Portland Architecture

Down by the water: visiting Fort Vancouver, the Confluence Project, and the Columbia riverfront

Although I was born and raised in Oregon and have spent all but about six years of my life here, I can't think of a single past instance when I've visited the banks of the Columbia River on the Vancouver side. Before last Sunday, that is, when I went there as part of an excursion to see the Vancouver Land Bridge that's part of the seven-project Confluence Project overseen by legendary designer Maya Lin of Vietnam Memorial fame.

It turns out that Vancouver has a lovely little strip of pebbled beach there, as well as lovely if frustratingly short tree-lined walking path that extends east from the Interstate 5 bridge. I've been missing a nice place all these years, although I think the built landscape and infrastructure here has something to do with it.

To access the riverfront, I started at Fort Vancouver, walking past an assortment of military barracks and other offices (such as those of Congressman Brian Baird). Some of the buildings date to the early 20th century or earlier.

Without having brought a guidebook, I'd have had difficulty finding which way it was to the Vancouver Land Bridge over State Route 14. Eventually I moved down a curving pathway, past barbed wire-enclosed fencing and a couple of windowless storage structures, passing the log-festooned historic Fort Vancouver structure, and twisting again past a vacant un-landscaped grassy field to the land bridge. It could be a pretty route to the bridge, but it's not at all.

Although the rest of the Confluence project is Lin's, the Vancouver Land Bridge was designed by Seattle architect Johnpaul Jones. On the project's website a quote from Jones reads, "The land bridge is a real link connecting back to the Klickitat Trail, Lewis and Clark, and the development of the Northwest. It completes a circle that's been broken."

The 40-foot-wide pedestrian bridge is lined with indigenous plants and Native basket weavings. There is also to be what's called a 'treaty table' designed by Maya Lin, although I did not see it there yet.

The Confluence Project website also explains:

"European and Native American cultures once converged at this Columbia River site, where the Hudson’s Bay Company stood as the first European trading post in the Pacific Northwest. Lewis and Clark camped here, and Fort Vancouver was built here 20 years later. Today, the site features an earth-covered pedestrian bridge that arcs over State Route 14, reconnecting historic Fort Vancouver with the Columbia River, which helped extend the fort’s influence from Mexico to Alaska and across the Pacific Ocean."

Entering from the south, you can also access the land bridge by walking under the land bridge’s Welcome Gate, designed by Native American artist Lillian Pitt. Two cedar canoe panels, each adorned with a cast-glass sculpture of a Chinook woman’s face, evoke the site’s role as a historic tribal crossroads as well as a point of contact between European and Native people.

It's great that Vancouver has a pedestrian connection between the Fort and the riverfront again. That there is a freeway-like state highway running so close to the water, as well as a train track, makes it difficult for the city to establish a strong tie to the Columbia's edge. When I was on the Land Bridge, a stopped freight train was blocking the river view entirely. That shouldn't be. Vancouver could be so much more enticing and beautiful city if there were people and buildings and life along the water there like there is in downtown Portland along the Willamette (although if you look at our east bank, we still have a long way to go too with the I-5 freeway along the water).

This new pedestrian bridge, especially such an artful and historically-minded one, will be a step toward Vancouver becoming a much more appealing city. And it's worth taking some steps, because there is truly a lovely resource in the riverfront here (the decaying Cisco & Pancho's and Joe's Crab Shack by said banks notwithstanding).

Considering that Jones' Vancouver Land Bridge is the closest of the seven Confluence Project sites, I'd have liked to see either Lin, Jones or both of them be given a site along the river itself, with a pedestrian bridge over SR-14 being built in tandem with the Confluence effort. I mean, at the end of the day, Jones's bridge is a bridge, one that looks out at four lanes of asphalt and a series of freight trains. It's about as picturesque a setting as one of the I-405 bridge crossings downtown, where the smell of carbon monoxide competes for your attention with the Mt. Hood view.

(Incidentally, the couple in the above photo, who I photographed randomly, turned out to be the parents of architect Darin Dougherty, who's SIPs House I just wrote about last week.)

And while the overall Fort Vancouver site, including both the military barracks and the other facilities there, is undoubtedly overall a resource and a treasure for the city, walking around there I couldn't help but feel that this land so close to the river was being under-utilized.

