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The building and street where Lookout Eugene-Springfield's offices are located has a history that dates back to the earliest days of Eugene.
A post office. A grocery store. A tin shop.
Littlefield’s Cigar Store. Bly’s Grill. The Baltimore Grill. R.A. Babb Hardware and Sporting Goods. Joe Gordon Hardware and Sporting Goods. John Warren Hardware and Sporting Goods. McKenzie Outfitters. Orient Taekwondo College. Track Town Crossfit. AHM Brands.
Lookout Eugene-Springfield.
From the 1880s to now, the history of 771 Willamette St. — wedged between two of downtown Eugene’s most historic structures, the Smeede Hotel and the Tiffany Building — is a rich and colorful one in the heart of Eugene.
The night before I first set foot in our new digital newspaper’s office in mid-January, I got curious.
So I plugged “771 Willamette St.” into the search bar of newspapers.com (an online archive of more than a billion pages of historical newspapers), and the first thing that came up was a Eugene Register-Guard ad for John Warren Hardware, Inc., dated March 11, 1956.
And just like that, I remembered. I’d been there before, the last time probably as a teenager in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
That led to a search to discover what other businesses once occupied Lookout’s new office, as well as the history of the 700 block of Willamette Street and the rest of the heart of downtown Eugene.
So let’s take a look at what was, what is and what just might be.
The past: ‘Smoke pouring through the window’
The town’s first newspaper, according to “Eugene Register-Guard: Vol. 1,” the 1976 book by the late University of Oregon journalism professor Warren C. Price, was the Pacific Journal, first published in the summer of 1858. But it didn’t last long. Editor B.J. Pengra moved on to another Eugene paper, The People’s Press, less than a year later, according to the Feb. 5, 1858, edition of The Weekly Oregonian.
The first photographic evidence of a newspaper in town came in the late 1860s, possibly the early 1870s. The famous photograph, taken somewhere along Willamette Street between present-day Seventh Avenue and Broadway, shows a large sign marked “Guard Office” on the west side of the street.
J.B. Alexander launched the Eugene Guard, a four-page weekly, June 1, 1867, in a building somewhere near the southwest corner of Seventh Avenue and Willamette Street. It was less than a block from where Lookout Eugene-Springfield now resides.
The Guard remained a weekly into the 20th century and had several locations in that same area, including on the east side of what is now the 700 block of Willamette, somewhere between the Smeede, built as Baker’s Hotel in 1885, and what is now the Olsen Run Comedy Club (formerly High Fi Music Hall) on the southeast corner of Seventh and Willamette. (The Guard later moved three blocks south, to 1041 Willamette St., becoming the Eugene Register-Guard in 1930 after the publisher, my grandfather Alton F. Baker Sr., purchased the competing Morning Register and merged the two.)
Other newspapers came and went, but the three most prominent publications at the end of the 19th century were the Guard, Register and Oregon State Journal.
Fire maps give best look into downtown’s past
The earliest available Sanborn fire map of Eugene blocks, from 1884, shows three storefronts — a post office/drug store, a grocer and a tin shop — at what is now 771 Willamette.
Sanborn fire maps, available online through the Library of Congress, are detailed maps of U.S. cities and towns in the 19th and 20th centuries, created to allow fire insurance companies to assess total liability in urban areas of the country.
By 1902, maps show a cigar store at the location, which was Littlefield’s Cigar Store, according to an old photo I found among the Lane County Historical Society’s collection.
Display ads in the Eugene Daily Guard during 1913 promoted a restaurant called The Baltimore Grill at 771 Willamette, including one summertime ad announcing “The Coolest Dining Room in Town,” although that didn’t refer to the place’s vibe. No, just the food and temperature — “cooling foods for these torrid days,” served in their “cool, well-ventilated dining room.”
By 1916, The Morning Register contained ads for “Bly’s Grill” at 771 Willamette. It was “the only place to eat” and had “the best 25 cent meal in the city.”
It wasn’t long before 771 Willamette would become a hardware and sporting goods store for most of the rest of the century. Ads in both the Guard and Register during 1919 mention R.A. Babb Hardware Co. at the address.
Babb sold the store to Joe Gordon in 1946, according to a 1957 Register-Guard story. Gordon only owned it for five years before selling to John Warren in 1951.
