Once upon a time, Portland was the Wild West.
In the early 1900s, the city teemed with bawdy saloons and street-fighting roughnecks who shared an uneasy coexistence with Gilded Age progressivism and Victorian pearl clutching. In response to rapid growth and urbanization, progressive reforms were coming to a swell; attempts to control venereal disease were on the rise, the Mann Act of 1910 had criminalized sexual “immorality,” and homosexuality had been added to the lexicon of psychiatric disorders. In those days, prostitution and other forms of vice (the fun, old-timey name for sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll) were rampant, but largely hidden from view—until a 14 year-old boy named Hazen Wright, brought downtown for questioning after being caught shoplifting, inadvertently exposed one of the biggest sex scandals of Portland’s early years.
In 1912, the Louvre was one of downtown Portland’s finest dining establishments. It was owned by Theodore Kruse, a wealthy German hotelier who dabbled in restaurants and catering. Kruse had a flair for the dramatic; one day in August of 1911 he simply disappeared, worrying his wife enough that she placed an ad in the paper a week later inquiring to his whereabouts. When Mrs. Kruse was pressed with the notion that he may have run off with a mistress, she laughed, insisting that she’d always had to shoo her homebody hubby out the door with male friends. The next day, he was spotted in Seattle in the company of two men, and then disappeared again for several months. Having purportedly spent the time visiting family in Germany, Kruse returned to Portland the following spring, saying he had needed “to merely get away.” He and his wife divorced shortly after.
The Louvre had a wild reputation. Shortly before Kruse’s abrupt disappearance, the restaurant had been on Circuit Court Judge William Gatens’ short list for what he saw as an immoral atmosphere. For a few exciting years, it was a regular venue of the Hungarian violinist Jancsi “Gypsy” Rigo.