I recently acquired this real photograph postcard (RPPC) from an online auction site. There was just something about it that caught my eye. If not for the caption “A Few New Bungalow’s [sic] in Ontario Ore” the location of these Craftsman bungalows would most likely have forever been a mystery.
This RPPC was mailed from Ontario, Oregon on July 15, 1911, which helped establish an estimated construction date for these three houses. I combed through the 1911 Sanborn fire insurance maps for Ontario looking for the footprints of these three houses, and after about a half hour of searching I found them at the northwest corner of Morfitt Street and Washington Avenue. Both streets were renamed at some point prior to 1949. Morfitt Street became SW 3rd Street and Washington Avenue became SW 2nd Avenue, so the houses are now located at the northwest corner of SW 3rd Street and SW 2nd Avenue.
It appears that all three of the houses in the 1911 RPPC still exist. The house on the corner nearest to the intersection appears to be the most intact, and the two other houses beyond appear to have been extensively modified over the past 109 years. The first image below is a scan of the 1911 RPPC, and the second image is an excerpt from Sheet 2 of the 1911 Sanborn fire insurance maps from the collections of the Library of Congress. The last image is the Google Streetview image that approximates the view angle of the 1911 RPPC.
