Classification: Historic Contributing
Historic Name: Bligh Building
Current Name: Olson Florist, etc. (Quiznos, La Estrellita, Hair Studio)
Year of Construction: 1923
Legal Description: 073W22DC06000; Salem Addition from Lots 3 and 4 in Block 22

Owner(s):
Betty L. and Kelley J. Peters, Trustees
c/o Fred Van Natta
499 Court Street, NE
Salem, Oregon 97301

Description: This is a one-story Revival style concrete commercial building on the northwest corner of High and Court streets. This-82-by-120-foot building has a Mission Revival style multi-curved parapet at the building corners, and small ornamental brickwork elements below the cornice.

The storefront appears to retain the original bulkhead materials and proportions, with the windows replaced to include aluminum sash. Some of the storefront windows and transoms have been painted over, but they remain in place. A fabric awning extends out from the building above the transoms. The building retains its integrity and contributes to the historic qualities of the district.

History and Significance: The one-story T.G. Bligh Building, constructed in 1923, has retained substantial physical integrity of design, materials and decorative details since the mid-1900s. Additionally, it is associated with the life of Thomas G. and Anna Bligh, prominent in the commercial and cultural life of Salem.

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1874, Thomas Gregor Bligh came to the United States with his wife and family from Vancouver, British Columbia, around the turn of the century, settling, first, in Portland, Oregon, and, around 1910, in Salem. T.G. Bligh and his son, Frank, soon opened the Star Theater. In 1912 the Blighs built the combined Bligh Hotel and Bligh Theater on the north side of State Street, next to the Masonic Building, between High and Liberty streets. (This complex is now gone and the site occupied by a parking lot.) In August 1922, T.G. Bligh bought this corner lot, then occupied by a one-story wood frame dwelling and office building, from the Salem Elks fraternal organization (BPOE Lodge #336). In November 1924, T.G. Bligh died suddenly in an automobile accident on the highway just west of Grand Ronde. He and builder L.C. Davis were returning to Salem from Neskowin, where Bligh had intended to have Davis build a summer cottage for the family. Frank D. Bligh took over the family hotel and theater business. Bligh completed the building in 1923.

Anna Bligh owned the T.G. Bligh Building until 1927, when in March of that year, Charles P. Bishop bought the building. Born in Contra Costa, California, in 1854, Bishop came to Oregon with his parents two years later, where he grew to adulthood on a farm in Linn County. After engaging in milling and mercantile businesses in Brownsville, Crawfordsville, and McMinnville, Bishop came to Salem in 1889, where he helped build and operate the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill with his father-in-law (Thomas Kay, Sr.). In 1891 he bought the Salem Woolen Mills Store, which evolved into Bishop’s men’s furnishings store—one of the largest enterprises of its kind in the state outside Portland. Also, between 1909 and 1920, Charles and his sons, Clarence, Roy, and Chauncey, bought three woolen mills—Oregon Worsted Company in Portland (Sellwood), Oregon, the Washougal Woolen Mills in Washougal, Washington, and the Eureka Woolen Mills in Eureka, California. Bishop may have briefly occupied the T.G. Bligh Building with his own shop, although his men’s clothing store was on Commercial Street around that time. In 1936, during the Great Depression, Bishop’s clothing store for men and boys, moved to the Eckerlen Building on Liberty Street and remained there through the 1960s, when it moved to Center Street. Charles Bishop contributed to Salem’s and Oregon’s civic and cultural life by serving as Salem mayor (1899-1906), state senator (1915-1918), and trustee of Willamette University for three decades. Bishop died at age 87 in 1941. The T.G. Bligh Building passed from the Bishops Clothing Woolen Mill to the Franklin Group in 1980.