The Linn County Armory Building, where I stopped on a bike ride Monday, April 13, 2026.
Sometimes following up on a reader’s tip takes longer than one might wish. So it was not until Monday that I stopped at the Linn County Armory Building while on a bike ride downtown.
On March 25, Michael Cunningham sent me a Facebook message.
Michael Cunningham sent me this photo of the missing seal on March 25.
“Got a reader tip for you,” he wrote. “On my ride yesterday I noticed the Armory sign is down. Wonder if it’s being refinished.”
He sent along a photo of the gable where the Oregon state seal had been attached. Only the wooden fastening strips remained. And it appears that the last time the building got a new coat of paint, the painters went around the seal without taking it off.
On Monday, when I finally remembered to look, the seal was up there where it belongs, high up on the building’s gable on the Fourth Avenue side. By email I asked Darrin Lane, the Linn County administrative officer, why it had been gone.
“The seal blew off in a wind storm some time in January or February,” he replied right away. “It was recently reinstalled.”
In my email to him, I had suggested that the thing seems to be kind of worn out. It’s impossible to make out details such as the covered wagon, let alone the ships off the coast.
“It could definitely stand refurbishing,” he agreed.
The building, a former National Guard armory, was built around 1910. Linn County bought it for $56,000 in January 1975 after the Guard started building a new armory on Knox Butte Road.
The county took possession of the property that spring and remodeled it as offices. But the state seal on the gable, along with the building’s name, reminds people of the structure’s original use. (hh)
The Oregon state seal, somewhat worse for wear, was back up on the Armory Building gable Monday,
Spent many weekends there cleaning M-42 self propelled 40mm anti-aircraft guns.
We’re all a little worn by the time any of us or any buildings live to be over 100.
I love our old armory. It made me feel safe and secure growing up knowing that we had that local protection right downtown. The existence of armories all over the country, around 4000 in total in the mid 1950s (height of the Cold War) and National Guardsmen, made America an almost impossible country to successfully attack, as proved by history. Some of the old downtown armories now serve as concert halls (Minneapolis)
Our house was moved from that site so the Armory could be built there.