Metro city halls photo project: Tigard and Tualatin

Tigard Civic Center (photo by Matthew Ginn, Homestead Images)

BY MATTHEW GINN AND BRIAN LIBBY

Continuing a photographic tour of each city hall in the Portland Metropolitan area brings these adjoining suburbs to the southwest of the Rose City. Tigard and Tualatin are home to 74,000 people collectively, but still dwarfed by larger suburbs like Gresham and Hillsboro.

Tigard Civic Center opened in 1986. It initially housed the library, city offices and police station; the library moved out in 2004, and the city offices expanded into that space. The police station is still there as well. The city was founded in 1961 but only had its first mayor in 1974. 

The area, earlier known as East Butte, was first settled by farmers like Wilson M. Tigard and his family, who arrived in 1852 and became involved in organizing and building a school, general store and post office in the 1880s, around which time East Butte was renamed "Tigardville". Within a decade, the community saw a large influx of German settlers. By 1910, Main Street had emerged with several community buildings and even railway service. Which, in turn, grew the town (known as Tigard since 1907) even more. By the 1930s, Main Street was even paved.

Tigard Civic Center (photos by Matthew Ginn, Homestead Images) 

In the 1970s, the Tigard Development Corporation (a group of business leaders) pushed for a relocation of Tigard City Hall to a shopping center at the end of Main Street where Value Village and Rite Aid sit now, but the measure was rejected by voter referendum.

The current Civic Center is on SW Hall Boulevard is faintly postmodern looking, not in that it features much in terms of ornamentation but in its almost whimsical shapes, recalling renowned civic center building in Mississauga, Ontario outside Toronto, designed by Jones and Kirkland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississauga_Civic_Centre), which opened a year later. Tigard Civic Center’s terra cotta and copper-green color palette also may suggest a southwest influence in the design.

Then there is Tualatin, which was originally called Galbreath in the 1850s after the settlement’s founder, Samuel Galbreath, who built the first bridge over the Tualatin river. It was also known later as Bridgeport.

Tualatin City Hall (photos by Matthew Ginn, Homestead Images)

According to Oregon Geographic Names, its first post office was established there in 1869. Interestingly, it initially had the spelling "Tualitin" but changed to "Tualatin" in 1915.  It was incorporated in 1913. According to the Tualatin Historical Society piece written by its president, Yvonne Addington, a previous city hall built in 1928 never opened for business until 1967.

Tualatin’s city hall is part of a complex built in 1984 from a design by Portland firm SRG Partnership. It was renovated in 2008. The firm explains: "SRG renovated and expanded the existing Tualatin Public Library, built in 1984, as well as performed a minor expansion and renovation of the city offices it houses. The new entrance and circulation spine, sloped to allow natural light deep into the interior and articulated from the exterior, emphasized the building’s distinct civic identity; an adjacent pedestrian plaza provides an inviting outdoor space directly off the Community Room."

Tualatin City Hall (photos by Matthew Ginn, Homestead Images)

The library looks quite nice, simple in its form and combining the sense of permanence that comes from brick with the openness of glass. Having said that, since the focus of this project is on city halls (not libraries), the photos here concentrate on the city offices portion of the building. This portion is, at least on the outside, strikingly ordinary. One can't help but feel curious about the symbolism. We can virtually all agree on the value of libraries in our communities. But politics are by nature divisive, and for all the grandiosity of Roman columns or other architectural expressions of permanence and importance used in larger city government buildings, small towns and suburbs seem to possess a greater sense of modesty about their city halls: not just because they are smaller, but because the role of government is viewed too with an attention to economy: an entity not on your back, to borrow a Ronald Reagan phrase, but quietly facilitating the surrounding community.

 

Comments

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Does anyone know who designed Tigard City Hall? To my eye it's very postmodern, with its square fenestration, glass gables, and pastels that bring to mind the work of Michael Graves and Charles Moore's Piazza Italia. That first photo reminds me of Portland Public Schools' Blachard Building.