Beauchamp Building Nominated, Nov. 20

STAYTON, Ore. – The Beauchamp Building in Stayton is among Oregon’s latest entries in the National Register of Historic Places. Oregon’s State Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation (SACHP) recommended the house’s nomination at their June 2019 meeting. The National Park Service – which maintains the National Register of Historic Places – accepted the nomination on November 1, 2019. The Beauchamp Building is one of several pre-cast concrete block buildings in Stayton constructed on the west side of 3rd Avenue between 1908 and 1916. Nine pre-cast concrete block buildings from this period still exist along a three-block portion of 3rd Avenue in Stayton’s downtown. The Beauchamp is the only building in Stayton to be all plain-face pre-cast concrete block.  Originally built to house a pharmacy, a specialty store and a dancehall, the Beauchamp building anchored and helped define Stayton’s business district and movement of the downtown core to the north, and aided in the commercial ascendency of Stayton from a village to a town. Clarence Albirto Beauchamp graduated from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon and became a pharmacist. C.A. Beauchamp and Louise Sommers of Scio married in 1908. In 1913, C.A. and Louise Beauchamp, at the ages of 33 and 29 respectively, took their dreams, their hobbies and a thriving pharmacy business and created a new building to house them, the Beauchamp Building.  Louise Beauchamp started as a pharmacy clerk in 1908 and became an assistant pharmacist in 1928. In the early 1900s only two percent of pharmacists were women and most of these women worked in hospital pharmacies. Women in the retail environment were rare and even discouraged up and through the 1930s, and Louise’s story plays an important part of Stayton’s Commerce history. The Beauchamp Building is now one of 5 individually listed properties in the City of Stayton that are listed in the National Register. The National Register is maintained by the National Park Service under the authority of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.