Portland's Golden West Hotel Survival Paradox

Smithsonian picks black history museum designer

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Greetings! I am contacting you in your role as a Golden West Historic Display Advisory Committee member. You received a letter from Central City Concern about this project in fall 2008, and we are now moving forward and would like to invite you to participate in the first Advisory Committee meeting in April.

• Attend two meetings to review the proposed content of the historic display;
• Help make the display ‘unveiling’ event a success;
• Help publicize the exhibit to schools, history groups, community groups, etc.

Background: As you know, the Golden West building is one of the oldest remaining landmarks of African American history in Portland.  Central City Concern purchased and renovated the building in 1989, and recently took full ownership.  For the past 19 years, the Golden West has served countless homeless and mentally ill people. In 2007 CCC undertook a number of renovations to the building. We earmarked $4000 to restore the historic display that faces Everett Street sidewalks. When the City of Portland Visions in Action grant program became known, CCC contacted Old Town History Project Director Dr. Jackie Peterson who helped us put together an application.  CCC was awarded $9250 from the City and $1000 from the Oregon Council on the Humanities. The combined funds, plus in-kind labor contributions primarily by CCC, will allow us to restore and improve the exhibit panels and to also add two new display windows on the Broadway side of the building and a sound component. The major goal is to convey the vibrancy of the African American neighborhood around the Golden West in the early part of the 20th century.

Let me know if you have any questions and we look forward to the first Advisory Committee meeting.

Thanks, EV, CCC

Golden West History Project Advisory Committee

Name	Role in the project	Project-relevant background
Billy Anfield	Advisory Committee	CCC Employment Access Center Employment Mentor; his relatives lived in the neighborhood of the Golden West
EV Armitage	Advisory Committee & administrative project manager for the project	CCC Executive Coordinator
Will Bennett	Advisory Committee	Community practitioner.  His ‘Golden West Project’ is one of the ‘partners and friends’ of the City of Portland Vision-Into-Action VIA program which awarded us a grant.
Ed Blackburn	Advisory Committee & project director	Executive Director of CCC
Dick Bogle	Advisory Committee	His grandfather ran the barber shop at the Golden West in its heyday.  The barber’s daughter-in-law, Katherine Bogle, was the prime author of the original historic display.
Kathy Galbraith	Advisory Committee & project historical consultant	Director of the Bosco Milligan foundation for architectural preservation;  knowledgeable about African American history in Portland
Michael Chappie Grice	Advisory Committee	Helped create the original historic display at the Golden West in 1990.
Bill Hart	Advisory Committee	Principal with Carlton Hart Architects which did renovation work on the Golden West recently
Darrell Millner, PhD	Advisory Committee	Professor of history at PSU with specialty in African American history
Jackie Peterson Phd	Advisory Committee & project historian and curator	Historian specializing in America’s social and multiethnic history.  Curator for multiple exhibits.  Founder of the Old Town History Project
Bing Sheldon	Advisory Committee & SERA is donating design services	Principal with SERA Architects and board member of the Old Town History Project

Golden West History Project Advisory Committee

Before gentrification, before northeast redlining and before Vanport – there was the Golden West Hotel. Sitting in the shadow of Union Station, where a large number of African Americans found gainful employment, the Golden west was a community gathering place for pool; games, drinks, meals, haircuts and even Turkish baths. The early part of the 20th century was kind to the grand hotel and the surrounding Black-owned businesses – the depression was not.

And that’s where Will Bennett has stepped in to pick up the pieces.

“I don’t know what happen to the group,” Bennett said. “But for 18 years, nobody was caring for it.”

Bennett is a local a amateur historian who has been leading a one-man effort to establish an African American Historical District, a restoration of the Golden West Display, and the truthful history about race relations in Oregon.

About two years ago, Bennett took up it up as a personal project to push the Central City Concern to clean up the Golden West Display. He was instrumental in helping arrange a $9,250 grant through the city’s Vision into Action program to restore the sun and water-damaged display with help from Old Town History Project. But it’s only a beginning, he says.

“Friends of the Golden West wanted a museum, a historical district and a national registry of buildings needs to be established,” All of these things are required to have a vibrant community. We’re not quite a community like we used to be.”

In many ways, Bennett is a restoration project all his own. He’s not shy about talking about his past, it helped to make him who he is today. He was raised in the state foster care system. Kathryn Bogle – the daughter of Waldo Bogle, the barber at the original Golden West, and mother to former City Commissioner Dick Bogle – was his case worker, and she still remembered him when he called her decades later for her help restoring the Golden West Display. His case sent ripples through the foster system after a caregiver physically abused him – giving him scars he still carries to this day.

