Cicero Hunt Lewis
Encyclopedia
Cicero Hunt Lewis was a prominent merchant and investor in Portland
in the U.S. state
of Oregon
during the second half of the 19th century. Born in New Jersey
, Lewis and a friend, Lucius Allen, traveled across the continent in 1851 to open a dry goods
and grocery store in what was then a frontier town of about 800 people living along the west bank of the Willamette River
. By 1880, their firm, Allen & Lewis, had become one of the leading wholesale grocery companies on the West Coast
.
Supporting transportation projects that affected his business, he was a member of the Portland River Channel Improvement Committee in the 1860s, invested in the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company in the 1870s, and was appointed to the original Port of Portland Commission in the 1890s. He helped form a local subscription library
in the 1860s, and he was named to the city's first water board in the 1880s.
Married to Clementine Couch, daughter of another prominent Portland pioneer, Lewis fathered 11 children and after 1881 lived in a large, elegantly furnished house within walking distance of his office. He spent most of his time at work or at home, and had few other interests aside from church and charitable donations. He died in 1897 while walking to work on a Saturday afternoon.
, Lewis moved with his parents at age 13 to Newburgh, New York
. At age 20, he went to New York City
to work in the dry-goods business of Chambers, Heiser & Company.
and Columbia
rivers and the Pacific Ocean with San Francisco and other ports and by land with an increasing number of pioneer farmers in the Willamette Valley
. Allen, a friend of Lewis, had tried and failed in 1850 to establish a Portland branch store, and DeWitt thought that the more experienced Lewis would be able to help. In 1883 after several setbacks, the two men opened their own business (independent of New York) in a rented store at Front and "B" (Burnside) streets. They specialized in dry goods and groceries, building customer loyalty by selling at a fixed price, extending credit to reliable customers, and offering free space in their safe for storage of their customers' gold.
By 1860, Allen had moved to San Francisco, a seaport city about 600 miles (965.6 km) south of Portland, where the company bought most of its supplies. He became a silent partner, uninvolved in day-to-day management. By then the firm of Allen & Lewis had begun to focus on wholesale
markets, and by 1880, it was one of the leading wholesale grocery firms on the West Coast. Lewis and three contemporaries, Henry W. Corbett
, William S. Ladd
, and Henry Failing
, who arrived in Portland in 1851 and set up businesses along Front Street, MacColl, Merchants, p. 20 became "merchant princes of the Northwest".
In 1864, these four merchants and others formed the Portland River Channel Improvement Committee, to raise money to make the Willamette shipping channel more easily navigable. This led to a federally-funded project by the United States Army Corps of Engineers
, which dredged the channel in 1866. In 1891, Lewis was named to the original Port of Portland
Commission, established by the Oregon Legislative Assembly
to oversee the maritime commercial and shipping interests of the city.
When railroads began replacing steamships as a shipping method in the 1870s, Lewis, Ladd, Corbett, Failing, and Simeon Reed (a Portland transportation executive), became the five largest stockholders, aside from Henry Villard
, in Villard's Oregon Railway and Navigation Company (OR&N). In 1888, Lewis was part of a group that visited Villard in New York to negotiate favorable shipping rates on the Union Pacific
and the Northern Pacific
railroads, with which Villard and the OR&N had contracts affecting Portland. Lewis's interest in Portland railroads extended to the Portland & Willamette Valley Railroad, of which he became a local director in 1885, and which was controlled and formally taken over by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1890.
Lewis and the other three pioneer merchants were among those in 1864 who formed the Mercantile Library Association (later renamed the Library Association of Portland) to establish a local subscription library
. Roughly 30 years later, after a public library opened in Portland in 1891, members of the Cicero Lewis family were among its largest donors. In 1885, Lewis was one of 15 men named to the Portland Water Committee, empowered by the state legislature to acquire and operate a municipal water system for the city.
, a sea captain and early Portland settler. Unlike many of his friends, Lewis developed few interests beyond his business. His only form of recreation was walking to work, and although he was a charter member of the Arlington Club
and could have dined there, he usually walked home for lunch. Historian E. Kimbark MacColl writes that Lewis "spent his life at his desk and never went out in the evening for entertainment or the theater... He was never known to have taken a pleasure trip, spending what remaining leisure time he had with his wife and 11 children." Lewis died of a stroke
in 1897 while walking back to work on a Saturday afternoon.
