The still-impressive 110-year-old home at 3533 NE Klickitat St. — known as the Barnes Mansion or sometimes the Barnes Castle — was built by Frank Barnes, one of old-time Portland’s most successful business magnates.
Barnes and his wife Isabella made their fortune by growing and packaging food for the still-young town of Portland and later branched out into real estate. Frank “established Portland’s earliest and busiest grocery market at the corner of SW 3rd and Morrison downtown,” according to Doug Decker’s Alameda Old House History website alamedahistory.org. “It was an integrated business with 40 employees, seven wagons, farming acreage, a poultry farm, a fruit packing plant, a commercial ice and cold storage facility, and a huge warehouse for salting, smoking, and canning salmon.”
Barnes came to Portland in 1858 with his parents via covered wagon — as a 4-year-old pioneer on the Oregon Trail.
He later reportedly tangled with another early Portland titan, Henry Pittock, the famed (and famously racist) early editor and publisher of The Oregonian. The story goes that Pittock looked down from his mansion high in the West Hills to glare at Barnes’ rival palace across the Willamette on the edge of the Alameda Ridge.
To be continued in the next newsletter…