Mt. Tabor Neighborhood Association

A great neighborhood building: 55th & Belmont

Mar 03, 2004

By Dave Hillman

The peach-colored building at 5500 SE Belmont, now the home of Merrill Architects, was constructed in 1914 by Pacific Telephone and Telegraph for the Mt. Tabor Telephone Exchange. The company placed its generating equipment in the basement (some of which is still there), the switching equipment on the first floor, and the operators on the second floor. Sometime between 1914 and 1920 they added a two-story addition to the building on the east side. The phone company owned the building until 1953, when they sold it to the Mt. Tabor Masons Lodge #42.

In 1972 the Masons rented space in the basement to the Mt. Hood Model Railroad Club, which still uses the space. In the late 1960s the Masons replaced the cornice that had surrounded the building with corrugated metal skin. By the mid 1990s, the lodge had very few members and decided to sell the property. Tim Merrill bought it in 1996 for use as a residence and as the office for his architectural firm. Since then he has undertaken many repairs and painted the building to closely match some of its previous colors. Unfortunately, upon checking to see if the skin could be removed and the cornice restored, Merrill Architects found that the cornice had been totally chipped and removed. Alas, it was not salvageable.