Ladd Carriage House Portland

The Ladd Carriage House was constructed in 1883 in conjunction with the family home of early Portland mayor William S. Ladd.   The house was located to the east, across SW Broadway. The Carriage House, as the name implies, was built to house horse-drawn vehicles , but it also included horse stalls, a hayloft, a tack room, and quarters for a coachman/driver.   It was later used to store automobiles as well. Designed by architect Joseph Sherwin in the then-popular Eastlake or Stick Style, the Carriage House was originally located in a suburban setting at the edge of a small but burgeoning Portland. At the time  of its construction the neighbourhood was dominated by the homes of wealthy entrepreneurs who had made great fortunes in the environment of early city growth.  Over the next few decades, however, the area was engulfed by the expanding commercial core.  By the time it left the ownership of the Ladd family, in 1927, the building’s highly ornamented style was out of  fashion, but the structure was still considered useful and was purchased by a construction fi rm as its headquarters.  It had many other uses in the decades that followed. Additions and remodeling greatly altered the  interior over time and some significant elements of the exterior, such as the cupola/ventilator, were also lost.  In 1978 the north side of the building was badly damaged by fi re and substantially rebuilt.  This eliminated much physical evidence in the building fabric  that might have guided today’s restorative efforts.  Also, because this side of the building was quite close to the property line and a neighboring structure, only a single, obliquely angled photograph, taken during reconstruction after the fire, has been uncovered.  The configuration in this image does not match the current condition, and the date of the subsequent changes is unknown. Similarly, the west face of the building is only  distantly visible in a few historic photographs, and its lower level was long obscured by an out-of-character addition. In spite of losses and alterations, the Ladd Carriage House retained sufficient historic integrity to allow for its designation as a local  landmark on July 1, 1970, and listing in the National Register of Historic Places on February 12, 1980.  The building was removed from the National Register on January 4, 2008, because of temporary relocation off its original site, but it will be eligible for  reconsideration upon its return.