Dear Liza,
I have told you about the delightfully quirky, slightly spooky coffee house in our neighborhood called The Pied Cow. But now I have learned more about it.
The Pied Cow is in the house and yard of the J. C. Havely House, built in 1893 by Mr. Havely, who is called a railroad tycoon because he made a lot of money building railroads around the Northwest. It was a mile and a half out of town at the time, reached by trolley car or wagons over muddy roads. It is a Queen Anne Vernacular Style, and has lots of decoration. A square tower with balconies and a roof like a pyramid, and details my Momma called “gingerbread” give it a really unusual look. It is currently painted a shade of green that looks like faded moss.
During the 1890s and early 1900s, the house hosted Suffragist meetings. That means people met here to plan how to change laws to allow women to vote.
After the Havely family moved away and sold the house sometime after the 1920s, I can’t find out who lived in it until the early 1960s when it was used by historic restorers Ben Milligan and Jerry Bosco as a storage place for architectural bits and pieces they used in re-building old houses.
In 1979, Ben and Jerry offered the building as a place for some friends’ new restaurant, Buttertoes. The friends, three sisters named Carolyn, Charmon and Cherous, ran Buttertoes for ten years, using family recipes. The popular, story-themed restaurant also hosted children’s tea parties and was known for making delicious pastries.
It was during the Buttertoes years that the ghost, Aunt Lydia, was discovered. The sisters reported that someone would walk into the back room, which had no exit, and there would be no one there. The people who rented to upstairs apartment reported furniture moving by itself and having strange dreams. A spiritualist was called in and confirmed that a spirit was present.
Maybe it was the spiritualist who gave the name Aunt Lydia to the ghost, and described her as wearing a black, high collared dress with her hair pinned up. I still have no information on WHOSE Aunt she might have been.
When Ben and Jerry passed away in 1989, the sisters closed the restaurant and sold the building to the owners of The Pied Cow. They opened Buttertoes Gift Shop down the road on Hawthorne, which ran for another 13 years.
The Pied Cow has been a funky place to have coffee, drink sangria, smoke a hookah, or have some of the best ginger cake ever for almost 30 years now!
Love,
Grandma Judy
Dear Liza 
Auntie Bridgett lookin’ cool and happy.
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I just came across your delightful blog after searching for “Buttertoes” – the house is featured in a recent Facebook post from Patrick F. Smith. I don’t remember whether I ever set foot in Buttertoes, but I did while away some lovely summer evenings on the lawn at the Pied Cow in its early years. I’ve just heard that a new bar & restaurant, Foxtrot, has opened in the space.
Your bio notes that you moved to Portland from Salinas. I’ve only visited that city once: a day trip to see a Woody Guthrie exhibit at the Steinbeck Center. There was also an earthquake! And so many artichokes! A memorable day.
Anyway, what a lovely idea, to use a blog to document your explorations of a new city. Thank you for sharing your stories.
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Hello K, I’m so glad you like the blog. I’ve written it since July 2017 and enjoy doing it. During the Shutdown, it assured me that I had to do SOMETHING, and had DONE something. It also keeps lots of friends up in my adventures. There’s also quite a bit of Portland history there, as I learn about the city.
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Yes, Salinas had plenty of Steinbeck and artichokes…but Portland is a real move up!
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