Lewis was a member of the Episcopal Church
and a Mason
. He was one of the largest supporters of Good Samaritan Hospital and Trinity Episcopal Church in Portland. After Lewis died, his wife funded a hospital addition named in his honor at Good Samaritan.
The Lewis family lived in a house on Fourth and Everett streets until 1881, when they built a large house on a lot in the Couch tract in northwest Portland. The tract, consisting of half of the block between 19th and 20th streets and Everett and Flanders streets, was owned by Mary Couch, Clementine's sister, and was developed by other members of the Couch family. The project consisted of four houses, each on a lot 100 feet (30.5 m) wide and 100 feet (30.5 m) long. The Lewis property, facing 19th Street, included stables, a greenhouse
, and a sweeping drive leading to a carriage porch
. Their very large house was built in a stick style
that was "rather simple for its period", but its interior featured tall windows, a massive staircase, front and rear parlors, a reception room with a marble fireplace, and tall mirrors in elaborate frames, as well as "rare woods, marble mantels, brocaded walls [and] fine lighting fixtures" throughout. The four houses on the Couch tract were demolished in the 1960s.
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
in the U.S. state
U.S. state
A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
of Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
during the second half of the 19th century. Born in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, Lewis and a friend, Lucius Allen, traveled across the continent in 1851 to open a dry goods
Dry goods
Dry goods are products such as textiles, ready-to-wear clothing, and sundries. In U.S. retailing, a dry goods store carries consumer goods that are distinct from those carried by hardware stores and grocery stores, though "dry goods" as a term for textiles has been dated back to 1742 in England or...
and grocery store in what was then a frontier town of about 800 people living along the west bank of the Willamette River
Willamette River
The Willamette River is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. The Willamette's main stem is long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States...
. By 1880, their firm, Allen & Lewis, had become one of the leading wholesale grocery companies on the West Coast
West Coast of the United States
West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...
.
Supporting transportation projects that affected his business, he was a member of the Portland River Channel Improvement Committee in the 1860s, invested in the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company in the 1870s, and was appointed to the original Port of Portland Commission in the 1890s. He helped form a local subscription library
Subscription library
A subscription library is a library that is financed by private funds either from membership fees or endowments...
in the 1860s, and he was named to the city's first water board in the 1880s.
Married to Clementine Couch, daughter of another prominent Portland pioneer, Lewis fathered 11 children and after 1881 lived in a large, elegantly furnished house within walking distance of his office. He spent most of his time at work or at home, and had few other interests aside from church and charitable donations. He died in 1897 while walking to work on a Saturday afternoon.
Early life
Born in 1826 in Cranbury, New JerseyCranbury Township, New Jersey
- Demographics :As of the census of 2000, there were 3,227 people, 1,091 households, and 877 families residing in the township. The population density was 240.6 people per square mile . There were 1,121 housing units at an average density of 83.6 per square mile...
, Lewis moved with his parents at age 13 to Newburgh, New York
Newburgh (city), New York
Newburgh is a city located in Orange County, New York, United States, north of New York City, and south of Albany, on the Hudson River. Newburgh is a principal city of the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown metropolitan area, which includes all of Dutchess and Orange counties. The Newburgh area was...
. At age 20, he went to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to work in the dry-goods business of Chambers, Heiser & Company.
Merchant-entrepreneur
John DeWitt, a New York merchant, hired Lewis in 1851 to assist DeWitt's son-in-law, Lucius Allen, in running a wholesale supply house in Portland, a frontier settlement on the West Coast. Portland, with a population of about 800, was in good position to trade via the WillametteWillamette River
The Willamette River is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. The Willamette's main stem is long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States...
and Columbia
Columbia River
The Columbia River is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, flows northwest and then south into the U.S. state of Washington, then turns west to form most of the border between Washington and the state...
rivers and the Pacific Ocean with San Francisco and other ports and by land with an increasing number of pioneer farmers in the Willamette Valley
Willamette Valley
The Willamette Valley is the most populated region in the state of Oregon of the United States. Located in the state's northwest, the region is surrounded by tall mountain ranges to the east, west and south and the valley's floor is broad, flat and fertile because of Ice Age conditions...
