Frank Dekum (November 5, 1829 – October 19, 1894) was a prominent 19th century fruit merchant, banker, and real-estate investor in Portland, Oregon. Born in Germany, Dekum emigrated to the north-central U.S. with his family and as a young man went west in search of gold before starting a successful fresh-fruit business in Portland. Prospering as a merchant, Dekum invested in real-estate, banking, and an early railroad, was a president or board member of many of the city's companies, and was one of 15 men named to Portland's first municipal water committee.
Dekum involved himself in many building projects in downtown Portland. One of his structures, the Dekum Building, which served as headquarters for the city's government in the 1890s, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The Portland and Vancouver Railway, financed partly by Dekum, ran along the east side of the Willamette River from East Portland to the Columbia River. Dekum Street in northeast Portland is named after him. Dekum was the president of the German Song Bird Society, which imported to Oregon many German songbirds. After suffering great financial loss during the Panic of 1893, he died in 1894.
Early life
Dekum was born in Deiderfeld, Rheinfalz, Germany, on November 5, 1829. He and his brother and four sisters emigrated to the United States to settle on a farm near Belleville, Illinois. The family later moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where both parents died. After serving as an apprentice confectioner in St. Louis, Dekum and a friend, Frederick Bickel, went gold prospecting in California and Idaho before settling in Portland.
From fruit to real estate
In 1853, the two men established a fruit and confectionery store, Dekum & Bickel, which prospered for the next quarter-century in downtown Portland. Amassing wealth from the "largest wholesale fresh-fruit business in the Northwest", Dekum joined "the frenzied real-estate speculations of the early 1860s", and his large holdings included several buildings that bore his name. In 1875, he and Simeon Reed financed the city's most expensive building of the time; it was known as the Dekum and Reed Block.
Portland historian Joseph Gaston wrote, "It is an interesting and noteworthy fact that he was connected with the construction of every building in whole or in part between First and Third on Washington street... ". These projects included the first large brick building on Front Street, the Gadsby and Commercial blocks, the Waldo Building, and in 1892 the Dekum Building.
The latter, at the southwest corner of Southwest Third Avenue and Washington Street, is eight stories high, was built entirely of Oregon materials, and cost $300,000 in 1892 dollars. The first three stories of the Romanesque structure are of rough-cut sandstone; the top five floors are of red brick and unglazed terracotta with floral designs. Decorative machicolations (openings of the sort used in earlier eras for pouring pitch and dropping rocks on attackers) appear in the parapet at the top of the building. For eight years starting in 1893 Portland's government was headquartered in this structure, temporarily dubbed the Council Building. The exterior was renovated in 1987, and the interior opened to the nearby Hamilton Building in the 1990s. The Dekum Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and is part of the Skidmore/Old Town Historic District.
Banks, companies
In 1880 Dekum helped establish the Portland Savings Bank, of which he was named president in 1886, succeeding David P. Thompson. He helped organize the Commercial National Bank of Portland and served as its president. (The two banks occupied the same building and had overlapping directors, including John McCraken, George H. Williams, and Cyrus A. Dolph, as well as Dekum and Thompson.) He was at various times president of Columbia Investment Company, Oregon Land and Investment Company, Columbia Fire and Marine Insurance Company, Portland and Vancouver Railway Company, Trinidad Asphalt & Paving Company, and the Portland Exposition Company. In 1885, Dekum was one of 15 men named to the Portland Water Committee, empowered by the Oregon Legislative Assembly to acquire and operate a municipal water system for the city.