A few old, small houses being torn down for the sake of another building’s expansion is nothing too uncommon. But when it comes to the 12 cottages at University of Oregon’s Columbia Terrace, the history of the small houses might be their saving grace.
UO Housing is looking to build a central kitchen that’s dedicated to being the prep stations for catering and housing food. The property where the kitchen is planning to be built is university-owned, and according to UO campus planning, that land is the only property available for that project. The only problem? It’s currently the site of cottages on the waiting list for being deemed historically significant by the City of Eugene.
If the houses are considered historically significant, then Lane County law states that the houses on 17th and 19th avenues on Moss and Columbia streets cannot be torn down.
Generally, the UO would be in the right to tear down the houses situated on its property. There are students that live in the cottages, but the university is setting up to financially ease their transition to new housing. But after Eugene City Manager Jon Ruiz was informed that the 12 cottages might have played a role in World War II, the $8.5 million central kitchen project was put on hold, pending consideration by the Eugene Historic Review Board.
“The Eugene Historic Review Board is reviewing the houses right now to see if they’re historically significant or not,” former UO student and Eugene activist Zachary Vishanoff said. For over 10 years, Vishanoff has been researching how the UO buys and sells properties near campus. “They’ve been looking to tear down these houses for the kitchen for quite some time now. It was supposed to happen during the summer but the bidding war for the constructing the kitchen went south so they had to put the demolishing back.”
UO Campus Planning says that there are no records of where the houses came from, but according George Kramer, the author of “Camp White,” a book about Oregon’s role in WWII, these 12 cottages might have been a part of either Camp White in Jackson County or Camp Adair in north Corvallis — two military boot camps that were used to train soldiers before they went to fight in WWII.
After the war, Kramer suspects the houses were transported to Eugene and were settled on Columbia Street. Records dictate that the houses came to Eugene in the 1940s, but the houses weren’t bought until the early ’60s when the university was able to cut a deal with the government to purchase the cottages that would have otherwise been torn down.
UO’s Director of Housing Michael Griffel says that the university is looking into keeping the cottages and moving them, but due to the frailty, age and foundation structure of the houses, the job is easier said than done.
“The properties are in very poor condition and are in need of substantial investment,” Griffel said to Eugene Weekly in regard to the houses.
The fate of the houses still currently rests with Eugene’s Historic Review Board. When the board plans on announcing its decision is still undetermined.
“The university just needs to know that they can’t tear down whatever they want just to build a kitchen,” Vishanoff said. “These houses have a cultural and historical meaning behind them, and now with the city manager, who’s also a veteran, behind this cause, the university’s chances of building that kitchen are starting to slim down.”