. Allen, a friend of Lewis, had tried and failed in 1850 to establish a Portland branch store, and DeWitt thought that the more experienced Lewis would be able to help. In 1883 after several setbacks, the two men opened their own business (independent of New York) in a rented store at Front and "B" (Burnside) streets. They specialized in dry goods and groceries, building customer loyalty by selling at a fixed price, extending credit to reliable customers, and offering free space in their safe for storage of their customers' gold.
By 1860, Allen had moved to San Francisco, a seaport city about 600 miles (965.6 km) south of Portland, where the company bought most of its supplies. He became a silent partner, uninvolved in day-to-day management. By then the firm of Allen & Lewis had begun to focus on wholesale
Wholesale
Wholesaling, jobbing, or distributing is defined as the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers, to industrial, commercial, institutional, or other professional business users, or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services...
markets, and by 1880, it was one of the leading wholesale grocery firms on the West Coast. Lewis and three contemporaries, Henry W. Corbett
Henry W. Corbett
Henry Winslow Corbett was an American businessman and politician in the state of Oregon. A native of Massachusetts, he spend much of his early life in the state of New York before moving to the Oregon Territory where he continued his business interests in retail, and later transportation and banking...
, William S. Ladd
William S. Ladd
William Sargent Ladd was an American politician and businessman in Oregon. He twice served as Portland, Oregon’s mayor in the 1850s. A native of Vermont, he was a prominent figure in the early development of Portland, and co-founded the first bank in the state in 1859...
, and Henry Failing
Henry Failing
Henry Failing was a banker, and one of the leading businessmen of the Pacific Northwest of the United States. He was one of Portland, Oregon's earliest residents, and served as that city's mayor for three two-year terms...
, who arrived in Portland in 1851 and set up businesses along Front Street, MacColl, Merchants, p. 20 became "merchant princes of the Northwest".
Within 10 years, this group of dedicated Front Street merchants and their families would dominate the economic, political and social life of Portland. All became warm and lasting friends with Ladd, the former teacher and railroad agent, first among equals... With Benjamin Stark and John H. Couch, who became Lewis's father-in-law, they formed Portland's earliest Establishment, one of merchant-entrepreneurs.
In 1864, these four merchants and others formed the Portland River Channel Improvement Committee, to raise money to make the Willamette shipping channel more easily navigable. This led to a federally-funded project by the United States Army Corps of Engineers
United States Army Corps of Engineers
The United States Army Corps of Engineers is a federal agency and a major Army command made up of some 38,000 civilian and military personnel, making it the world's largest public engineering, design and construction management agency...
, which dredged the channel in 1866. In 1891, Lewis was named to the original Port of Portland
Port of Portland (Oregon)
The Port of Portland is the port district responsible for overseeing Portland International Airport, general aviation, and marine activities in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area in the United States....
Commission, established by the Oregon Legislative Assembly
Oregon Legislative Assembly
The Oregon Legislative Assembly is the state legislature for the U.S. state of Oregon. The Legislative Assembly is bicameral, consisting of an upper and lower house: the Senate, whose 30 members are elected to serve four-year terms; and the House of Representatives, with 60 members elected to...
to oversee the maritime commercial and shipping interests of the city.
When railroads began replacing steamships as a shipping method in the 1870s, Lewis, Ladd, Corbett, Failing, and Simeon Reed (a Portland transportation executive), became the five largest stockholders, aside from Henry Villard
Henry Villard
Henry Villard was an American journalist and financier who was an early president of the Northern Pacific Railway....
, in Villard's Oregon Railway and Navigation Company (OR&N). In 1888, Lewis was part of a group that visited Villard in New York to negotiate favorable shipping rates on the Union Pacific
Union Pacific Railroad
The Union Pacific Railroad , headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is the largest railroad network in the United States. James R. Young is president, CEO and Chairman....
and the Northern Pacific
Northern Pacific Railway
The Northern Pacific Railway was a railway that operated in the west along the Canadian border of the United States. Construction began in 1870 and the main line opened all the way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific when former president Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" in...
railroads, with which Villard and the OR&N had contracts affecting Portland. Lewis's interest in Portland railroads extended to the Portland & Willamette Valley Railroad, of which he became a local director in 1885, and which was controlled and formally taken over by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1890.