Again, there's no doubt most of the historic buildings there need to be preserved, and no one is trying to kick out the military - they're part of the history of Fort Vancouver. One might even argue that the Army is being kind even allowing public access here without much restriction. 

Even so, when you get a taste of the good parts of there being a beautiful Columbia waterfront, and this thoughtful Confluence project being rooted there, as well as the character of the Fort and barracks buidings, it makes one wonder what it would be like if this were a denser, more pedestrian and public-oriented place along the Vancouver side of the Columbia banks, with housing and retail and parks part of the mix. If the city were to grow dense along the river, Vancouver could some day in a generation or two become a more equal urban sister to Portland.

There has been significant progress nearby this stretch of Vancouver riverfront. To the east there is Columbia Shores with a hotel, waterfront restaurants office buildings, condominiums and apartments. To the west there are 26 acres adjoining downtown from the former Boise Cascade site; this is planned to become a more dense urban waterfront. This adjoins to the regular part of downtown Vancouver where Esther Short Park and several new mixed use projects have given the area more vitality.

Of course when we're talking about Fort Vancouver on the other side of I-5 from downtown, the other major presence in these parts is the historic Pearson air field, from which an occasional small-engine Cessna plane was taking off on the Sunday when I visited. Portland has a functioning airport that includes service for smaller planes, and the proximity of Pearson is seriously compromising the design of the Columbia Crossing. I mean, it's downright absurd to me. But that's another conversation for another time. Right now, I'd be happy to see Vancouver continue moving towards a closer relationship with the riverfront. If nothing else, Johnpaul Jones' bridge is just that.

Washington High School turns toward "gut and stuff". What about giving it to PICA?

The city Bureau of Parks and Recreation earlier this year convened a citizen advisory committee to determine the fate of Washington High School, the long-empty building that recently played host to the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's popular Time-Based Art Festival and is set to become some kind of city community center. That committee is moving toward an option (one of three still on the table) that would completely remove everything within the school building but its exterior walls.

The Buckman neighborhood, where the Washington High School (also known in the past as Washington-Monroe) site is located, has a need for some kind of community center. Ultimately, that's what this property is scheduled to be. But on September 22 (as reported by Lee Perlman in the Southeast Examiner), a majority of the advisory committee voted for what has been nicknamed the "gut and stuff" option (officially "Option C"), by a 10-8 vote over Option A, which would have instead built a separate building for the community center and retained the school for another purpose.

According to Perlman's piece, "the old high school biulding, once proposed for housing, would be used for some other purpose or possibly torn down." The committee also eliminated a 3rd possibility, Option B, that would have been the purest preservation measure, putting the community center in half of a renovated school building. 

The Parks bureau is not counting the 10-8 vote as the final verdict because the committee pledged to decide major issues by consensus. So on October 15 at 7PM at Central Catholic High School (2401 SE Stark), the public is being invited to weight in before another vote is held.

If you want to save Washington High School from either demolition (which is a faint possibility under option A) or a renovation that compromises its historic character (by removing everything inside - a much greater possibility), please consider attending this meeting and weighing in. Unfortunately I can't go to the meeting, because it coincides with my mom's retirement party. But if not for supporting mom, I'd go to that meeting and urge the committee to preserve the interior.

And without trying to undermine the process as it's gone forward thus far, with a lot of work from both city staffers and volunteers on the committee, I'd hope some consideration for incorporating an arts organization like PICA with a permanent home in Washington High School, along with the community center that's planned, might still be possible if there was a will for it.

 

Meanwhile, anyone who attended last month's TBA Festival at Washington High was treated to a wonderfully imaginative re-imagination of the former school. In each classroom there was a different art exhibit, many of them very accessible too, such as a room filled with scores of electronic music boxes affixed to the walls. What's more, the center of the school is a double-height auditorium, where on my visit I could hear the rock band Quasi warming up for a show later that night.

Before the Portland Parks committee decides this building's fate, I think this has to be said: Washington High would make an ideal home for the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. For many years, the Institute has been without a home to exhibit visual art or performing arts. Each year during TBA, PICA exhibits a huge amount of energy and fun and stimulation, only to disappear for most of the other 50 weeks of the year. They have swanky offices in the Wieden + Kennedy building thanks to the generosity of the advertising agency, but PICA would be better off in a home of their own with space for performance and exhibits.

