By Linda Whitmore
A prim little white house surrounded by a meticulously neat garden has been donated to the city of Mount Angel to become a park.
The donor, Henrietta Saalfeld, 91, lived in the house at 195 E. College St. since early childhood and now resides at Mount Angel Towers.
Saalfeld has warm memories of the house where her parents brought her and her siblings on the day their former home on Academy Road burned to the ground.
“We slept on the floor the night of the fire,” she said. “We only had what we had on. We had to start all over.”
That was around 1924. Her parents were natives of Germany. When they came to Oregon they settled on a small farm about a mile west of town, according to Bill Predeek, a Mount Angel resident who is compiling historical information about the community. Henrietta is second to youngest of 11 children, of whom two died in infancy.
Predeek met Saalfeld and her nephew a few months ago and has been scanning albums full of family photographs and gathering some information about the Saalfelds for the Mount Angel Historical Society that is formulating.
Saalfeld admits her father, Henry Saalfeld, didn’t like farming; so he began Henry Saalfeld Meat and Grocery downtown at the time he moved the family to the house on Academy Road.
When it burned down, the family moved to the house on College Street where Henrietta and her siblings grew up. They attended local schools and worked in the grocery after class.
“There was always something to do when you had that many,” she said.
In the 1930s, her father sold the store and she and her siblings went to work in local fields picking berries and hops.
“In the Depression, all the children went out to work,” Saalfeld said. “We got up at 4 a.m. to pick hops.”
After high school graduation and a year at Mount Angel College she became a secretary for the Flax Growers Association for 13 years, then went to work for U.S. Bank where she became the manager.
As they reached maturity her siblings moved on.
A brother became a priest and a sister was a “renowned teacher in Mount Angel,” but Henrietta stayed at the family home and cared for her parents as they age.
The siblings remained close.
“Everyone always came home to Mom’s place,” for holidays and special events, Saalfeld said. It was a happy home. Her mother especially enjoyed gardening.
“Mother loved flowers. That’s one of the reasons I thought it would be nice to have (the property) become a park.”
Pete Wall, interim city administrator, said he has been working with Saalfeld’s nephew and trustee, Jim Berchtold, for about six months on the arrangements to make it so.
“It was an opportunity we wanted to take advantage of,” Wall said, but it hasn’t been decided how the house will be used.
It is zoned commercial and could become an antiques shop or art gallery. Wall said the agreement has some conditions. The grounds must be used as a public park and will be called Saalfeld Family Park.
If sometime in the future it is found the 9,500-square-foot property cannot be used as a park, it will be deeded to Mt. Angel Community Foundation, which could sell it and establish Saafeld Family Scholarship Foundation with the proceeds.
Wall said the house, which is one of the oldest houses in downtown Mount Angel, “appears to be quite sound.”
Predeek’s records show that the property once belonged to a man named Palmer who had a Donation Land Claim. Palmer plotted lots in 1884, then in 1891 a Mr. Butala bought lots 5 and 6. He had a general merchandise shop on College Street and the property was just behind the store, making it a convenient place for his home. “I think Butala built the house,” said Predeek. “I have nothing to prove it. It just makes sense.”
Butala left town in 1899 and the property went through several owners before Henry Saalfeld bought it in the early 1920s.
Predeek enjoys tracing the history of Mount Angel families and institutions. He said by looking at the old photos, reading local newspapers and studying old maps “the pieces start falling together.”
Predeek thinks the house “would make a perfect place for a museum.”
