|
|
Features |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Gift of Fir Acres
|
|
|
Margery Frank Crist recalls life at Fir Acres
|
Crist was only two years old in 1925 when she moved to Fir Acres Estate with her parents, Lloyd and Edna Frank; her brother, Frederick; and sister, Dorothy Frank Sherman. "I remember horses plowing a field where Griswold Stadium now stands and riding the horses around the field with my cousins from California," Crist says. She rode her tricycle in the basement, which also housed the laundry and a wine cellar. She slid down the shallow curved stairs in the foyer and pretended the porch over the garage was a boat and she was a sailor. "We always had surprises," she says. "We would lean on a closet or a panel or a bookcase, and it would surprise you and open." Swimming teacher, Millie Schloth came to the pool once a week, and the neighborhood children came over to swim. "We had fun playing in the white sand surrounding the pool. The pool has shrunk, though," Crist says wistfully through older eyes. "It's a lot smaller than I remember it to be." A red, enameled cookie box filled with chocolate cookies sat on the ledge by the swimming pool, according to Crist's cousin, Gerry Frank, son of Aaron Frank, Lloyd Frank's younger brother. Gerry is the former vice president of Meier & Frank Co., Sen. Mark 0. Hatfield's chief-of-staff, author, columnist and owner of Salem's Konditerei. Frank vividly recalls riding around Fir Acres Estate in a little racing car called the Red Bug. "I just thought it was the greatest thing. I'd come home and say to my dad, 'My cousin Fred has a Red Bug. I'd sure like to have one.' And my father would say, 'Your cousin is spoiled, and you're not going to be. You're not going to have a Red Bug."' "It used batteries and would start with a jump," Crist says. "There were only two seats, and my brother, and the grown-ups, too, would drive it all around the grounds. I think that's how they got the cookies." Lloyd Frank met Edna Levy, daughter of a San Francisco jeweler, and they married in 1915 after a whirlwind courtship. For their family home, they purchased a 63-acre hilltop site and engaged architect Herman Brookman to design buildings and gardens. The result was a brick-and-slate Tudor-style manor house with hand-carved paneling and hand-wrought iron, greenhouses, stables, garages and a swimming pool. The final bill in 1926 was $1.3 million. "Uncle Lloyd and members of the Jewish faith weren't admitted into the major golf and country clubs in Portland, such as Waverley or Portland. So he said, 'I'll build a place equal to theirs,"' Gerry explains. "That was the genesis of Fir Acres Estate." "Furniture was his expertise," Crist says of her father. "He managed the furniture department for Meier & Frank and picked out all the furniture for the house." She was "sweet and popular," says Crist. "Everyone loved her." Fir Acres quickly became the cultural gathering place, not only for members of the Jewish faith but for Portland's society. "My mother loved classical music and was the one who introduced me to opera," Crist says. "She loved chamber music and the symphony, and she had quite a record collection. She was on the boards of the Portland junior Symphony and Portland Youth Philharmonic. "Portland junior Symphony used to give recitals on the terrace," Crist recalls. "The audience would sit on the grass, and we would sit on the terrace with the whole symphony. Mother was good friends with Jacques Gershkovitch, director of the junior symphony, and I took lessons from his wife." Virtuoso pianist Arthur Rubinstein visited. The London String Quartet performed on the terrace. And a string quartet with a red-headed violinist named Susie Pipes rehearsed in what is now Armstrong Lounge. Crist recalls costume parties and a carnival with food and game booths in the large cobblestone circle by the gardens to raise funds for the Portland junior Symphony. In 1931, Frank's role Edna Frank loved flowers and presided over the estate's gardens, which attracted amateur and professional gardeners from across the nation. Once a week she opened the gardens to the public. "She was a strong woman and a gracious hostess , recalls her nephew. him away from Portland, and in 1932, he and Edna separated and divorced. Frank retired from the family business, left Portland, remarried twice and died in 1959 in Palm Springs, California. Left with three children in the midst of the Depression, Edna Frank could no longer maintain the grand estate with its 34 servants. In 1935, she and her children left Fir Acres, and she later remarried W H. (Ted) Holmes and moved to Wilsonville. The family set up trusts, which Lloyd's brother, Aaron, managed and controlled, to provide for Edna and her children. "Mother was quite enthused about the sale of the estate to the College," Crist says. "And I thought it was great. Mother didn't want to see this beautiful building empty and the grounds going to seed and weed." Edna remained active in Portland civic circles, becoming the second president of the Oregon junior Symphony Association, president of the Fruit and Flower Nursery, vice president of the League of Women Voters and member of many other boards. Edna became a Lewis & Clark trustee in 1945, serving for more than three decades. She then continued to serve Lewis & Clark as a life trustee. She died June 17, 1990. Frederick Frank died in a plane crash in 1942, while training pilots near La Grande. Dorothy Frank married Leslie Sherman. He died in 1988, and Dorothy died, 10 years later, in 1998. Margery Frank married Capt. Lewis Russell and later married John Crist, a retired sociology professor from Lewis & Clark College. The home and its landscaped gardens are on the National Register of Historic Places. |