Bennett has battled drug addiction and homelessness He’s also has 11 felony Convictions. Mostly for drug-relates crimes. But he’s cleaned up his life and turned it around.

“I had to do this for her (Kathryn Bogle).” He said.

Bennett new addiction is local African American history. It all began when he made a call to Portland Public Schools to demand a change in curriculum when it came to teaching the truth about the way African Americans had been treated. They gave him a speaking slot. He was terrified about what he was going to say. So he started looking for a copy of Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Local Color” to play.

“After 18 years you couldn’t find a copy nowhere,” he said “like to tell people I got ethnic with them.”

He found a copy in the office of Portland State University’s Darrell Millner, who assisted journalist Jon Tuttle in making the award-winning film. Through Bennett’s continued prodding, OPB re-released the 1991 film on DVD and distributed hundreds of free copies to schools and nonprofits organizations.

“I’m a catalyst, some of these things are already in place, I just speed ‘en up a little bit,” he said.

Because of his efforts, the city of Portland’s Black History Committee gave him an award during their Black History celebration earlier this month.

“I’m humble and grateful,” he says.

Always looking ahead, Bennett is organizing public screening for “Local Color,” and hope to push someone to make a sequel to the film. He’d also like to see an African American museum open up, establish a historic and hopefully partner with an organization such as the Urban League to promote historical understanding.

But wherever his vision takes him, he doesn’t want it to be about money.

“I don’t want to be market driven, “he says. “I’m not into all that formality.”

And like the many forgotten faces the once graced the halls of the Golden West, the behind-the-scenes Bennett want people to learn about the Black people who helped make this city thrive.

“I want to focus on the unsung hero,” he said.

ORIGINAL FRIENDS OF THE GOLDEN WEST:

Chair Leroy Patten, Kathryn Hall Bogle, Greg Stevens from the Oregon Historical Society, historian Bob Zybock and Michael Grice

http://AfricanAmericanHuntingAssociation.com/Donny.pdf

www.African-American-Historical District.com

www.GoldenWest.ordpress.com

Vision into Action Built Portland Recipient

Portland, Oregon

Central City Concern: The Golden West Historic Display – $9,250 The Golden West Historic Display will be an innovative, street-level exhibit about African American history in an area of Portland not widely known to have been an African American business, social and cultural center: the Golden West Hotel near Union Station. Through words, sounds, and images, the multimedia display will tell the story of the African American community surrounding the Golden West Hotel in downtown Portland in the early 1900s. The publicly accessible display will face the sidewalks at a well-traveled corner, NW Everett and Broadway.

A little more light on little-known history Thursday, August 07, 2008 By Erin Hoover Barnett The Oregonian Staff When Portlanders talk about the city’s African American history, many speak of the black shipyard workers who were relocated to inner North and Northeast after the 1948 Vanport flood. Fewer know about the African American business district that thrived around Union Station in the early 1900s. Among black-owned businesses, the Golden West Hotel, 707 N.W. Everett, became the social focal point with its restaurant, Turkish baths, barbershop, gambling room, gymnasium and ice cream parlor. Now a project to better display Golden West’s history is among 12 recipients of city grants from the Vision Into Action Coalition. “It was surprising to some of the committee members the African American history that existed near Union Station. They considered that area Chinatown or Old Town,” says Stephanie Stephens, Vision Into Action’s manager. The coalition is acting on priorities, such as acknowledging city history — identified during Mayor Tom Potter’s visioning process. A committee of community, business and government representatives chose recipients from 55 applications. The grants range from $2,500 to the Good in the Neighborhood multicultural music and food festival to $10,000 to expand the newspaper Street Roots on the east side. Central City Concern received $9,250 for the Golden West display. The nonprofit, a social service and low-income housing agency, bought and rehabbed the hotel in 1989. The agency worked with the late Kathryn Hall Bogle and others to locate and display historic photos in window boxes outside the hotel. Bogle’s father owned the hotel barbershop. Her son, Dick Bogle, became a city commissioner. The new project, led by historian Jackie Peterson Loomis on behalf of Central City Concern, will upgrade the display and add another window box. Peterson Loomis, co-founder of the Old Town History Project, plans to incorporate audio, including music from the time and interviews with people such as Dick Bogle. “It’s an opportunity to position the Golden West as one of the most important centerpieces for this quite unique community of middle-class African Americans,” Peterson Loomis says. “It was a very tiny black community in a very racist city and state, but they really managed to build a community in that neighborhood.”… ©2009 Oregonian