, screaming hate and
avowing an intention to "riddle the
rebel hide" of Patterson with, bul
lets, followed, brandishing his gun.
"Stand your ground!" Patterson
cried, "I'll have no more of your
insult." r
Warned, Staples scorned. A shot
' rang out. The mariner was dead. .
'Young Portland J alarmed by the
first shot, was flooding into the Pi
oneer lobby.
Friends hauled out their shoot
ing irons and the walls o that ho
tel, to the day it was razed, carried
the marks made ' by 20 - crashing
bullets fired in the fusillade that
failed to imperil Patterson, or the
companions who had deserted Sta
ples for the protection of the stair
case. Witnesses comprised .nearly the
entire hamlet. The testimony of
some of . them helped to free Pat
terson from a charge of murder on
a plea of self-defense. '
That is a thriller from the days
of the gunmen. The thrills of the
tapestried lobbies of the twentieth
century hotel are not even akin to
those at the days of the frontiers
men. ,
Pompous gentlemen in expensive
tweeds and Imported felts sit mildly
by as the warp and woof weave to
day's narrative, and discuss politely
the contest of favorite sons. Twelve
cylinder automobiles transport
guests to and from the railway sta
tion, that half a century ago was
t- dream stuff in the minds of Ideal
ists imported overland on a lumber
ing old stage coach.
Highly polished hardwood floors
cover the brilliantly lighted dancing
space in the glittering hotel grill, in
contrast to the fir board floor that ',
saw the merry parties at which
Graham, : colored barber to the
Brummels of Portland in the '60's,
shouted his square dance calls In ,
famous stentorian tone that echoes
still in memory. ,
V
And the new order of things is
? largely ; in the keeping of the
Greeters of Oregon, of whose 175'
members 110 are employed in Port
land hotels.
The Greeter is a gracious young
man, versed in the ways of trav
elers, advised as to every possible .
point, of interest, conversant with
; hotel conditions tn all parts of the .
1 world and full of the knowledge of
the mysteries of train schedules.
He is charged with the duty of
being an asset to the community
through his reception of the day's
guests, to whom he can Impart a
good or evil impression of the city
that ofttimes will overcome' 'all
other praise or scorn and bring or,
send away a possible citizen.
There is no checkered vest be
hind Portland hotel desks to shield
from soil a purple shirt and green
necktie adorned with a blazing dia
mond horshoe pin. That type in
hotelmen disappeared forever . be-
' fore the Greeters organized an Ore
gon chapter in 1911. The new
clerk is a man of splendid ideals, if
he , is worthy of his organization, .
; mindful that his work is to welcome
every guest and make his hotel a -home
for the traveler.
; iv The Greeters in 1919 spent $8000
. on a convention at which they en
tertained ' fellow workers . from all .
parts of the nation. They publish
a local, and a national magartne;
they have homes and families away
from their hotels gardens, friends
.. and all.' j , - '.
V They are characterized by Mayor
Baker, as the greatest group asset
the city has. They can make or
break the city by , their . reception
to guests and thus are a powerful
factor in the city's upbuilding. They
are organized among . themselves
for the inculcation of high stand- '
' ards of character and efficiency,
and to establish the calling in
which they are engaged on as high .
a plane as possible.
. Which, for all its laudation, does
not detract one whit from the ho
telman of the years now gone."
Stephen Coffin, who had an im- .
I . II ' ll
JT WAS si &a&si?zs& JAOJ?.
portant part in a score of the en
terprises upon - which ; Portland's
present business structure is built,
was one of the city's first hotel- '
men. It was - Coffin, "township .
proprietor," lessee of the peniten
tiary, etc., who owned the Canton
house, one of the earliest hotels, if
not the first, in Portland. The Can
ton house was purchased from Cof
fin by S. X. Arrigoni. and his happy
Irish wife after they, had made a
perilous cross continental trip from
New York. .-' : --: ,
The Canton house became the
Pioneer hotel and assumed a great .
dignity through the efforts of the
Arrigonis. Ransom Clark kept the
Columbia hotel, another early day
establishment. Clark was one of
Fremont's men, who came to the
new world in '43.
Attest a successful career . in
charge of the pioneer, the Arri-.
gonis bought the Metropolis, a
prominent competitor, and renamed
it the "Arrigon." The Arrigon was
headquarters for years of the1 over
land line to California and its roof
sheltered scores of prominent per- t
sons of that day. V '
r It was from the balcony, of the
Arrigon that Schuyler Colfax, then
speaker of the national house of
representatives, reviewed the Just .
ended Civil war, and where other
members of the Colfax party spoke.
Colfax and his friends, a trio of
Eastern newspapermen, made their
way bstage overland to California
from St. Joseph, thence up the
coast to Portland. : ; '
.The Western hotel, later the Oc- -cidental,
was owned and personally
operated by "Muckamuck" Smith,
a noted pioneer, of '53, about whose
hotel experiences many 'amusing
stories are handed down.
Thomas Guirieah.? first manager
of the then sumptuous St. Charles ,
. hotel, was one of the most widely
known hotelmen on the coast and
made his house equally famous.
But it was the Clarendon house
that took all praise in its time. The
Clarendon was by far the most gor- "
geous thing attempted up to that
time and was,-it"has been said, "real '
fashionable." The f dignitaries of
that day invariably were -guests at'
the Clarendon, which. was operated
by C. W. (Charlie)! KnowlesandAI
Zieber. The house occupied a site
at First and F streets 'at the ter
minus of the old one-horse street
car system the, city- then boasted ;
about.' . ;.
4 The daddy of them' all," though,
was the Whatshire house,' prede
cessor of the Pioneer and like es-
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tablishments. The Whatshire first :
housed many of the men and. wom
en who were coming. here to, make
Oregon, history. . It .was conducted
by O'Conner and Keagan. . v,
. The Esmond hotel deserves Its
measure ?of fame ; in more recent
ym. wr, t . tCrVnB. .
fore its recent destruction, men and
women whose - names are written
Indelibly in the history of the world,.
the nation and the ttate.
The fact that S. N. Arrigoni was
the pioneer of . pioneer hotelmen
! i
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entitles him . to a big, place in the
' of - Italy, 'wedded to - a- delightful
Irish lass 'in -Dublin', , educated inj
college in his native land, Arrigon J
spoke ' six ' languages fluently anttj
was a manner or mvcn experience
r he arrlved; ln Portland wttnJ
1n Mai,tr . Mr.l
his wife -and twin 'daughters. Mrs!
Arrigoni, aged 91,-lives in Portland
noW'4uid- retains much, of the peri
sonality that endeared her to piol
neer Portland. -. . ;- - . ; 7
Joseph, Gaston,-Portland hlstori
an," says ' of - Arrigoni's hotels, "thf'
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.Pioneer and the Arrigon: "These
; were the first hotels of any size in
Portland."
'Arigonl was an emp're builder,
good Samaritan, ' banker through
the faith of his friends and a leader
. In the community. He first gave
, free office room to the telegraph
and stage coach . companies that
were invading the territory and was
a good-roads enthusiast with much
action to his credit. He went from
Portland to Astoria, and there, for
11 years before his death, ln 1876,
operated' hotels. v .
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