I had noticed some work down the other day on a house owned by the woman who was probably the oldest and longest resident on SE Alder. When I walked past it this morning on my way to work, however, I noticed that it wasn’t renovation going on, they’re deconstructing one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood, built in 1889 (most of the other houses on the street were built in the first couple decades of the 1900s).
Anna, the woman who lived there, died a couple of years back. She had a big garden in the side yard and grew much of her food, including—it was rumored—a couple of small coffee bushes. She also owned a couple of other houses on the block as rentals.
The garden and the house are soon to be no more, however. The big lot’s too valuable for city farming.
