Everyone who frequently crosses the Ross Island Bridge has spotted the beeswax yellow Queen Anne Victorian-style mansion with a 50-foot-high turret. MLS#16396701. Photo provided by Premiere Property Group
The family earned its wealth through co-ownership of the Poulsen-Inman Lumber Co., then the largest lumber company in the state. Fellow timber baron Robert D. Inman erected a matching Queen Anne on the same east bluff overlooking the Willamette River. Inman, however, lived in his mansion. The properties, once safe in the Brooklyn neighborhood, were separated first by streaming traffic on the highway after the Ross Island Bridge was opened and later by bulldozers. In the 1950s, long after both men had died and their company sold to Georgia-Pacific, Inman’s house was torn down to make way for a parking lot, according to the Cafe Unknown history blog.