Astoria Towers
| Astoria Towers |
Astoria Towers went up in the 1920s to give the teachers and students of the Oakridge Institute of Forestry and Land Sciences rooms of their own. Until then they had boarded in town beside what was left of the mill hands, and the boarding-house keepers, who stood to lose them, wrote to the paper against the new building for most of a year. Agnes Corliss was among its first tenants, in the years she spent counting fish in the salmon creeks.
After the Institute became Oakridge College in 1947 and the college put up dormitories of its own, it gave up its claim on the apartments. Today they are let to anyone in Briarmont who wants one, college or not.
Out of character. Its apartments are rented through Munibase, and the rentals board lists the ones that are open.