June 05 2021
A century and a quarter in Sellwood and Westmoreland can be traced by following one family
Westmoreland in the 1950s and 1960s found young people spending their Saturday afternoons at the Moreland Theater, while mom and dad played cards with their next-door neighbors, and when teenagers went dancing in sock hops at the local high school. And everyone went to church on Sunday.
For a ten-year-old girl like Marcia Singer, that was a time to appreciate the burst of colorful flowers and wonderful smells that came from Crantford s Flower Shop on the corner of S.E. Milwaukie Avenue and Bybee Boulevard…a time to ride bikes with neighborhood girlfriends to summer concerts at Sellwood Park…and to rise early in the morning for ballet and tap dance classes at the Sellwood Community Center at Spokane and S.E. 15th.
Here, Historian Dana Beck reminisces about two centuries of barbershops in Inner Southeast
Saturdays were often the most popular day of the week for men in the 1920 s, and it wasn t just because for many it was a day off. There wasn t a week that you wouldn t find a gathering of gentlemen at the local barbershop, weekends included.
It s not that men a century ago were fastidious about their looks; it s just that the corner barbershop was where men gathered to banter with each other, follow their favorite sports teams, and hear the latest local gossip. And, like many other local communities in the City of Portland and across the nation, Sellwood and Westmoreland offered a host of hair cutting establishments to choose from.