PICA may not need to occupy the entirety of Washington High in the future, but why not make the Institute an anchor tenant in the building with a community center incorporated around them? There would be countless opportunities for PICA artists and staffers to interact with people visiting the community center. What better way, in this age of plummeting arts-education funding, to have the city's most important arts organization in the trenches working with kids and parents on art?

What's more, PICA understands - apparently better than Buckman's own residents on the Parks committee - that Washington High is a treasure precisely because the old school inside is mostly intact. A new building could never match the ambiance of experimental and performance art happening amidst the classroom chalk boards, hallway lockers and literally old-school feel of this wonderful old school.

The wheels are already in motion for Washington High to be leveled by those trying in vain to do the right thing. Lets not only stop the demolition, but move PICA there permanently. And this isn't just my pipe dream. I know PICA loved having TBA at Washington High. It made The Works a much greater portion of the overall festival. It made TBA performances and exhibits more centralized. It was an ideal marriage, it seemed.

It's great that Washington High could become a community center. But let's not take away the wonderful historic feel of the building, and let's add a tenant that clearly belongs there and would make a great addition to any public space we create there. 

Frank Lloyd Wright's Gordon House: talk & tour

Normally on Saturday if I'm awake by 10AM, it's a bit of an anomaly, especially if it has nothing to do with watching college football or eating lots of greasy bacon, eggs & hash browns.

But as it happens, this Saturday I'll be giving a talk at the Architectural Heritage Center (701 SE Grand Ave.) called "Frank Lloyd Wright: Great Grandfather of Green". Despite the lecture title's emphasis on sustainability, however, the focus will really be on Wright's Gordon House, the only house in Oregon that the great master designed.

The talk will be followed by a chartered bus trip to the Oregon Garden in Silverton for a tour of the Gordon House itself.

Here's a passage from my 2001 Architecture Week article on the Gordon House, which at the time was being moved to the Oregon Garden from its original location in suburban Charbonneau:

"The Conrad and Evelyn Gordon House (S.419) is based on Wright's 'House for a Family of $5-6,000 Income' plan, originally published in a 1938 issue of Life magazine. (That wage translates into $65,000-$75,000 today in 2001 income.) 

Wright designed a lot of big buildings in his career, but this minister's son was also faithfully committed to dwellings for the middle class, which he christened "Usonian." Designed in 1956, the 2,100-square-foot (190-square-meter) Gordon House is Lilliputian by today's building standards, but it radiates beauty and craftsmanship in a way that most cavernous houses in Portland's 'upscale' West Hills never approach. In other words, Wright knew it's not size that matters but what you do with it."

If you go on the tour, you may find it surprising how small the house really is. The kitchen is particularly tiny, and so are the bedrooms. But there is an exquisite clarity to the design and its details, as well as the focus on public spaces such as the living area, where a vast expanse of glass looks out at the garden. The house was originally oriented towards views of Mt. Hood and the Willamette River at its original site, and unfortunately that can't be replicated. But if one were to count on one hand the most significant works of architecture in Oregon, the Gordon House would arguably be one of them.

What's more, the house still serves as a model for good design that a lot of suburban subdivision home builders would be well served to study. It's not about having some giant foyer when people walk in the door and stepping down in space and material quality everywhere else. Wright did just the opposite.

"You enter this house through a small, constricted opening with a low ceiling and transition into a dramatic high-ceiling area," architect and historian Al Staehli told me for a Willamette Week article on the Gordon House. You always have a sense of moving through a sequence of different-scaled spaces. Wright's Usonian houses are of a scale that you can live in. I'm not the kind of architect who could design, say, a 600-square-foot bathroom, so I relate to these designs."

Even though the Gordon House is among the smaller of the legendary architect's designs, this principle of moving through a sequence of spaces is quintessential Wright. I think of the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, for example, where Wright made the unusual decision of having the sanctuary elevated a few feet above the rest of the space (many sanctuaries are descended into like sunken living rooms). It had to be accessed by a small series of stairs, which was very much intentional: you were moving upward to a communion with God. In that same sense, the procession through a small sequence of entry and private quarters into the double-height, glass ensconced family gathering area.