A native Oregonian born and raised in the eastern part of the state, Warren played football at the UO from 1925 to 1927. After graduation, he became the head basketball coach at Astoria High School, where he led the Fishermen to four state titles between 1930 and 1935, the last two, led by the backcourt duo of Bobby Anet and Wally Johansen. Anet and Johansen would follow Warren to the UO, where they helped lead the Ducks to the first-ever NCAA men’s basketball title in 1939.
Warren coached freshmen football at his alma mater, then became the head football coach during the 1942 season, and the head men’s basketball coach in 1944-45 and 1947-1951. He was also head track coach for a season in 1948, serving as a bridge between the two famous Bills —Hayward and Bowerman.
Warren ran his store for five years, selling everything from footballs and basketballs to Lionel electric train sets as well as guns, hunting and fishing licenses.
‘Fire Sweeps Downtown Store’
Then came the morning of July 2, 1956: “Fire Sweeps Downtown Store.”
The lead story on the front page of the next day’s Eugene Register-Guard said the blaze began about 3:30 a.m.
It started in a trash box that had caught fire behind the building, along West Park Avenue, the newspaper reported. The loss totaled $250,000, about $2.9 million in 2025 dollars. Firefighters feared the flames might reach dynamite and black powder stored in the back of the store, but only small-caliber ammunition was ignited.
“It sounded like an old-fashioned Fourth of July … just cracking and snapping,” Eugene Fire Department Assistant Chief H.C. Guthrie told R-G reporter Jerry Uhrhammer.
The Smeede and Tiffany buildings on either side were threatened, with residents being evacuated from the hotel.
“I woke up, and smoke was pouring through the open window,” Smeede resident Wiley Cox told the newspaper. “I didn’t know what in the devil was happening.”
John Warren’s reopened in a new building March 13, 1957, according to The Register-Guard. The new R.A. Babb Building was 13,500 square feet with a first-floor sales room, mezzanine offices, a hardware display room and a basement stockroom.
Eugene’s downtown core hummed along quite nicely through the 1960s, but by the end of the decade, changes were afoot.
Valley River Center opened in 1969, taking such downtown anchors as J.C. Penney, Montgomery Ward and the Bon Marche over the years.
Pedestrian mall reshapes downtown
The construction of the city’s ill-fated pedestrian mall began in 1970, complete with a big, ugly concrete fountain in the middle of Broadway and Willamette. Willamette Street between Eighth and 11th avenues was closed to vehicle traffic, as was Broadway between Oak and Charnelton streets and Olive Street between Eighth and 10th avenues.
Part of federally funded urban renewal, the pedestrian mall opened in 1971, and during the next couple of years, many decades-old buildings came down to make way for the new. The 600 and 700 blocks of Willamette were hit hard, as wrecking balls took down the Heilig Theatre and other beloved structures in the early 1970s.
“There was quite a fight from historians and architects in opposition to all that destruction, which was supposed to be (downtown’s) answer to (Valley River Center),” recalled retired UO sociology professor and local historian Douglas Card. “Instead, it killed (downtown).”
Of course, the demolition of the old made way for the new and such present-day gems as the Hult Center for the Performing Arts, which opened to much fanfare in 1982, and the city reopened Willamette in 1996 and the other streets in the ensuing years.
John Warren’s closed its Willamette Street location in 1981, not long after Warren died that March at age 76. His son, Charlie Warren, the former UO All-American basketball player and Eugene businessman, took ownership of the building that would briefly house McKenzie Outfitters in the ‘80s and then Orient Taekwondo College in the ‘90s and into the 21st century.
Former UO track and field standout Roscoe Divine bought the building from Warren in the late 1980s or early 1990s, said Divine, whose son, Conor Divine, is now the owner.
Track Town Crossfit was a brief tenant in recent years.
“They only lasted about three months because I thought they were going to tear the whole building down,” Roscoe Divine said, referring to the crashing of weights on the old building’s floor that would rattle coffee cups next door at Perugino coffee shop in the Smeede Hotel.
AHM Brands, a Eugene marketing agency, started leasing 771 Willamette in the winter of 2014-15, said Brent MacCluer, a partner in the firm and its media director. It moved out last summer to a new location a few blocks south at 1249 Willamette St.
The firm did a significant remodel on the space, upgrading the mezzanine and putting in a cyclorama photo studio, among other improvements.
The present: ‘Big on downtown’
Ken Doctor, CEO and founder of Lookout Local, the public benefit, for-profit company that is Lookout Eugene-Springfield’s parent, wasn’t necessarily looking to land in Eugene’s downtown core. He had visited several other spaces before a commercial broker mentioned 771 Willamette.
