The home where my wife and I live and raised our kids will soon celebrate its hundredth birthday. We moved into this modest Beaumont-Wilshire bungalow in 1979 and were told we were just the third owners. The place had good bones, an ancient converted sawdust-burning furnace we had to replace, and three look-alike sister houses stretching in a row up our street.
Over the years, we realized hundreds more nearly identical houses dotted NE Portland, all distinguished by the same one-and-a-half-story height, overhanging eaves, front porch, two large front windows, and an open circular interior layout on the main floor. We long wondered where this light-filled, family-friendly design originated. Recently we got the answer to our question, starting with a mention of something called the Universal Plan Service book in local historian Doug Decker’s terrific Alameda Old House History website (alamedahistory.org). This led us to some neighborhood history sleuthing.
A Solution for Post-World War I Portland Building Boom
During the early decades of the 1900s, we learned, Portland’s boundaries and population rapidly expanded. A post-World War I economic boom contributed to a house-building explosion. Into this market stepped two Portland residential designers, Howard Gifford and Harry Boland, with a vision of making it possible for working-class families to afford simple and durable homes without expensive individual architectural fees.
Starting in the mid-1920s, they began to publish their Universal Plan Service books containing dozens of home designs. Early editions of the book sold from 75 cents to a dollar, and orders eventually came from all over the country. Regularly updated editions of the Universal Plan Service book sold until 1960, and almost half a million were purchased over the decades.
Efficient to Build a Century Ago, Author’s House Plan Number 531 Lives On
Estimates are that in Portland alone, the company sold plans for nearly 10,000 homes. You can find them on most streets in our older neighborhoods. A carpenter acquaintance told us that builders could easily flesh out these boilerplate designs and get them constructed quickly. Carpenters would move their table saws into the houses and craft the cabinets and trim on site — nothing prefabricated here.
We were delighted when we discovered the original design of our and our neighbors’ sturdy old houses in the 1926 edition of the Universal Plan Service book. It’s plan number 531, perfect for our typical Portland 50’ x 100’ lot.
You can check out the 1926 edition of the Universal Plan Service book for yourself, a copy of which is online. Maybe you’ll find your home there!
dahp.wa.gov/sites/default/files/PortlandHomes_UniversalPlanService_1926.pdf.
BWNA board member Tim Gillespie was a public school teacher in the Portland area for almost four decades.