The house
3210 SW Malcolm Court is a wood-sided house of 2,988 square feet on .71 acres just off Canyon Road in Portland, recorded as built in 1940. It has four bedrooms. Its longtime owner, the architect Richard 'Rick' Carlson, has been adding to it since the 1970s in a sequence of projects, and a roof terrace and several decks reach out from the living spaces into the trees.
Vertical siding and low, sloping rooflines cover the outside. Inside, skylights, triangular panes under the rooflines and floor-to-ceiling glazing bring the trees into nearly every room, and one pointed window rises high above the rest.
Inside
The stone fireplace is original to the house. A timber staircase and an interior water feature continue the run of natural materials. The kitchen is intact from its era, with wood cabinetry and paneling, tiled counters, geometric windows and pendant lighting.
The record
Canyon Road opened in 1849 and became the route of the Great Plank Road, whose 16-foot planks were first laid in September 1851 and finished in 1856. Carlson believes the site housed a way station for overnight travellers between Portland and Hillsboro, though no deed or other record confirms it. The plank road was an early infrastructure project meant to give Portland a dependable link to the farms of the Tualatin Valley across notoriously muddy ground.
What the listing calls a historic stopping place has been carried forward by his additions, each one opening the house a little further to the woods.
