Butterfield Cottage, Seaside, Oregon, USA

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Seaside Museum & Historical Society & Butterfield Cottage | Seaside, Oregon

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Butterfield Cottage

Seaside, Oregon

Seaside, Oregon's first seashore resort, had become a major tourist attraction of the Pacific Northwest by 1888. Excursion boats came down the Columbia River with vacationers who disembarked on a railroad trestle in the bay near Skipanon (Warrenton) and then to Seaside by train.

Grimes built a hotel on the Necanicum River, but, as more accommodations were needed, he built tent platforms in the grove of trees between the river and the ocean. This area became known as Grimes Grove.

By the 1890s, cottages were being built along the path to the beach. Horace Seely Butterfield, a prominent Portland jeweler, built the Butterfield Cottage in 1893. The house had many additions and changes over the years. It was used by the Butterfields for their beach cottage until 1903 when they built five new cottages on the ocean front.

In 1907 Guy E. DeGolia became the caretaker and in 1912 he took Emelia "Emma" Bitterling Roberts as his bride. Emelia continued to live in the cottage for most of her life, as the caretaker, and she operated it as a rooming house in the summer.

Many people remember the building as "The House of Roberts". Marion Roberts opened a millinery shop in 1958. She was well known for her designer chapeaus.

In 1972 "21 North Columbia", the original location of the Butterfield Cottage, became an antique shop. On December 5, 1984 the Butterfield Cottage was given to the Seaside Museum and Historical Society and moved to its present location at 570 Necanicum Drive. It has been interpretively restored to be used as a museum depicting a beach cottage and rooming house of 1912.

The Butterfield Cottage is the only cottage which has survived from the original Grimes Grove, which is the present location of Seaside's downtown core area.