If you shopped at Fred Meyer for Thanksgiving ingredients, make sure to wave a carrot stick when you pass the pink stucco 1929 Envoy tower at 2336 SW Osage St. in Portland. It's here, on the top floor, where one-stop-shopping guru and former gold prospector Fred G. Meyer lived.
At that time, the Mediterranean-style building was rented as apartments. In 2005, units were renovated and converted into condos, and the twin penthouses were joined into one 5,026-square-foot elevated palace with an equal square footage in terraces.
Originally, architect Carl L. Linde designed the seven-story structure for developer Jack L. Easson to rest on an irregular parcel of land between Southwest Osage and Cactus streets in King's Hill.
Today, this top-of-the-world, two-story pad has a private entrance and an elevator that opens into the solarium. Unit #800 sold for $1,807,800 in November 2015. Annual taxes were $43,820 and the homeowner fee is about $3,000 a month.
In the spirit of the holiday in which food and family take center stage, we look at houses where famous food, beer and diet-plan tycoons lived. Most of these are edited reports from researchers and writers at Top Ten Real Estate Deals.
Kellogg Mansion: The opulent Mediterranean Revival-style mansion at 129 Buena Vista Dr. S in Dunedin, near Tampa, Florida, was built in the Roaring Twenties as the coastal playground and winter home of W.K. Kellogg, who founded the multinational food manufacturing empire headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1906. Throughout the 7,667-square-foot mansion are secret passageways, wood coffered ceilings and custom stained glass windows. The one-acres property is listed at $4.5 million.
Ghirardelli chocolate mansion: The early 1900s Mission Revival-style mansion, built for chocolatier Gieseppe "Joseph" Ghirardelli at 6363 Highland Dr. in Piedmont, California, sold in October 2016 for $4.65 million. In 1911, Ghirardelli's widow, Ellen Ghirardelli Cushing, remodeled the 6,479-square-foot estate in the Colonial Revival style. There are seven bedrooms, six baths, a third-floor apartment and a guest house above the two-car garage.
Campbell's Soup mansion: Chemist John T. Dorrance invented the formula for condensing soup while working for his father in the family's preserve factory. From this, Dorrance started the Campbell Soup Co. in 1914 and ran it until his death in 1930. His 14,467-square-foot French Normandy-style mansion called Linden Hill, on 50.5 wooded acres at 1543 Monk Road in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, is for sale at $16.5 million. The property has multiple stone outbuildings, two swimming pools, tennis court, 10-car garage, landscaped grounds and an aviary.
Oscar Mayer mansion: The renovated brick house Oscar G. Mayer, Sr., bought a year before he took over the sausage company in 1928 that was started by his father Oscar Ferdinand, is on the market at $2.8 million. The 0.28-acre property at 1030 Forest Ave. in Evanston, Illinois' historic Lakeshore District, includes the 7,401-square-foot mansion with an updated chef's kitchen, walk-in pantry and butler's pantry with wine cooler. Herbs can be grown in the heated sunroom off the kitchen.
Morton Salt mansion: Jean Morton Cudahy's inheritance came from her father, Joy Sterling Morton, who founded the Morton Salt and Argo Starch brands. Her gated Lake Forest estate on two acres was designed by architect David Adler and built in 1914 at 830 N Green Bay Road in Lake Forest, north of downtown Chicago. The 10,386-square-foot French Norman mansion has a dark wood-clad bar room and lounge, and outdoor entertaining areas with a pool, spa, tennis court and terraces. It sold for $2.75 million in May 2017.
Sugar mansion: During the Golden Age, sugar importer George R. Mosle's 32-acre country getaway was Hillandale estate in Far Hills, New Jersey. His company, Mosle Brothers, acted as agents and bankers for two Cuban sugar plantations before the Spanish-Cuban and Spanish-American wars from 1895 through 1898. During the conflicts, he brought the sugar-cane growers and their families to the United States and later paid to restart their plantations.
In 1906, Mosle hired architect Grosvenor Atterbury to design an 18,000-square-foot, stone-and-brick structure near captains of industry. When the stock market crashed, Mosle lost his fortune and the property was sold to the Sisters of St. John the Baptist to be used as an orphanage, school and summer camp. The property at 22 Saint Johns Dr. is on the market at $4.995 million
Winn Dixie grocery chain plantation: 19th-century cotton and sugarcane plantations in Chemonie, Florida, turned into quail hunting grounds with luxury lodges. The Chemonie Plantation has been under the stewardship of T. Wayne Davis, Jr. of Jacksonville, whose grandfather, father and uncles founded the Florida-based grocery chain now known as Winn Dixie.
The historic Chemonie Plantation, 2,410 acres at 5591 Miccosukee Road in Tallahassee that includes the 30-acre Cody Lake, was listed at $15.5 million before being taken off the market. The 7,000-square-foot brick main house has southern porches on all sides. A separate guest house has four bedroom suites that face dogtrot grounds. Nearby are kennels with a Classic Revival facade. The property also has a manager's house, plantation office, stables, barns and grain bins.
Pabst Beer mansion: In 1936, post-Prohibition, Pabst Brewing Co. president Harris Perlstein hired architect William Pereira to design a 14,300-square-foot Georgian mansion on two acres at 443 Sheridan Road in the lakefront Glencoe community north of Chicago. The property, with a pool, spa, sport court and coach house with a four-car heated garage, sold for $3,575,000 on Oct. 27, 2017.
Anheuser-Busch beer estate: Anheuser-Busch has been the largest brewer in the United States since 1957. According to the company, the company survived the Depression by diversifying into more than 25 non-alcohol products such as soft drinks, trucking, ice cream and a cereal-based beverage. After Prohibition ended in 1933, Anheuser-Busch returned to beer, hitting the 2 million barrel production mark in 1938.
That year, Adolphus Busch III built his 12,533-square-foot Mediterranean-style Manga Reva estate with a outdoor band shell, 60-foot lap pool, 130-foot dock and 525 feet of waterfront on the Ft. Lauderdale Intracoastal Waterway. The 1.2-acre property at 1000 Riviera Drive was purchased in 2014 by Michael Wekerle of TV's "Dragon's Den" for $12.5 million.
Weight loss tycoon Jenny Craig's Del Mar mansion: In the 1960s, an overweight Jenny Craig reduced the amount of fatty foods she ate and started going to a gym. She mortgaged her house and opened a fitness center, and later grew fitness salons Body Contour Inc. to 200 franchises. She and husband, Sid Craig, started Nutri/System in 1983.
Three years later, they bought a Del Mar, California beachfront estate, built in 1980 on a three-quarter-acre gated property. The two-story house has three kitchens, an ocean-side, swimming pool terrace and second floor balcony. Both run the full length of the mansion. The property at 2936 Ocean Front is on the market at $35 million.
-- Janet Eastman based on research by TopTenRealEstateDeals.com and others
jeastman@oregonian.com
503-799-8739
@janeteastman