If the heart of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Depression-era New Deal efforts in Oregon could be represented in only one place, it might not be the Bonneville Dam or the Portland airport, but the home of Oregon’s first congresswoman, Nan Wood Honeyman.
Honeyman hosted former classmate and longtime friend, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, at her 1908 Colonial Revival residence overlooking the city in Portland Heights. The congresswoman socialized with national politicians and the city’s wealthiest families while working to reduce poverty.
She supported the federal Old Age Pension Plan, loans to farmers and improving veteran services.
She is famous for leading the state Constitutional Convention in 1933 that repealed the prohibition on alcohol, which she said benefited organized crime. She didn’t drink, but her husband, David Honeyman, had a still and wine cellar in their home basement.
During the half century Nan Wood Honeyman lived at 1728 S.W. Prospect Dr., she served one term on the U.S. House of Representative’s committees for Indian Affairs, Irrigation and Reclamation, and Rivers and Harbors.
She was also on the board of Portland’s Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, and was president of the state’s League of Women Voters and director of the local chapter of the American Red Cross.
Honeyman was the daughter of author, Army colonel and attorney Charles Erskine Scott (C.E.S) Wood, one of Portland’s most influential cultural figures in the early 20th century.
Today, the historic David T. and Nan Wood Honeyman House, where Eleanor Roosevelt used the formal dining room as an office and slept in an upstairs bedroom, is for sale.
The preserved mansion, with 8,635 square feet of living space, Tiffany wall sconces and leaded glass windows, is listed at $2,675,000.
“This well-maintained home is a Portland treasure,” says Suzann Baricevic Murphy of Where, Inc., who represents the sellers.
Honeyman house history
David Honeyman, the manager of his family’s Honeyman Hardware Company, bought the 0.38-acre lot at the crest of the first ridge of Portland Heights in 1907, the year he married Nan.
He hired his brother-in-law, architect David Chambers Lewis, to design a two-story house with a daylight attic and a full basement. Here, the Honeymans raised their three children.
During construction, mule-drawn wagons hauled lumber, bricks and fixtures up to the site on a steep hill, according to historians who were successful in having the house included on the National Register of Historic Places.
Open the front door, which has an elliptical archway with tracery forming a sunburst, to enter the foyer to see the first of seven fireplaces and the grand staircase with a carved mahogany handrail.
Pocket doors open to the living room on one side of the foyer or the dining room on the other side. Each of these rooms has French doors to the covered front porch, which is supported by six Corinthian columns.
The living room spans the entire south side of the first floor, with windows and glass doors framing the garden. Columns and ceiling beams visually divide the 40-foot-long room into three conversational groupings, as explained in the National Register. Smaller versions of the columns are part of the fireplace border at one end of the long living room.
The dining room has mahogany wainscot that rises six feet from the hardwood floors.
The kitchen was updated and cabinets are made of an exotic South American hardwood. Nearby, the original butler’s pantry has four banks of glass-fronted cupboards and built-in drawers.
The daylight attic has been finished as an office space. The basement area, where the bootleg alcohol still was concealed, was converted into a cedar-lined sauna, but the original below-ground wine cellar continues to store bottles at the proper temperature.
In 1967, Portland architect Richard Marlitt designed an addition in the back of the house that created a library with bay windows on the first floor, bedroom on the second story and a basement space used as a game room.
The house has seven total bedrooms with five large “bed chambers” on the second floor. The two upstairs bedrooms in the front of the house each has a fireplace and share a dressing room.
Still standing: A giant sequoia in the southwest corner of the property is believed to be one of the trees planted in the 1880s to mark the corners of the city’s boundaries.
Who is attracted to this property? Listing agent Baricevic Murphy says history buffs, architectural enthusiasts, home entertainers, philanthropists who hosts events, multi-generational families and “anyone who loves casual elegance.
“The list is long because this is uniquely special to Portland,” she says, “and there is so much to love.”
— Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072
jeastman@oregonian.com | @janeteastman
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