Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses Spring 7-3-2013 No Place for Middlemen: Civic Culture, Downtown Environment, and the Carroll Public Market during the Modernization of Portland, Oregon James Richard Louderman Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Part of the United States History Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Louderman, James Richard, "No Place for Middlemen: Civic Culture, Downtown Environment, and the Carroll Public Market during the Modernization of Portland, Oregon" (2013). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 1050. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.1050 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. No Place for Middlemen: Civic Culture, Downtown Environment, and the Carroll Public Market during the Modernization of Portland, Oregon by James Richard Louderman A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History Thesis Committee: William Lang, Chair David Horowitz Jennifer Tappan Barbara Brower Portland State University 2013 © 2013 James Richard Louderman Abstract Following the Civil War, the American government greatly expanded the opportunities available for private businessmen and investors in an effort to rapidly colonize the West. This expansion of private commerce led to the second industrial revolution in which railroads and the corporation became the symbols and tools of a rapidly modernizing nation. It was also during this period that the responsibility of food distribution was released from municipal accountability and institutions like public markets began to fade from the American urbanscape. While the proliferation of private grocers greatly aided many metropolises’ rapid growth, they did little to secure a sustainable and desirable form of food distribution. During the decades before and after the turn of the century, public market campaigns began to develop in response to the widespread abandonment of municipal food distribution. Like many western cities, Portland, Oregon matured during the second half of the nineteenth century and lacked the historical and social precedent for the construction of a public market. Between 1851 and 1914, residents of Portland and its agricultural hinterland fought for the construction of a municipally-owned public market rallying against the perceived harmful and growing influences of middlemen. As a result of their efforts, the Carroll Public Market was founded on the curbsides of Yamhill Street in downtown Portland. While success encouraged multiple expansions and an increasingly supportive consumer base, a growing commitment to modernist planning among city officials and the spread of automobile ownership determined the market to be incompatible with the commercial future of Portland. i In an effort to acknowledge and capitalize on the Carroll Public Market’s community, a group of investors, incorporated as the Portland Market Company, worked with city officials between 1926 and 1934 to create the largest public market in the United States, the Portland Public Market. As the first building of the newly constructed waterfront development, many believed the massive institution would reinvigorate nearby businesses and ultimately influence the potential of the downtown business district. The Portland Public Market was decidedly distinct from the market along Yamhill and the promoters cast it as such. By utilizing the most modern technologies and promises of convenience there was little that the two organizations shared in common. In the end, the potential of the waterfront market was never fulfilled and amidst legal scandals, an ongoing struggle to meet operating costs, and the success of a rebellious Farmers Cooperative, it shut down after nine years. This thesis discusses these two public markets during a period of changing consumer interests and the rise of modernist planning in Portland, Oregon. Ultimately, the Carroll Public Market was torn down for reasons beyond its own control despite the comfortable profit it enjoyed each year. Many city officials refused to support the institution as they increasingly supported the values of modernism and urban planning. The Portland Public Market fit perfectly with many city planners’ and private investors’ intents for the future. This essay seeks to offer a unique glimpse of how commercial communities form and how commercial environments evolve through the politics of food distribution, consumerism, and producer-to-consumer relationships. ii I would like to dedicate this thesis to my parents, the doors they have opened for me, and a camping trip in the Rocky Mountains that forever altered the course of my life. iii Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................... i Dedication .............................................................................................................................................. iii List of Figures ......................................................................................................................................... v Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter One Making it to Market ............................................................................................................................... 9 Chapter Two A Prosperous Environment ............................................................................................................... 48 Chapter Three The Troubles of an Unplanned Market ........................................................................................... 83 Chapter Four The World’s Most Modern Food and Merchandise Mart ........................................................... 107 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 124 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................ 131 iv List of Figures Figure 1 – Portland Waterfront 1912 ............................................................................................... 77 Figure 2 – The Carroll Public Market Street Side ........................................................................... 78 Figure 3 – Bartholomew’s Map of Downtown Portland .............................................................. 79 Figure 4 – The Portland Public Market ............................................................................................ 80 Figure 5 – Inside Portland’s Million Dollar Market ....................................................................... 81 Figure 6 – The Farmers’ Cooperative ............................................................................................... 82 v Introduction According to the Municipal Markets Report of 1918 conducted by Director Sam L. Rogers of the Bureau of the Census, “A municipal market should be self-supporting, but should not be operated for any considerable profit. A municipal market can justify itself only by supplying to its patron some advantages not supplied by a privately owned public market.”1 The logic may not entirely continue today for the remaining public markets of America, but in the early twentieth century, these institutions were seen as tools that provided the urban public with lower prices, fresher food, and in many cases, food that neighborhood consumers otherwise did not have access to. Farmers also supported the public market because it gave them better prices on the produce they worked year-round to create. The Census report did not detail the motivations of urban and rural citizens for the establishment of public markets let alone the history that spawned the American public market movement during the early twentieth century. Of all the different values that people found in public markets during this period, there was one that nearly everybody shared; the elimination of the middleman.2 Generally speaking, middlemen constituted every person in between the producer and the consumer that raised the price of the product throughout the process of distribution. While the term middleman may have initially referred to businessmen and merchants in the early decades of the nineteenth century, by the end of the 1800s it was also ascribed to those who transported goods (particularly the railroads), the speculator, and anyone else who made 1 U. S. Bureau of Census, “Municipal Markets in Cities Having A Population of Over 30,000: 1918,” Prepared by Sam L. Rogers, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919. 2 Helen Tangires, Public Markets and Civil Culture in Nineteenth Century America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2002), 204-205. 1 money off of a producer’s products. This broader definition and re-focusing on the middleman was partly the product of political movements but it was also a reaction to a monumental growth in the commercial structures that operated within