This is the second installment on boarding houses, following a column published in July.

Boarding houses in Astoria were in their heyday around the turn of the century until the late 1920s.

They furnished all the comforts of an extended family to single workers and to newly arrived immigrants.

They were operated largely by Finnish families serving lumber mill workers in Uppertown and cannery workers in Uniontown, with a variety of houses and residents in between. However, the biggest concentration of boarding houses was in Uniontown, with probably as many as 20 scattered at one time or another between Suomi Hall and the Doughboy Monument.

The only one of these establishments still offering lodging is the Bridge Rooms on the corner of West Marine Drive and Ray Street next to Suomi Hall. Diaries of Buddy Bell, longtime Astorian, say he has watched most of the others burn down. The place passed through a succession of owners, but was best known in the 1920s as the Karhuvaara Boarding House, where Ed Niskas mother was famous for her fine cooking. At that time, it housed about 10 men.

It is now owned by File Riutta and its residents are a half dozen elderly men, one of whom is retired fisherman Albert Aho. He lived there in the early days while fishing on the river. Now hes retired there.

Riutta recently donated the place to the Northwest Oregon Housing Authority to use for transitional housing for self-sufficient mentally ill persons in Clatsop County.

Across the street from the Bridge Rooms is the spot where Toippis Boarding House used to stand. It was built in 1917. Nearby on Taylor Street was the Takkunen House. It stood a little up the hill toward the Taylor School, located where Oregon Healthcare Center/Crestview now stands. In 1909, when John Takkunen sold the boarding house to Emil Punkala, it became Punkala House. Later, when Takkunen died, his widow bought the house back again. When she remarried, it became the Eskelin Boarding House. Later it was sold to Mr. and Mrs. Sakri Loppaka. It was known by that name until it burned in 1943.

The largest boarding house

The biggest boarding house of all and the one in longest operation was Hannula House. Daniel Hannula came to Astoria as a young man to make his fortune. He married Amalia, a Finnish girl whose heart was set on running a boarding house. In 1904, they got started building the biggest boarding house ever to be operated in Astorias Finntown. It was four stories high and housed 75 men. Located across West Marine Drive from present-day Uniontown Cafe, it soon ran into hard times. It was too big for the highly competitive boarding house business until World War I, when Astoria had a ship-building boom.

For years, the Hannulas success was phenomenal. However, some say that activities during Prohibition days added to the pot of gold. In any case, Amalia tooted around town in her big Franklin car, the first in Astoria, though one local historian said it was a big Lincoln she drove. Still another reported, Amalia drove a big Cadillac, the first in Astoria.

When I checked with Bob Lovell of Lovell Auto Co., he said his father sold the first Cadillac in Astoria in 1921, and Amalia could have been the customer. My guess is that during the Hannulas years of prosperity, Amalia successively owned all three cars.

Then in 1943, Hannula House burned. When the big structure went up in flames, the Astoria Budget (July 21, 1943) pronounced it to be Astorias most devastating fire since the 1922 conflagration. Apparently, the blaze started about midday from a cigarette tossed into a bucket of oily rags at a nearby car agency.

The disaster rendered homeless 200 men and several families as it wiped out Uniontown boarding houses and surrounding residences. The 75 men in Hannula House and the 53 living in the Loppaka House, mostly new immigrants, lost most of their belongings. However, Mrs. Lopakka managed to scoop $10,000 out of her safe which had been entrusted to her. The Hannula residents suffered heavy losses in cash and war bonds.

The whole community rushed to the scene to help, though the many onlookers hampered rescue efforts. Fire Chief Wayne Osterby and Deputy Sheriff Myron Jones reported that people were in a panic trying to rescue belongings and stacking them in the street. Dennis Thompson, of Astoria Granite Works, worked all night with the cleanup crews, then was inducted into the Army the next day for service in World War II. Astoria gave me quite a sendoff, he says. Arvi Ostrom, who operated what is now Uniontown Cafe, remembers the intense heat blistered the walls of his building.

Firemen rushed in from Seaside, and some rode the ferry across from llwaco, Wash. The U.S. Navy Station at Tongue Point sent 144 Blue Jackets to fight the flames and stop looting. Even so, the center of Uniontown was reduced to ashes. Homeless men were bunked down in bathhouses, in hallways of surviving establishments and on ships in port. The Red Cross responded swiftly with supplies.

The fire was not the only tragedy that struck the Hannulas. Daniel and Amalia had one son, George, the apple of their eye. He married; the marriage was a stormy one; the wife was killed; and George spent 10 years in the penitentiary. When he returned, the boarding house business was gone; his father had died and his mother was in a disastrous marriage. George married again, bought a trailer and went fishing.

Of course, Uniontown has changed since the fire, as new businesses have gradually been established, but some early ones have remained. Suomi Hall is still in place. Workers Tavern and the Triangle Tavern are still doing business, as are Union Steam Baths and Uniontown Cafe. Ferrelis Home Center has replaced Puustis store. The Doughboy Monument still rises majestically in what was the hub of the Finnish community, probably the only Doughboy statue in the nation to guard a citys comfort station.