George Herman Otten was born in 1889 in Portland, Oregon. He studied civil engineering and landscape engineering at the University of Oregon, at Columbia University in New York, and at the University of Montpelier in France. He worked as a landscape architect in Portland, Oregon, and as a landscape engineer for the Oregon State Highway Department. In his role with the highway department, he earned a reputation for highway beautification, including work on Southwest Canyon Road between downtown Portland and Sylvan and on the section of Interstate 80N (later Interstate 84) in the Columbia River Gorge. In his later career, Otten operated a landscape architecture and civil engineering firm with his son, George W. Otten (1923-2016), named George H. Otten & Son. Otten died in 1978.

Sources: Articles in the Oregonian and Oregon Journal, 1913-1979; vital records on Ancestry.com.

The Catlin Hillside School was founded by Ruth Catlin in 1911 in northwest Portland, Oregon, as Miss Catlin's School. In 1928, it absorbed the Cady School of Music, and became the Catlin Hillside School. In 1957, Catlin Hillside School merged with the Gabel School in southwest Portland, and the combined Catlin Gabel School moved to S.W. Barnes Road over the course of 10 years. After 1968, the former site of the Catlin Hillside School became the Hillside Center.

Source: "Catlin Gabel School," by Ted Kaye, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/catlin_gabel_school/#.Y8CJkHbMJaQ