The William O. Munsell House in southeast Portland

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

 in the U.S. state

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...

 of Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

 is a 1.5-story single dwelling listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

. Built in an eclectic mixture of Bungalow

Bungalow

A bungalow is a type of house, with varying meanings across the world. Common features to many of these definitions include being detached, low-rise , and the use of verandahs...

, American Craftsman

American Craftsman

The American Craftsman Style, or the American Arts and Crafts Movement, is an American domestic architectural, interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts style and lifestyle philosophy that began in the last years of the 19th century. As a comprehensive design and art...

, and Colonial Revival styles in 1902, it was added to the register in 1989.

Situated on the western edge of a proposed Buckman

Buckman, Portland, Oregon

Buckman is a neighborhood in the Southeast section of Portland, Oregon. The neighborhood is bounded by the Willamette River on the west, E Burnside St. on the north , SE 28th Ave. on the east, and SE Hawthorne Blvd...

 Historic District, the Munsell House features large pediment

Pediment

A pediment is a classical architectural element consisting of the triangular section found above the horizontal structure , typically supported by columns. The gable end of the pediment is surrounded by the cornice moulding...

ed gable dormer

Dormer

A dormer is a structural element of a building that protrudes from the plane of a sloping roof surface. Dormers are used, either in original construction or as later additions, to create usable space in the roof of a building by adding headroom and usually also by enabling addition of windows.Often...

s facing the cardinal points

Cardinal direction

The four cardinal directions or cardinal points are the directions of north, east, south, and west, commonly denoted by their initials: N, E, S, W. East and west are at right angles to north and south, with east being in the direction of rotation and west being directly opposite. Intermediate...

. The oval window in the facade dormer includes ornamental keystones

Keystone (architecture)

A keystone is the wedge-shaped stone piece at the apex of a masonry vault or arch, which is the final piece placed during construction and locks all the stones into position, allowing the arch to bear weight. This makes a keystone very important structurally...

, also facing the cardinal points, in the manner of many Colonial Revival structures. Houses similar to this one were built throughout southeast Portland from about 1900 through 1926.

The home's interior has four rooms on the main floor and three on the second floor. Interior features include an open staircase with turned baluster

Baluster

A baluster is a moulded shaft, square or of lathe-turned form, one of various forms of spindle in woodwork, made of stone or wood and sometimes of metal, standing on a unifying footing, and supporting the coping of a parapet or the handrail of a staircase. Multiplied in this way, they form a...

s, pocket door

Pocket door

A pocket door is a sliding door that disappears, when fully open, into a compartment in the adjacent wall. Pocket doors are used for architectural effect, or when there is no room for the swing of a hinged door. They usually travel on rollers suspended from an overhead track, although some also...

s, dual fireplaces in the living and dining rooms, and an oriel window

Oriel window

Oriel windows are a form of bay window commonly found in Gothic architecture, which project from the main wall of the building but do not reach to the ground. Corbels or brackets are often used to support this kind of window. They are seen in combination with the Tudor arch. This type of window was...

.

Munsell, the home's original owner, lived in it for two years before selling it to Henry B. and Ellen Adams. Born in Indiana, Munsell moved to Portland in 1896. Starting as a clerk for Acme Harvester, by 1932 he had become president and manager of Mitchell, Lewis and Staver, a farm-implement business in Portland's eastside warehouse district.