Nadene Goldfoot
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The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (opened as the Portland Publix Theatre before becoming the Paramount Theatre after 1930) is a historic theater building and performing arts center in Portland, Oregon, United States. Part of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts, it is home to the Oregon Symphony, Portland Youth Philharmonic, Metropolitan Youth Symphony, White Bird Dance Company, and Portland Arts & Lectures. It is also a concert and film venue. Originally (and sometimes still referred to as) the Paramount Theatre, it is also locally nicknamed "The Schnitz".
Sam Schnitzer, 72, founder of the Schnitzer steel and scrap enterprises in Portland, died at his home at 1011 S.W. Vista Avenue on a Sunday night. Death came of a heart ailment that had made him inactive the past few years.
Mr. Schnitzer came to Portland in 1904 as a street peddler at age 24 and rose to the head of one of the largest steel and scrap businesses on the Pacific coast. He was born in Poland July 12, 1880. Son of Avrum Schnitzer and Taube Schnitzer, Born in Troianivka, Volyns'ka Oblast, Ukraine.
My father, Moses//Morris/Maurice Goldfoot's father was Nachum/Nathan Goldfoot and lived either next door or in the same Ward 6 with Sam. They had Goldfoot listed as Goofoot. Nathan originally came from Lithuania via England, Ireland and Canada. He also came as a peddler and was given a horse and wagon to get started by an organization. He died in 1912, leaving his wife, Zlata "Hattie" a widow who couldn't speak English, only Yiddish.
With H. J. Wolfe in 1912, Sam founded the Alaska Junk company and Schnitzer & Wolf Machinery company. Later expansions developed the Oregon Steel mills and Industrial Air Products company in Portland. His five sons today head the Schnitzer Steel Products company, a separate enterprise.
Mr. Schnitzer was a past president of the Congregation Shaarie Torah, and board director for the Portland Hebrew school and Jewish Old People's home, which became the Robison Home.
Surviving was the widow, Rose; five sons, Manuel, Morris, Gilbert, Harold and Leonard; two daughters, Mrs. Morton Goodman and Mrs. Bernard Levin; and 14 grandchildren, all in Portland. A service
was held on a Tuesday at 11 a. m, in Shaarie Torah synagogue.
Looking at their education, most all attended Reed college and were lawyers. Harold Schnitzer was born in 1923 to Rose and Sam Schnitzer, ethnic Jewish émigrés from Tsarist Russia. Harold was the fifth of seven children of the couple. The elder Schnitzer was in the scrap metal business, beginning the Alaska Junk Company. 5 children born in Portland were: Barney b: 1900; Harry b:1903; Louis b: 1906; Emanuel b: 1908 and Bernard b: 1909.
Harold anticipated entering the steel industry from an early age, studying metallurgy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he graduated in 1944.
Following graduation, Schnitzer served a stint in the U.S. Army during World War II as an ordnance specialist.Schnitzer worked the family business, Schnitzer Steel, from 1947 to 1950. He did not wish to compete with his four brothers in the company, however, so in 1950 Harold Schnitzer sold his share of the business to provide capital for a new enterprise.
The new enterprise founded was a real estate investment company known as Harsch Investment Properties. The name of the firm, Harsch, derived from the first three letters of Harold Schnitzer's first and last names.
Arlene and Harold Schnitzer connected with Portland's performing arts center by providing a multi-million dollar philanthropic donation that funded the vital 1980s restoration of the historic former Paramount Theatre. In recognition of their vital financial support and leadership in revitalizing the cultural venue, the building was renamed the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in 1994.
In 1980 there was no such thing as the Keller Auditorium or the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. That all changed as arts leaders and city officials began work on the Portland Center for Performing Arts, a collection of performance venues now known as Portland’5. Today, names of Portlanders are inextricably linked to the venues, but what do we know about these people?
The Keller Auditorium in Portland, Oregon, was named after Richard Brownson Keller, following a financial donation made by the Keller family. Family Connection: He was the son of Ira C. Keller, who headed the Portland Development Commission and heavily championed downtown revitalization and the arts.
Keller and his wife Lauretta retired to Portland in 1953, but he did not slow down. By the time Portland’s popular new mayor Terry Schrunk was elected in 1956, Keller had founded Western Kraft, a paper products company with a lumber mill in Albany (the company would merge with timber-giant Willamette Industries in 1973). Schrunk made urban renewal a major priority for the city, and he saw in Keller the kind of hard-driving commitment PDC needed to rid the inner city of increasing blight.
Donor: Richard B. Keller provided a $1.5 million financial contribution to help fund the facility's major updates. Not everyone was enamored of urban renewal, however, because it destroyed established ethnic neighborhoods and forced people from their homes, and not everyone appreciated the bulldozer manner with which Keller carried out his goals.
In January 1972, Keller resigned as PDC chair after the City Club of Portland recommended abolishing the commission as an independent agency. The City Club urged that a city department take over Portland’s urban renewal program to ensure that a higher priority would be given to lower-income housing. (As of 2010, PDC remained an independent agency with major projects and program changes subject to review by the Portland City Council.)
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