The Man with the Plan — Richard H. Martin Jr., Architect of the Sholes House
The architect who designed the Albert and Jenny Sholes house was Richard H. Martin Jr., and Albert Sholes must have been both influential and persuasive to secure his services. Martin designed very few residences over the course of his long career, and the Sholes house is the only one he ever designed outside the city of Portland.
The Making of an Architect
Richard H. Martin Jr. was born in England in 1858 and came to Portland with his parents in 1874. His father, Richard Martin Sr., was a builder and stonemason, so architecture was in the family from the beginning.
Courtesy Oreg. Hist. Soc. Research Lib., OrHi9900
Martin worked as a draughtsman in the office of Warren H. Williams, one of Portland’s leading architects of the 1880s. Among the buildings he helped design during those years were the Starr Block in Portland in 1882 and Villard Hall in 1886, the second oldest building on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, which still stands today.
After Warren Williams died in 1888, Martin worked in partnership with Alexander M. Milwain before forming the firm of McCaw, Martin and White. It became one of the most prominent architectural firms in Portland at the close of the nineteenth century, responsible for some of the most substantial Romanesque-style buildings in Oregon.
The Buildings
The list of Martin’s work reads like a tour of Portland’s architectural heritage. In 1888 he designed the Pacific Northwest Industrial Exposition Building, the largest exhibition hall on the West Coast when it was built. It burned in 1910. His early works included the Skidmore Block and New Market Block in 1889, the University of Portland’s West Hall, now known as Waldschmidt Hall, in 1891, and the First Regiment Armory Annex, also 1891, which today is the beloved Gerding Theater. In 1892 he designed the Portland home of Dr. Kenneth A.J. Mackenzie, a founder and dean of the University of Oregon’s Medical School, now Oregon Health Sciences University. Also in 1892 came what many consider his masterwork: the Dekum Building, a Portland landmark distinguished by its distinctive stonework, elaborate carvings, and colorful masonry.
Later projects included the Scottish Rite Center in 1902, the home of philanthropist Dr. Henry Waldo Coe in 1906, now destroyed, and the Masonic Temple in 1907.
Courtesy Oreg. Hist. Soc. Research Lib., neg. no. 020238
And then, in 1909, the Albert Sholes House in Cornelius, Oregon.
Courtesy U. of Oregon Libraries, Oregon State Preservation Office, pna_01156
The Cornelius Connection
That final entry on the list is the remarkable one. A man who designed the largest exhibition hall on the West Coast, whose work still stands on two university campuses, whose Gerding Theater remains one of Portland’s most treasured buildings, designed one private residence outside of Portland in his entire career. It was in Cornelius. Albert Sholes was president of the Cornelius State Bank, a former mayor of Cornelius, a man of considerable means and connections. Whatever conversation he had with Richard Martin Jr. that led to the commission, it was clearly a persuasive one.
Richard H. Martin Jr. died in Portland in 1950 at the age of ninety-two and was laid to rest at Lincoln Memorial Park alongside his wife, Hattie L. Martin. His buildings outlasted him across Portland and Eugene and on the campus of the University of Portland. And one quiet house on Alpine Street in Cornelius, Oregon, the only home he ever designed outside the city, still stands today with its original blueprints recovered from the attic.
