Stucco repair costs in Salem

Building in East Salem's Court Street–Chemeketa Street Historic District, now on the National Register, began in 1892 and peaked in 1908–1910. Those houses were built of wood. The roughly 25 added from 1920 to 1937 often broke from that, in favor of brick or stucco facing, the district's nomination says.

Two of those houses on Court Street show how stucco gets lost. The 1926 Steeves House, a Dutch Colonial the nomination calls one of the loveliest in the district, was first surfaced in stucco. As the stucco wore out, it was replaced in sections with wood shingles, so the walls are now a mix of the two. Next door, a bungalow from about 1928, probably built for the Steeves' daughter, started out stuccoed. It was redone in shingles, clapboard, vertical boards and brick, and in its present condition it counts as noncontributing.

Oregon's residential code doesn't ask for a building permit to replace or repair siding that isn't required to be fire-resistance rated. The same section says nothing in the code limits a city's own ordinances, so the state exemption isn't the last word on a historic block.

The ground moves here, too. On March 25, 1993, the magnitude 5.6 Scotts Mills earthquake struck on the Mount Angel Fault Zone in rural Marion County. It cracked the dome of the State Capitol and shifted the pioneer statue on top. The shaking was felt across the Willamette Valley, so a Salem wall older than 1993 has been through at least one real quake.