Smith, Alvin T., House

About this property

The Alvin T. Smith House is a two-story home on Elm Street in Forest Grove, Oregon, United States. Completed in 1856, it is the second oldest building in the city and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. A Greek Revival style house, it was built by pioneer Alvin T. Smith beginning in 1854. Alvin Smith settled on a 643 acres (260 ha) farm on the Tualatin Plains south of what became West Tuality Plains in 1841. He and his wife were the first permanent Euro-American settlers in the area that would later become Forest Grove. An earlier cabin on the property was destroyed in a flood, and their second cabin later became a post office. In 1854, he and his wife Abigail began the construction of a new home. Alvin was a trained carpenter and did the work himself. Construction finished in 1856, and is the second oldest wood-framed building in Forest Grove after Old College Hall at Pacific University. Abigail died in 1858, with Alvin continuing to live in the home with his second wife Jane until 1870. The couple moved to downtown Forest Grove, but continued to own the property. Alvin died in 1888, and Jane leased the house until around 1920 when she died. The Alvin T. Smith House was one of only two structures in Forest Grove that were documented for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in the 1930s. The next owner sold the estate to the Zurcher family circa 1940. Alvin T. Smith House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 8, 1974. The house was abandoned around 1990. In 2002, the Friends of Historic Forest Grove began plans to purchase the home and restore it. The group worked with the Oregon Historic Preservation Office to purchase the property. In 2005, a methamphetamine lab was removed from the basement and the house decontaminated. In March 2005, the group purchased the home for $75,000 after raising $175,000, with some of the funds raised through a calendar featuring nude members at the house. Long-term plans call for turning the property into a center for learning about the cultural heritage of the area. In 2015 the A.T. Smith House was named one of Oregon's Most Endangered Places by Restore Oregon. The home sits on a 2.2 acres (1 ha) site on the south side of Forest Grove off Oregon Route 47, in what was once the town of Carnation. Smith House is of a classical Greek Revival design with a side hall floor plan. The gabled side serves as the front of the structure. The two-story building includes a basement. The basement consists of stone walls with brick on the top as the foundation. The basement remained cool and was utilized as storage for perishables such as fruit and vegetables.

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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