These are pictures of the lost Salem observatory. It was never at 241 High Street. That would have put it smack downtown in Salem, a bad place to be even back in 1938 when it was constructed. Rather it is at 490 Waldo Ave at the intersection with High Street. In 1938 this was out in the country. According to the current resident this was where lovers would go to park. At the time the house here was one of only two houses in the area.
I left my notes at the office, but here is the basic story.
Buck Bradley was the builder of the observatory. Early in the century he met his future wife while on a cruise in SE Asia. He worked in SE Asia promoting a tobacco company, Ligget something. He met his future wife on a cruise, then, by cosmic circumstance, he met her on another cruise. Fate apparently was in the cards and they were eventually married.
As a wedding present his new father in law gave them the house on 490 Waldo Ave. At that time Waldo Ave was out in the country and away from the city lights. The city limits stopped at Rural Ave, several blocks north.
Buck owned a bicycle shop on the 200 block of High Street. I don't know if it was SE or NE. That is probably where the 241 High St address came from.
In 1938 he built the observatory. According to the owner there is an inscription in the concrete with the date.
Sometime later the telescope was donated to a university, though it is not known what university it went to.
The house was later owned by Mark O. Hatfield's parents, though by then the telescope was removed and I believe Mark had moved out and on his own. This goes against the oral history that I had heard about Hatfield having built the observatory as a youth.
Buck died, possibly sometime in the 60's. The current owner met his widow about 8 years ago and talked with her about the telescope. It is not known if she is still alive or where she lives. However, she did have some photographs of the old observatory and telescope that the current owner made copies of. He has offered to locate those photos and allow me to make copies of them. When I do I will let you know.
August 11, 2001 - This just in... more information from Peter Abrahams who found an article in a 1940 copy of Scientific American about the Bradley Observatory.
Scientific American, Feb. 1940. Albert Ingalls column:
The volume of an observatory dome is directly proportional to the cube of the length of the telescope it houses, hence when B. L. Bradley, 235 North High Street, Salem, Oregon, made a 12-1/2" mirror of f/11-1/2, with a 13' tube (Figure 2), the 20' dome he built (Figure 1) was a logical sequitur.
It is a fine, roomy dome, quite unlike some which leave so little room between walls and telescope that a fat man, or even a skinny one, must become a contortionist in order to get around. Bradley s dome has a fixed base 7' high, of reinforced concrete 5" thick. Rafters are two-by-fours, roofing is 26-gage galvanized iron painted with luminum. Shutters open a full 6', running on roller-skate wheels. Dome rolls around on ball-bearing assemblies from wrecked cars. The telescope stands on a heavy, deep concrete pillar. Its mounting has Timken and New Departure bearings, a closely calibrated declination circle, electric lights, and other trimmings. Tube is 14" in diameter Finder is a 6", f/5.5 reflecting telescope. Bradley got the machine work of the mounting done on the well-known "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" principle. That is, he made the lads of the Salem High School an 8" mirror while they did this part of the work for him.
