Oregon -- Back From The Edge -- The Restored Edgefield Manor Near Portland Is A Hotel With History

TROUTDALE, Ore. - Ever feel like you're in the poorhouse?

Stay at Edgefield Manor and you'll be there for real.

What once was a poor farm where down-and-outers got room and board in exchange for tending cattle, hogs and crops is now a restored hotel oozing with history and charm.

The three-story Georgian Revival brick structure was built and operated as a poor farm by Multnomah County from 1911 to 1962. It was a retirement home for 20 years, until it closed in 1982.

In 1990, the Portland-based McMenamins company caught a vision for what the then-decaying building and 25-acre farm could be. It spent about $6 million turning it into a hotel, restaurants, a winery, brewery, golf course, banquet facility and movie theater.

The revived Edgefield, 20 minutes east of Portland, is popular. All 103 rooms of the hotel were occupied when my wife and I stayed there recently.

History galore

It's easy to get glimpses of Edgefield's history. Our room, with turn-of-the-century decor, was large enough to imagine it housing six to eight boarders in years past. In the poor farm's heyday, nearly 600 homeless people lived and worked there at one time.

We could picture how the porches and verandas, still sporting cane rocking chairs, were a fair-weather haven for poor-farm boarders and retirement-home residents. As the wind gently rocked some of the chairs on the veranda outside our room, we imagined them rocking the ghosts of residents past.

And with a little imagination, we envisioned former residents shuffling or rolling wheelchairs down the wide, wooden hallways.

But at Edgefield, you don't have to rely only on your imagination. Enlarged old photos and artwork depicting the early days drape the walls like moss in a rain forest. They line every hallway, occupy entire ceilings and adorn every guest-room door. Even fuse boxes and pipes are canvases for some of Edgefield's whimsical art.

The 14 artists who painted their hearts out at Edgefield also worked their magic inside the guest rooms - ours had numerous birdhouses and flowers painted on the walls.

One artist turned a stairwell into a story, with a wall-and-ceiling mural depicting stock-market troubles, homes being repossessed and people being sent to the poor farm, where linens and beds are assigned. And the ceiling in the movie theater has elaborate artwork of the sky, stars and moons.

McMenamins is known for giving new life to buildings with intriguing histories. Edgefield sprang to life in 1990 with operation of the winery, followed in 1991 with the opening of the brewery, a pub and a few guest rooms. In 1993, the large manor house opened.

The company also operates the Kennedy School in Portland, a 1915 elementary school that now is a brewery, pub and hotel, where guests sleep in the former classrooms.

McMenamins last month opened the refurbished 42-room Hotel Oregon in McMinnville, Ore., a 1905 building that has been a hotel, dance hall, bus depot, Western Union office and soda fountain.

Trip of discovery

Part of the fun of visiting Edgefield is discovering its nooks and crannies - such as the farm's old ice shed. It's now a small sports bar with the only television on the grounds.

The Little Red Shed - formerly the incinerator - is a teensy-weensy pub about 20 feet square. Brambly rose bushes crawl across the roof of the rustic shed. The huge incinerator fireplace roars on chilly nights and customers squeeze into corners of the cozy, candle-lit space.

There's also the former morgue, a little shack out back now home to a clay artist. And in the old administrator's large two-story house next to the manor, a local artist operates a glassworks studio.

A few yards away is the winery. The dimly lit setting in the basement of a hotel wing is European in mood, with fermentation tanks behind large windows on one side of a wide aisle, stacks of wine barrels on the other side, and tables and chairs down both sides of the hallway, candles flickering on each table. We tasted Chardonnays and Rieslings in what once was the poor farm's commissary.

The power station

For dinner, we crossed a courtyard to the farm's former power station, now a large pub and restaurant. Through a door past the kitchen we found the movie theater in the old boiler room. We took in the free 9 o'clock showing of "Antz."

Up the hill, we found another old farm building that now is the Distillery Bar and smoking room, complete with a warm-your-hands potbellied stove.

Had we visited Edgefield in the spring or summer, we could have spent part of our time on the 18-hole pitch-and-putt course, strolled through flower gardens, vineyards and orchards, or relaxed at the outdoor beer garden and grill.