Historic Preservation Month - House of the Week - May 5, 2025

1798 Fern Place - Harriet and Cecil Bondell House

 For a Complete Presentation, see the video on You Tube at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HKgAUeT5d4

The Harriet and Cecil Bondell House, located at 1798 Fern Place, is a good example of English Cottage Revival architecture.   Completed c.1939, the house displays many of the characteristics of the English Cottage Revival style.

Facing east on Fern Place, this one-and-a-half story house is situated on a flat lot in a residential neighborhood. The large lot has a forest feel, organically landscaped with a combination of mature evergreen and deciduous trees. The driveway enters the property from the southeast, and curves to the west leading up to the attached garage.

The house has a rectangular plan with a side-facing gable roof, clad in wood shakes, with no eave overhangs. A single shed dormer, projects slightly from the east façade covering the house’s main entryway door. The exterior stone chimney rests on the east side of the south façade. All of the house’s windows are multi-paned, wood casement windows, that either stand-alone or are set in groups of two or three. Attached to the southwest corner of the house, is the garage, which matches the house in materials and style,  it has two, wood-paneled doors that open out from the center. 

The primary façade includes the houses main entryway, consisting of a wood door that is set back approximately two feet and a multi-paned transom. The doorway projection has a simple finish with wide boxed columns, flanked by two windows. This door is a large solid wood Dutch door and retains all of its original hardware and leads to the main living room area of the house. 

In 1942, Harriet Griffith Bondell purchased the property and Harriet and Cecil Bondell lived there until 1976. The Bondell’s were married in November of 1941and lived in Lake Oswego. Mrs. Bondell attended the University of Oregon for some time, but eventually graduated from Northwestern University. Cecil worked at a garage door factory and loved to play the fiddle. He taught “old time dance” at the Norse Hall in Portland on Saturday nights.

In 1976, Leona Ambrose Purchased the property on a contract sale. She preserved the house’s original fixtures, woodwork, cabinetry, and other materials, which has helped to maintain the houses impeccable historic integrity. This House retains a high degree of integrity, and is a good example a pre-World War II, Mid-Century Cottage design in Lake Oswego. There are surprisingly few houses that are of this size, from this period left in the city.

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