The Monteith Historic District takes its name from the brothers Thomas and Walter Monteith, who platted Albany in 1848. It covers the oldest part of the city's core and contains some of Albany's finest Victorian and Edwardian residential architecture. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and is considered one of the best-preserved collections of 19th-century houses in the Pacific Northwest.
The streets here slope gently toward the Willamette River, and many of the homes have broad front porches that speak to a period when people actually used them. The mix of styles — Italianate, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, and vernacular carpenter Gothic — gives the district texture without feeling like a museum. This is still a lived-in neighbourhood, which is part of its appeal.