Celebrating (and learning from) Pioneer Courthouse Square

It is probably the most popular urban space in Portland. It's been America's 4th best public square by the Project for Public Spaces. The American Planning Association named the square one of its 10 Great Public Spaces along with landmarks like Central Park in New York and Santa Monica Beach.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Pioneer Courthouse Square's completion. To celebrate, AIA/Portland (a sponsor of this site) and Portland Spaces magazine are collaborating on a March exhibit at the Center For Architecture called "Pioneering the Square."

It's no coincidence that this is an exceptionally successful public space, for Pioneer Courthouse Square came about through an international design competition. For all the simple enduring quality of the square, from its gentle curving stairs that double as seating to the series of columns that play with postmodernism much more successfully than Michael Graves's Portland Building down the street, Pioneer Courthouse Square could have been an ugly disaster. But the competition received 162 different submissions, including finalists from around the country: New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland. However it was actually a local team, led by the late Portland architect Will Martin, that won the job.

At one point after the competition, there was a ridiculous effort to enclose the square and make it a private space out of concern there would be too many transients there. It's true today if you go to PCS, there are a lot of unshowered people playing hackey sack, but they have as much right to Portland's living room as anyone else. Thank goodness this plan never went through, in part because of an indignant former governor Tom McCall standing up for Martin's design.

It's really too bad there haven't been many design competitions since. The competition for the Portland Building seemed to scare away the notion for many years. Then we had a terrific competition for the tram, but then the city made an ill-advised move to back away from a design competition for Fire Station 1 after THA Architecture won the job. Today we're having teams of developers and architects vie for public projects like the Sustainability Center for Excellence and, a couple years ago, Burnside Bridgehead. But those aren't design competitions. They choose a team before a design is ever produced, and the teams are usually led by developers, not the architects.

Another legendary politician but one now disgraced, former Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt, was also key. In 1975, while mayor, he negotiated directly with the Meier & Frank store to sell the parcel to the city instead of using it for a parking garage.

Pioneer Courthouse Square also might not have been created were it not for the MAX line. It was this project that kick started the idea of a public square downtown, and TriMet funds for an information center and transit stops provided key dollars.

And speaking of funding, one of the wonderful little features about Pioneer Courthouse Square shows how citizens stood up to make it possible. The square's brick surface is embedded with the names of thousands of citizens (one on each brick) who donated money.

The bricks and the TriMet funding reveal how Pioneer Courthouse Square was almost derailed out of budget concerns. But you know how much this priceless landmark cost? About $3 million for the land and $4.3 million to build. That would be pocket change today for an urban development. This was something I often kept in mind when foes of the Portland Aerial Tram were citing this very successful transit project as a boondoggle.

Sometimes I get tired of all the countless events that are held in the square, especially in the summer. Do we really need Scientologists in their yellow circus tents trying to convert people? Do I have to hear that lowest-common-denominator rock music at noon on summer days? On the reverse side, Pioneer Courthouse Square's security and rules can be excessive in my opinion. I was once prevented from using a tripod there, for example.

But those criticisms are relatively small compared to the pride, thankfulness and enjoyment the square generates. Portland may not have many landmark buildings by famous architects like our urban West Coast neighbors to the north and south. But Pioneer Courthouse Square epitomizes the veritable jewelry box of beautiful public spaces in this city, from Lawrence Halprin's fountain at Keller Auditorium to Peter Walker's Jamison Square Park. the Olmsted brothers' Park Blocks, and much more.

The "Pioneering The Square" exhibit at the CFA, put together by Portland Spaces editor Randy Gragg with an assist from researcher Audrey Alverson, will feature not only Will Martin's original model and drawings, but many of the plans that didn't make the final cut. Mayor Terry Shrunk, for example, proposed a two-block square in the 1960s. And then there were the other finalists. How differently might our living room have looked?

The exhibit officially opens tomorrow with a First Thursday early-evening reception from 5:30 to 8:30pm.

Comments

[Bob R.]

Square management has made up for the fact that the square isn't a walled city by incrementally imposing more and more regulations which squeeze out what have historically been legitimate public uses.

For example, without obtaining an event permit in advance (which requires insurance and a liability waiver), you CANNOT:

1. Use a tripod or monopod for your camera.
2. Have a protest sign where any part touches the ground. (The elderly and disabled have to hold their signs aloft or face exclusion.)
3. Hold a candlelight vigil - no open flames, not even candles.
4. Plug in a cell phone to recharge at an unmarked outdoor outlet, or be cited for "theft of city services", even though people routinely are encouraged charge phones and laptops in other city buildings, at the airport, etc.

I've personally been threatened with being cited for using a monopod, and recently I was at a marriage equality candlelight vigil where attendees were ordered to put out their candles until a reporter started asking questions of security, such as "what is your name?"

A little birdie tells me that KGW's contract with the square for their new studio gives them permission to bar other media entirely from areas of the square -- but I haven't seen the fine print.

It's these kinds of management overreactions which lead some to have very mixed feelings about what should rightfully be Portland's living room.

[Brian Libby]

Great points, Bob. I also was surprised to have security hassling me when I tried to shoot some Super 8 film footage using a tripod. My intent here was to focus on the design, but it's true that you can't separate Pioneer Courthouse Square from its uses and a conversation about what those should be. Your comment also reminds me that I forgot to bring up that ridiculous skating rink idea they had for the square a couple years ago.

[Bob R.]

Thanks for the reply, Brian... in retrospect I realize I was diverting this off-topic a bit... I really always have enjoyed the architecture of the square, and I'm old enough to remember the first brick sales, the big open lot, etc... It's also a great place to bring visitors to introduce them to the "feel" of Portland.

If anyone is curious about the monopod diversion, I did a YouTube video and there was a write-up of it on the Mercury blog last year:

http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/2008/04/rentacop_enforces_odd_pioneer.php

[Jim Heuer]

Good post, Brian, on a wonderful part of Portland's cityscape. But just a reminder that PCS was the original site of the famed Portland Hotel, once included in lists of "The 100 Greatest Hotels in the World". The hotel was the brainchild of Henry Villard, whose newly completed Northern Pacific Railroad needed a great hotel at its western terminus. When the NP went broke a year after its arrival in Portland, work on the hotel stopped.

The revival of construction by city interests persuaded easterners William Whidden and Ion Lewis to come to town as the architects, taking over from McKim, Mead, and White, who had produced the original designs.

Alas, in the 1950's the land was worth more to Meier and Frank as a parking lot than it was as the site of a hotel, and the grand building was demolished. The iron work gate on the east side of the square is the only reminder of the grand hotel which once stood on the site.

[keith.d]

Wonderful post Brian, perhaps it can spark a little clean up of the people's square.

I've noticed that food carts are increasingly dominating the space, unfortunately in the one area that people used to be able to sit or stand under and enjoy the outdoors in the rain.

Now food carts are blocking the view of the square - and have been slowly creeping under the glass awnings in order to be out of the rain themselves - leaving the public out in the cold.

[Steve]

The Fox Tower’s shadow cast across the square is a very disappointing recent change.

[Austin TX Landscaping]

That building is truly beautiful. I wish there was a building half as good looking as that in my city.

[George]

Article said "Do we really need Scientologists in their yellow circus tents trying to convert people?"

Why is scientology, with hundreds of front groups, allowed to put up tents to fool and trap people? Nobody ever passes their little stress tests. Fake religion pretending they are mental health workers.