Odem, Milton, House

About this property

The Milton Odem House is a small bungalow home located in Redmond, Oregon. The house was built in 1937 by Ole K. Olson for Milton Odem, a local theater owner. It is one of the best examples of residential Streamline Moderne architecture in Oregon. The Milton Odem House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. Milton Odem was born in Enid, Oklahoma in 1906. He moved to Idaho as a boy, growing up in Grangeville and Lewiston. Odem arrived in Redmond with his wife in 1923. They bought an existing theater and renamed it the Mayfair, turning it into a successful business. Odem later built a second movie theater in downtown in Redmond; and then a drive-in theater on the outskirts of the city. Over the years, he also served on the Redmond Airport Commission, the Redmond City Planning Commission, and the Redmond City Council. In 1937, Odem decided to build a new theater to accommodate the influx of movie goers from the Civilian Conservation Corps camp at Camp Sherman and workers at the new Redmond Air Field. He called the new theater the Odem. Odem chose a sleek modern design for his new theater, an architectural style known as Streamline Moderne. The style features aerodynamic lines, chromium steel, colored vitreous marble, tubular neon, stucco walls, glass blocks, tinted mirrors, and recessed lighting. All these features combine to create a streamlined industrial look which was very popular at the time, especially for theaters and commercial buildings. Not only did he build his new Odem theater in that style, he also built a new Streamline Moderne home the same year the theater was constructed. The home was located on a 50 by 100-foot (30 m) lot on the west side of 12th Street in southwest Redmond. The Odem family only lived in the house for three years, moving to another home in the Redmond area in 1940. In 1940, a back porch was added to the home and a garage was built on the northwest corner of the lot. A year later, the new owners added a second bedroom to the northwest corner of the house. With that addition, today's historic structure was complete. Subsequent alterations changed some of the original characteristics. For example, in the 1970s, the original double-hung windows were replaced by aluminum frame windows. The original doors were also replaced during that period. A major renovation of the Odem house was completed in the spring of 1996, bringing back much of the original detail using historic photography to guide the work. Because of its unusual Streamline Moderne design, the Milton Odem House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 21 February 1997. At the time it was listed, the Milton Odem House was the only Streamline Moderne residential property in Oregon listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Today, the Odem house remain one of the best examples of a Streamline Moderne residence in the state of Oregon.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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