I'm not sure if the bus trip will allow for it, but Wright's Gordon House is also located less than a mile or two from another of Oregon's biggest architectural treasures, the Mt. Angel Abbey Library, designed by the great Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. The interior of this library is absolutely breathtaking (see my snapshot below). Even if the bus doesn't stop there this Saturday, make sure you do sometime.

Visions of Memorial Coliseum from the city archives [updated]

Last Friday I visited the City of Portland's archives buiding, which surprisingly are in a tiny brick building in a park on Columbia Boulevard that used to be a garbage incinerator. "The irony is not lost on us," one staffer told me of the building's past.

As it happened, though, there was a wealth of written information and images of the building. This wasn't just a matter of history or nostalgia, though. Pouring over old correspondence, announcements, brochures from the men and women who planned and built Memorial Coliseum, it was clear they knew they had a world-class architectural landmark on their hands. And with the local office of legendary NYC-Chicago based architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, they had the talent to deliver.

It's almost impossible to convey how futuristic and optimistic a building Memorial Coliseum would have seen to a society less than 20 years removed from World War II. Memorial Coliseum, city leaders believed, would transform the city of Portland and make it a city of the world: a city that mattered.

Whatever our city has now begun to establish as of 2009 in terms of continual New York Times features and hordes of young creatives moving here, it's a brand that, long before green building, urban planning, bike culture or farm-to-table cuisine, Memorial Coliseum represented Portland's greatest ambitions in a time when ambitions mattered. This was a time when America would begin exploring space, when we made the coolest cars and movies and music, and when we built glass palaces.

"Picture with me, if you will, a dramatic landmark rising on the banks of the Willamette some 90 feet in height which will command an impressive view of the downtown area across the river," wrote Don Jewell, the Coliseum's first general manager, in a speech to city leaders in 1958, two years before the building was completed.

"At night, the illuminated glass arena building will be seen from many points of the city, as well as from the major highways, rail lines and the air."

"Unlike any other coliseum in the nation - or perhaps the world - Portland's new center will feature an exterior glass curtain wall extending a block and a half square."

One file in the archives was devoted to suggested names for what would be christened Memorial Coliseum. I got a chuckle from two one-word monikers: the "Vetarena" and the "Rosearena". There was also a suggestion for the "Rose Colosseum, the "Beaver Dam" (thank goodness that didn't succeed) and, my personal favorite: THE GLASS PALACE. I actually wish they would have chosen this over Memorial Coliseum. If they did, maybe more Portlanders today would realize, or have the chance to peer beyond the deterioration and the outer perimeter of trees blocking its transparency and see how special and unique a work of architecture this building is.

Another file held correspondence involving The Beatles' 1965 concert in Portland. The invitation to the Fab Four came in part because they already had concerts scheduled in Los Angeles and Seattle. "Everyone knows," an invitation letter explained, "that all flights from Los Angeles to Seattle stop for a layover in Portland."

But there was one major problem: the Beatles could only play in Portland on one date, but the American Legion already. At first, the Legion didn't want to budge. They wouldn't change the date. That is, until Jewell threatened to tell the media that the American Legion was keep The Beatles out of Portland. Suddenly the American Legion changed its mind. Hey Don, on behalf of my mom, who was lucky enough to attend that concert, I say, "We love you ya-ya-ya!"

Meanwhile, Mayor Sam Adams' office has chosen the 32 members of the Rose Quarter Citizen Advisory Committee. There are two excellent choices for the committee from the architecture community: Joseph Readdy, a member of the AIA Urban Design Committee, and Paul Falsetto, head of the AIA's Historic Resources Committee and an expert on midcentury modernism. But the committee is disappointingly large. A colleague of mine spoke of once being on an 18-member committee and having that too big to get things done. I worry the architectural community's influence and expertise will be drowned in a pool of specialized interests.

We in the small five person group leading Friends of Memorial Coliseum (Stuart Emmons, Rick Potestio, Peter Meijer, Don Rood, myself) were also disappointed not to have one of our members on the Committee. But I plan to attend all of the meetings, each of which I believe will include time for public testimony.

