Portland Magazine
March 1, 2022
The Oregon Historical Society honors the institution’s contributions to Portland
Story by Amanda Waldroupe
THIS YEAR, THE BLANCHET HOUSE OF HOSPITALITY marks its 70th anniversary of serving those experiencing poverty and homelessness in Portland. Rooted in social justice and the values of the Catholic Worker Movement, the Blanchet House’s founding mission was a simple one—feeding free meals to those in need. Today, Blanchet House’s services have stayed true to the original vision while also expanding to meet the needs of the time.
To honor the anniversary, the Oregon Historical Society will host an exhibit, from March 4 to June 5, 2022, displaying photographs, news clippings, and historic artifacts narrating the Blanchet House’s founding, history, and contributions.
That history, from its very beginning, is a remarkable one.
The Blanchet House’s founding and early years are next to lore for the University of Portland community and those who know Portland’s history. In the years after World War II, a group of University of Portland students, all men, sought to start a social club. They hoped to host dances and enliven the school’s social life. At the time, all clubs had a chaplain. In 1948, Father Francis Kennard became the club’s chaplain, an event that proved pivotal to the club’s mission.
Kennard was an assistant priest of St. Mary’s Church, yet he was more commonly found walking the streets of Portland’s Old Town District, pushing a cart of ham sandwiches and coffee that he would serve to the people in need that he encountered. He was inspired by Catholic social activist Dorothy Day, who co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement, which advocated for serving and providing hospitality to individuals who were marginalized and experiencing poverty.
“He had a great love for the poor,” James O’Hanlon ’51, one of the founders of the Blanchet House, recently remembered.
Kennard’s belief—that the Gospel was a call to service—was combined with a charisma that inspired those around him. He gave the club members an ultimatum: there would be no club unless it existed to serve their impoverished neighbors.
“We were all for it,” says O’Hanlon, who is the last living founder. “It was the Christian thing to do, to see Christ in every individual, to help them. So, we were going to help the poor.”
O’Hanlon and the other men—including Gene Feltz ’50, Dan Christianson, Dan Harrington ’50, Bernie Harrington, and Patrick Carr—loaded a pickup truck with food, drove it into Old Town, and served meals of hot beans and coffee from the curb.
Then they found a building. O’Hanlon recalls that Kennard and another priest were walking Old Town’s streets when they encountered the owner of a three-story building on the corner of Northwest Fourth and Northwest Glisan. The top two floors were used as a brothel, but the first floor was vacant. The owner agreed to rent the first floor for $35 a month. The young men scrubbed the floor, cleaned out the space, and washed the windows. Tables and chairs were donated. They named the space the Blanchet House of Hospitality after Portland’s first Catholic archbishop, François Norbert Blanchet.
The doors opened on Monday, February 11, 1952. The first meal was stew, bread, and coffee. They expected to feed 100 people that first day. Instead, they fed 200. People, mostly men, their hands stuffed into the pockets of their trench coats and wearing battered fedoras, lined up around the block, waiting to get in. By the end of the week, 300 people were walking through the Blanchet House’s door each day.
The Blanchet House also caught the attention of The Oregon Journal, which ran its first story on the agency on Sunday, February 17. “Reaction of hungry drifters was immediate,” the report reads. The first meals were “not fancy, but filling,” served in a “dilapidated but scrubbed-out building” with a “rickety door.”
In early December 1952, Dorothy Day toured the Blanchet House. One evening, she addressed a crowd of 100 people in its dining room. “We have an obligation to do the work of mercy to those who suffer—and to do these works ourselves instead of letting the state do them,” The Oregon Journal reports her as saying. “This is the personal, the unitarian revolution.”
The personal revolutions that kept the Blanchet House going in its early years, O’Hanlon remembers, were volunteer driven. “It was touch and go there for the first seven or eight years,” he says, laughing. “We were always struggling to get money, finding people to run it.”
Individuals and organizations donated a refrigerator, washing machine, hot water heater, dishes, and other materials. Restaurants, butcher shops, and farms donated food. The Oregon Journal ran a half dozen articles throughout 1952 announcing benefits for the Blanchet House. Collection cans in Old Town’s bars accepted donations. Every gift, no matter how small, helped.
In 1956, O’Hanlon and another founder purchased the building that housed the Blanchet House for $25,000. From that point forward, the Blanchet House’s services began expanding. The top two floors turned into housing. In 1962, what became the Blanchet Farm, a 62-acre farm in Yamhill County, was purchased, where men recovering from substance abuse could go to aid their recovery. Donated clothes were given out; people were connected to jobs.
In 2012, the Blanchet House moved nearby to a newly built four-story building on Northwest Third and Northwest Glisan. The building triples the agency’s space, offering twice the number of apartments. In 2020, the Harrington Health Clinic—named for numerous members of the Harrington family who were founders or deeply involved in the agency—began offering primary health care by nurses (many from UP) to the Blanchet House’s customers.
Through it all, the Blanchet House has remained true to its original core mission. Now, six days a week, three meals a day are served to between 1,000 and 1,500 impoverished Portlanders.
Like other houses of hospitality inspired by Day, the Blanchet House offers radical acceptance: anyone can come in for a meal. The only rule, then and now, is that customers be sober and comport themselves with decency. In a 1953 article, The Oregonian reported that “inside is nourishing food to fill the stomach, and understanding and love to replenish the spirit.” The same thing could be reported today.
“Everybody was accepted, no questions asked,” O’Hanlon says. “That is what the good Lord told us to do. Help the poor.”
AMANDA WALDROUPE is a journalist and writer based in Portland, OR. Her feature writing focuses on homelessness, poverty, inequality, and other social justice issues.
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