Albany residents Kate and Rod Porsche are buying the 1884 Chamberlain house at Seventh Avenue and Baker Street.

The house once was the home of a future Oregon governor and senator. Most recently it was the residence of Maxine Matland, the late founder of the Albany Signs of Victory Mission.

Kate Porsche, Albany’s urban renewal coordinator, told the advisory board of CARA, the downtown revitalization board, about the purchase on Wednesday.

The Porsches plan to live in the Chamberlain House and restore it. They intend to sell their home at 418 Seventh Ave. S.W.

Porsche said she and her husband are buying the Chamberlain house from former Albany resident Alta Taylor, now of Florence. She said they also have first right of refusal to buy another property owned by Taylor. It’s the house occupied by the mission at Seventh and Lyon.

In 2006, the Porsches began work to repair a crumbling house built in the 1870s at Eighth Avenue and Walnut Street. The project remains unfinished, and they are exploring options for what to do with that property.

The Chamberlain House at Seventh and Baker is named for George E. Chamberlain, an Albany teacher and lawyer who served two terms as Oregon governor before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1908. He was in the Senate from 1909 until 1921 and died in Washington, D.C., in 1928.

Democrat-Herald