History

The C.J. Howe building is significant for two reasons. It is one of the few buildings to have survived a fire on July 12, 1919, a fire which destroyed the wooden structures of the central business district. Only those few brick buildings survived. The building is also and authentic representation of turn-of-the-century commercial architecture. And during the 1960s, a well intending but misguided movement to “early-up” storefronts in Brownsville to attract tourists reduces further the number of unaltered historic buildings on Brownsville’s main street.
C.J. Howe was one of several brothers who had come to Brownsville from Massachusetts, and the deed shows that the Howe’s had purchased land within the district as early as the 1890s. A grocery was purchased in 1905, and two of the brothers formed a partnership in 1907, apparently to enlarge the business. The store was operated by the family until the Great Depression, when the familiar pattern of unpaid accounts contributed to its failure. Since that time, the building has housed various forms of commercial activities, an appliance store, shoe store, tire store, antique store, beauty salon, and as noted earlier, the upper story was converted to apartments during the Second World War. Located at a major intersection, the store served as a gathering place for local merchants and farmers.
Brownsville, whose population has stayed around 1,500 people and is Linn Counties oldest town, has been identified as a fifth-order town. It’s representative of a community which thrived earlier in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. It’s present lack of economic diversity and its distant decay factor from the interstate freeway and major economic centers have contributed to the town’s lack of major growth in recent decades.
This lack of growth, however, has contributed to the preservation of the town’s architectural resources. Many churches, homes and farmhouses on the perimeter of the downtown area attest to Brownsville’s origins in the 19th century. The C.J. Howe building is Brownsville’s best preserved example of commercial architecture dating from the time when the town was at the height of its commercial and economic importance.