What's more, it's a good democratic exercise for this body to be formed and for a variety of ideas to be vetted

 I just hope at the end of the day that Committee members remember they have a landmark on their hands, and a multi purpose arena that is capable of the flexibility and has the extra space to host a velodrome, an amateur athletic complex, or anything else people dream up. Hopefully the committee will see that Memorial Coliseum is the Rose Quarter's greatest enduring resource, and that it's the rest of the development - the parking garage fronting Broadway, the untapped riverfront - that needs the most attention.

Ghosts of Portland past: Olympic bids, elaborate lights

 

A few weeks ago I got to know another Portland blogger, Dan Hanekow of Cafe Unknown, when we were both interviewed for a TV show, "Outlook Portland" on NW32, about local architecture.

Dan has two fascinating recent posts on Cafe Unknown about past Portland city-building efforts that really caught my attention: a bid in 1962 to host the 1968 Olympic Games, and a series of arced street lights stretching over Third Avenue downtown in the early 1900s.

First the Olympic bid. The effort was lead by the Portland Olympic Council, which included Portland Mayor Terry D. Schrunk and Oregon Governor Mark Hatfield.

“The decision to invite the XIX Olympiad built upon the existing ambitious initiatives during the Terry Schrunk administration that included a new zoo, the recently constructed Memorial Coliseum, a rapidly expanding freeway system, the dawn of Portland's urban renewal program and a proposed forty-eight million dollar stadium at Delta Park,” Hanekow writes.

In an editorial in the Oregon Journal, business leader Fred Meyer (of the stores bearing his name) wrote this piece advocating the Olympic bid:

"If Portland wants to be the great metropolis of the Northwest, serving the distributing, banking, cultural and entertainment needs of a vast four state area, it should act like one. And the best way to act like a metropolis, in a class with San Francisco and Los Angeles, is to provide a big league stadium for baseball, football and other outdoor spectaculars which will attract thousands of visitors on a year-round basis."

The Oregonian also entered the fray with this editorializing: "Portland is Oregon's largest city with a population of approximately 372,000 and a metropolitan area of more than 800,000. As a major port reaching out to Alaska, Hawaii, South America and the Far East, the City is inevitably cosmopolitan in its makeup. Indeed, more than one person out of every five is either foreign born or fluent in his mother tongue. There are of course many Canadians who have settled in this area. A great portion of those of foreign extraction are from the Nordic countries of Europe and the United Kingdom, from Russia, China and Japan."

The proposed site was anchored in Delta Park, where a new stadium was to be built that would have seating for 60,000 with 20,000 more temporary seats and standing from for 10,000 for a total capacity of 90,000. Can you imagine how different Portland might have been if we'd built this stadium? Even if the Olympics never came in '68, I'll bet we would have long since had an NFL team by now.

Memorial Coliseum was to be the other anchor where numerous Olympic events would be held. And the proposal also called for a new 3,000 seat convention hall.

But, as Hanekow writes, “It was over as fast as it began. On October 16, 1962 Detroit Michigan was selected as the American contender for the 1968 games.” The bid ultimately went to Mexico City.

Meanwhile, Café Unknown also recently featured the campaign to “bathe Third Street in light by building a line of illuminated arches stretching from Yamhill to Burnside (later extended on both ends to Madison and Glisan) to be known as The Great Light Way." To supporters, the arches would cap a protracted campaign establish the thoroughfare as the center of Portland night-life and attract more business to the area.

“At eight in the evening on June 6, 1915 a switch was flicked in the Northwestern Electric central powerhouse,” Hanekow writes. Suddenly Third Street was ablaze in light, much to the joy of the assembled thousands celebrating up and down its length.”

The arched fixtures rested on four concrete encased Doric columns to straddle each intersection. Both linked arches had ninety-six 40 watt "lamps" with more clustered at the column's capitals.

The Third Avenue arches north of Burnside were removed during a 1920s street widening projects. The rest remained lit until 1937, when, due to the Depression and electric company franchise changes, the power was cut and the arches removed. Three survived until August 1940, when they were ordered down by the City Council. In 1958, the City Council abolished all ornamental lighting districts, folding them into the existent city lighting program.

