Wilcox Manor opens its doors to neighbors

By Jessie Kirk

The Southwest Community Connection, Aug 31, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

Jessie Kirk / The Southwest Community Connection

Located in Bridlemile, WIlcox Manor is on the National Register of Historic Homes and will be open to the public on Sept. 30. The colonial revival home was completed in 1917.

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Theodore Burney Wilcox was a big man who ran a big flour empire in Portland and eventually built a really big house.

The sprawling home, known as Wilcox Manor is set on four acres of beautiful gardens and is a hidden treasure in its Bridlemile neighborhood full of single-family homes. Since 1993 the house has been on the National Register of Historic Homes and as part of the designation, the owners must open the home to the public each year. Now divided into condos, two units and the baroque gardens will be open to anyone interested in viewing an elegant part of Portland’s past.

“In its heyday, the house was a center of Portland social life,” write authors William Hawkins and William Willingham in their book “Classic Houses of Portland, Oregon 1850 to 1950.” “Enormous rooms for entertaining ran the full width of the house and opened onto the terraced and walled back gardens.”

The large home was a good fit for Wilcox’s extravagant lifestyle in the early 1900s. Starting out as a New England bank teller, Wilcox earned his fortune in the flour industry by first establishing the largest milling company in the Northwest and then by expanding the business into exporting flour to China. At the height of his success, he hired architect Kirtland Cutter to build a lavish country estate for his family. Then called Glenwood Farm, the three-story, 14-bedroom home was completed in 1917.

Sadly, Wilcox died shortly after the house was completed. His son Ted Wilcox Jr. inherited it and lived in the home with his family for 30 years, according to interviews with current owner Ken Guenther, conducted by Bridlemile historians Ginger Danzer and Bev Shaw.

Beginning in 1947, the manor became the site of the Columbia Preparatory School, a high school department of the University of Portland. After seven years, the school closed due to dwindling enrollment. The house changed hands several times over the following years and was eventually remodeled into apartments. In 1965, Guenther bought the home, which by then had broken windows and peeling paint. He and his wife Mary Lou built duplexes beside the gardens, put the home on the national register and in the last few years have turned the apartments into condos.

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