Historic Hood River
LaFrance Home
6-15-2017
Notes
Here’s another downtown view which has been radically transformed. This is the LaFrance home at the SE corner of Oak and Second, looking east towards the J.E. Hanna store. We’ve seen a few other views of this corner. You can place them in chronological order based on those young trees. This is one of the earliest.
The perspective is a little confusing. The camera is sitting on the top horizontal member of the picket fence, so what looks like a high wall on the left side of the image is actually just the top few inches of the fence along Oak Street. Look at it for a few minutes and it should start to make sense.
Charlott
This is no doubt Eleanor LaFrance in the photo. Probably her husband and one of their baby girls. She came to Hood River with her parents, Lyman and Helen (Jackson) Smith from New York. Though she married Shearman LaFrance in Hood River, both families were from the same place in New York state, so apparently knew each other prior. They lived in Hood River in this house prior to moving to Portland in 1900. In the earlier years she was alone in H. R. a lot of the time with her two daughters,as LaFrance was into music and worked out of San Fransisco, no doubt as a saleman for Kohler and Chase.
L.E.
I am amazed at the beautiful lawn, in the early days of Hood River rocks and oak tree stumps.
L.E.
April 11, 1891 HR Glacier:
The picket fence on the LaFrance property is the prettiest thing of the kind in town, except Berdan’s fence which is just like it.