PORTLAND, Ore. – The Fried-Durkheimer in Portland 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 8, 2019. Constructed in 1880 for Morris and Annie Marks, the Fried-Durkheimer House is an exemplar of an Italianate Town House and one of few examples of an Italianate Town House remaining in Portland. The house features original exterior details that define the style such as the large ornamented windows, overhanging eaves with decorative brackets, curved hall stair, and marble fireplace surround. In 2017, the Fried-Durkheimer House was moved approximately 5 blocks east and 12 blocks south of its original location. The move was an effort to save the house from developmental pressures, which were threatening demolition. Popular in Portland between the 1860s and 1890s, the Italianate style emerged as a response to the relatively plain, bold, straight lines of the Greek Revival and Gothic Revival styles. Italianate emphasized height, ornate arches, balconies with balustrades all the while maintaining balance, unity, and a strong emphasis on the horizontal line. The Italianate residential styles popularity as urban/town residences was perhaps their downfall, given Portland’s downtown cores rapid growth from the late 1800s to the twentieth century. As the city center became a metropolitan hub, single-family residential construction was demolished for large scale commercial and multi-family buildings. The Fried-Durkheimer is now one of 603 individually listed properties in the City of Portland 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.