“It felt a little funky, which is what we wanted. We wanted something with personality — a space where people would want to work in.”
He and the rest of Lookout’s team also wanted a place with a “sense of community identity,” where they could invite the public.
Doctor also likes the feel of the historic Smeede Hotel next door and the ambience of some of its local businesses, such as Perugino and Authentica Wines, which faces the West Park Avenue side.
“I’m totally jazzed about Lookout and what they’re doing. I just think local news is so important,” said Authentica’s owner, Steve Baker, a former Register-Guard employee. “I’m big on downtown; I always have been. So when I learned Lookout was going to be here, I was very excited.”
Hue-Ping Lin, owner of the White Lotus Gallery, which features Asian arts in the Smeede Hotel, feels the same way.
“I think it’s wonderful,” she said of Lookout Eugene-Springfield’s arrival, mentioning the Pulitzer Prize its sister publication, Lookout Santa Cruz, received last year. “I think we need to instill that kind of spirit into the community.”
Eric Brown, the city of Eugene’s downtown manager, said during a recent walk around the city’s downtown core, that “It’s great just to have (Lookout’s) tenancy.”
The future: ‘A lot of good things’
New Eugene Mayor Kaarin Knudson campaigned last year on a goal of adding 1,000 housing units downtown in the next five years.
“Most of downtown Eugene still has a lower residential density than most of our typical neighborhoods,” Knudson said during her State of the City address Jan. 13. “That statistic tells you almost everything you need to know about why downtown has struggled. Vibrant places need people power.”
The mayor wants a good chunk of those prospective 1,000 new units to be in the downtown core. This is why Brown was standing on the north side of the Farmer’s Market Pavilion, just a few steps from Lookout’s back door, gazing at the empty half-acre of city-owned land on the corner of East Seventh Avenue and Oak Street.
“(The mayor) wants 200 units in the core, and this is very much the core,” Brown said. The parcel is on property zoned for commercial uses, which allows for 150 feet of height for a structure on the property that’s valued at about $1 million.
But the city might let it go to the right developer for less if it could create affordable housing, Brown said.
A significant increase in the number of residents living downtown could increase public safety, climate goals (more people walking rather than driving) and make for a more productive local economy, Brown said.
Kaz Oveissi, Perugino’s owner, knows well the challenges of trying to spark interest and bring people to a struggling downtown.
He’s been part of several downtown projects, including owning his oriental rug store, Oveissi and Co., for 23 years at 22 W. Seventh Ave., before closing in 2016. Now, he sells his rugs out of the back of his coffee shop, which opened in 2002. Oveissi has also had an ownership stake in several buildings, including the One East Broadway building at the corner of Broadway and Willamette, aka Kesey Square.
As the years have gone on, though, he’s become more and more frustrated with downtown’s struggles.
“There was a time when people were really gung-ho about making this amazing thing happen (downtown),” Oveissi said. “And it didn’t happen.”
So, he’s leaving it up to the next generation.
Someone has to step up with a vision. Adding housing would certainly help, Oveissi said. And having Lookout Eugene-Springfield downtown as his new neighbor is also good, he said.
“Absolutely,” Oveissi said. “It’s community oriented. When I read about (Lookout), there’s a lot of good things, so I’m glad (it’s) here.”
Eugene hasn’t had a visible daily newspaper presence downtown since The Register-Guard left its East 10th Avenue and High Street location for Chad Drive in northeast Eugene in January 1998. Some think the R-G’s staff still work out of the building at 3500 Chad Drive because of “The Register-Guard” sign on the east side of the building that’s still owned by my generation of the Baker family.
But R-G staff left that office space, leased by Gannett, when the pandemic hit and worked remotely for a few years before taking up shared office space at The District in the 5th Street Public Market Alley. The R-G has no signage at this shared space.
Lookout plans to erect “a nice big sign” next month that will be lit at night on the building’s facade, as well as signage on the back of the building, Doctor said.
There was a time when most cities and towns across the country had a local newspaper in the heart of downtown, he said, and residents were proud to drive by it and say, “That’s our newspaper. Maybe it was that damn newspaper, but it was ‘our damn newspaper,’ and it represented our city.
“We want people to know we are here, and we intend to tell them what’s going on,” Doctor said. “In most American cities, you can’t say that anymore.”