Lewis and the other three pioneer merchants were among those in 1864 who formed the Mercantile Library Association (later renamed the Library Association of Portland) to establish a local subscription library
Subscription library
A subscription library is a library that is financed by private funds either from membership fees or endowments...
. Roughly 30 years later, after a public library opened in Portland in 1891, members of the Cicero Lewis family were among its largest donors. In 1885, Lewis was one of 15 men named to the Portland Water Committee, empowered by the state legislature to acquire and operate a municipal water system for the city.
Family, other interests, death
In 1857 Lewis married Clementine Couch, daughter of John H. CouchJohn H. Couch
John Heard Couch was an American sea captain and pioneer in the Oregon Country in the 19th century. Often referred to as Captain Couch, he became famous for his singular skill at navigation of the mouth of the Columbia River. He is one of the early residents and founders of Portland,...
, a sea captain and early Portland settler. Unlike many of his friends, Lewis developed few interests beyond his business. His only form of recreation was walking to work, and although he was a charter member of the Arlington Club
Arlington Club
The Arlington Club is a private social club organized in 1867 by 35 business and banking leaders of Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon. First called the Social Club and later re-named the Arlington Club, it offered its all-male members, most of whom were relatively wealthy and powerful, an...
and could have dined there, he usually walked home for lunch. Historian E. Kimbark MacColl writes that Lewis "spent his life at his desk and never went out in the evening for entertainment or the theater... He was never known to have taken a pleasure trip, spending what remaining leisure time he had with his wife and 11 children." Lewis died of a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
in 1897 while walking back to work on a Saturday afternoon.
Lewis was a member of the Episcopal Church
Episcopal Church (United States)
The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...
and a Mason
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
. He was one of the largest supporters of Good Samaritan Hospital and Trinity Episcopal Church in Portland. After Lewis died, his wife funded a hospital addition named in his honor at Good Samaritan.
The Lewis family lived in a house on Fourth and Everett streets until 1881, when they built a large house on a lot in the Couch tract in northwest Portland. The tract, consisting of half of the block between 19th and 20th streets and Everett and Flanders streets, was owned by Mary Couch, Clementine's sister, and was developed by other members of the Couch family. The project consisted of four houses, each on a lot 100 feet (30.5 m) wide and 100 feet (30.5 m) long. The Lewis property, facing 19th Street, included stables, a greenhouse
Greenhouse
A greenhouse is a building in which plants are grown. These structures range in size from small sheds to very large buildings...
, and a sweeping drive leading to a carriage porch
Porte-cochere
A porte-cochère is the architectural term for a porch- or portico-like structure at a main or secondary entrance to a building through which a horse and carriage can pass in order for the occupants to alight under cover, protected from the weather.The porte-cochère was a feature of many late 18th...
. Their very large house was built in a stick style
Stick-Eastlake
The Stick style was a late-19th-century American architectural style. According to McAlester, it served as the transition between the Carpenter Gothic style of the mid-19th century, and the Queen Anne style that it evolved into and superseded it by the 1890s....
that was "rather simple for its period", but its interior featured tall windows, a massive staircase, front and rear parlors, a reception room with a marble fireplace, and tall mirrors in elaborate frames, as well as "rare woods, marble mantels, brocaded walls [and] fine lighting fixtures" throughout. The four houses on the Couch tract were demolished in the 1960s.
Works cited
- Gaston, Joseph (1911). Portland, Oregon, its history and builders: in connection with the Antecedent Explorations, Discoveries, and Movements of the Pioneers That Selected the Site for the Great City of the Pacific, vol. 2. Chicago, Illinois: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company.. Retrieved March 6, 2010.
- Marlitt, Richard. (1978) [1968]. Seventeenth Street, revised ed. Portland, Oregon: Oregon Historical Society. ISBN 0-87595-000-0.
- MacColl, E. Kimbark; Stein, Harry H. (1988). Merchants, Money, and Power: The Portland Establishment 1843–1913. Portland, Oregon: The Georgian Press. ISBN 0-9603408-4-X.
- MacColl, E. Kimbark. (1976). The Shaping of a City: Business and Politics in Portland, Oregon, 1885 to 1915. Portland, Oregon: The Georgian Press. .