Why Historic Buildings Matter

Oct. 15, 2024
By: Fred Leeson

With all the new buildings and modern housing facing SW Durham Road on the suburban flank of Tigard, it’s easy to miss the small, white wooden building that started life in 1920 as a two-room schoolhouse.

After all these years, it’s worth glancing occasionally at the Durham School with a bell still residing in its small steeple.  A quick look at the modest building – expanded in 1937 and again in 1951s – tells us why historic buildings are important to save.

Without its presence, we might not realize that the bountiful suburban sprawl around it was once primarily agricultural land.  Or that generations of children romped and played on its grounds, just as we once did wherever else we grew up.  And that human life is a continuing chain, and that we need to remember occasionally that others came before us, just as others will come after us.

The simple Craftsman-era architecture reminds us that simplicity can indeed embrace elegance, and that wooden buildings in our heritage can survive for prolonged periods if we bother to take care of them responsibly along the way.  Woodworkers can look at the building’s straight lines and recognize that yes, careful, lasting, quality work indeed preceded the loud buzzing of power tools.

The school and Durham Road are named after Albert Alonzo Durham, who succeeded as a miner in the California gold fields before arriving in the Tigard area in 1869.  Durham then built his subsequent economic success as a grist mill operator.  The area came to be known as “Durham Station” and as a stop along the Oregon Electric Railway.

The “old” Durham School we see today is actually the second Durham School.  It seems that no photographs remain of its predecessor erected in the 19th Century, and little is known about it today.

The old school that survives has had several uses during its life, including tenure as an alternative high school.  The Tigard School District, to its great credit, seems committed to maintaining its classrooms and library for additional future use.  Adaptive reuse is a critical tool for saving historic buildings.

The little white building offers another important lesson about historic preservation: monumental size or grandeur is not necessities for a genuine, important monument.

Fred Leeson is a former president of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation and a member of the foundation's Board of Advisors.