Criterion A: Education
Criterion C: Architecture
Period of Significance: 1926 to 1969
Local Level of Significance
The Thomas B. Reed School possesses integrity of design, location, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association, and meets Criteria A and C at the local level for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. The period of significance extends from 1926, when the original school building was constructed, to 1969, the fifty-year cut off period for National Register listing. The Reed School was completed in 1926 to provide a much-needed modern school facility in the Riverton neighborhood, the oldest and one of the largest of Portland's streetcar suburbs. The school is significant under Criterion A as the best extant representation of patterns of education in Riverton. The Reed School is also significant under National Register Criterion C in the area of Architecture, as it embodies distinctive characteristics of two twentieth century American school types. The original 1926 building represents the standardized school design that emerged in the United States after the turn of the century and was used almost exclusively from about 1910 until about 1930. The 1960 west addition is a well-preserved example of Modern school design of the mid-twentieth century.