The state of historic preservation in Portland

For the current issue of Architecture Week magazine I wrote a story that assesses the state of historic preservation in Portland.

The local design and preservation communities were galvanized somewhat earlier this year by the demolition threat to Memorial Coliseum, which seems to have avoided the wrecking ball. At the same time, Portland suffered at least one tragic loss of a historic building this year: the A.E. Doyle designed Riverdale Grade School.

I also wrote in the article about recent and past losses to the historic urban fabric, such as the kitschy pagoda atop the now-defunct Pagoda restaurant in the Hollywood District, the destruction by Reed College of the city's last remaining trolley barns, and the demolition in 2007 of the Rosefriend Apartments on Broadway, pictured here.

There have been preservation success stories too, however: 

• The restoration of the Ladd Carriage House next door to the Rosefriend site;
• Centennial Mills along the waterfront that will be transformed (presumably, following a city-sponsored development competition) into a series of shops and other venues (pictured below);
• The Portland Armory, which became the first building on the National Register of Historic Places to earn a Platinum LEED rating from the US Green Building Council;
• The White Stag block, a cast-iron pair of buildings along the waterfront renovated by the University of Oregon (pictured at top); 
• The Doyle-designed Meier & Frank building turned into Macy's and the Nines hotel;
• The John Yeon-designed Portland Oregon Visitors Center;
• Warehouses renovated into creative mixed use spaces such as the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, the Ford Building, and the Leftbank Building.

More than just listing successes and failures of individual buildings, though, I wanted to get to the bottom of what local protections there are for historic architecture, if any, besides a National Register listing. Here's part of what I wrote in the article:

Portland does have some protections in place for historic buildings. For example, the City of Portland's Historic Landmarks Commission reviews the design of new buildings proposed for historic districts and conservation districts in the central city — such as the Alphabet District, Skidmore Fountain/ Old Town, Kenton, and Ladd's Addition — and the commission has the power to prevent a building permit from being issued (although its decisions can be appealed to City Council).

The commission also has the power to approve or deny requests to make alterations to local buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In addition, the City maintains a list of Portland Landmarks and a Historic Resources Inventory. Still, according to Nicholas Starin, who heads the Historic Resources Program within the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, a National Register listing is still the best way to protect a building or district.

Portland's Historic Resources Inventory has not been updated in over 20 years. "It desperately needs to be updated," says Val Ballestrem, education manager for Portland's Bosco-Milligan Foundation, a local affiliate of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Regardless of its currency, however, the inventory confers no legal protection for buildings; it is simply a guide, Starin says.

In contrast, for buildings on the Portland Landmarks list, an application for new construction or alteration on those sites triggers a 120-day waiting period, allowing preservationists time to pursue alternatives to demolition. "That is binding," Starin explains. "But when the delay period is over, the property owner can, if they desire, demolish it." In contrast, a National Register listing requires the building owner to go through a full demolition review with the City Council, which can approve or deny the demolition.

What's more, Starin adds, even the 120-day delay for buildings on the Portland Landmarks list can be avoided. "All a property owner has to do is request [for the listing] to be removed, and they don't have to wait," he explains.

The owner's ability to opt a building out of the local landmark listing results from changes to Oregon law in the mid-1990s, when the legislature passed a statute preventing local jurisdictions from applying a historic designation to a property without the consent of the property owner. Starin points out that the same concept applies for privately owned properties on the National Register.

Some of you reading this know more than I do about historic preservation. What does Portland need to do a better job of protecting its buildings?

Elvis, Pele and Willie Stargell: a short history of PGE Park

Aaron Fentress has a fun piece in the Sports section of today's Oregonian (the section I always read first): a timeline of major events, both sports and non-sports related, held at PGE Park.

Events were first held on the grounds here in 1893, but it was more officially christened as a stadium, Multnomah Stadium, in 1926, from a design by renowned Portland architect A.E. Doyle. In the 1930s, it was a popular spot for greyhound racing. In the 1950s, the Portland Beavers moved there from their stadium on Vaughn Street. And that's just the start, my friends.

Here is Fentress's timeline for the stadium, with a few parenthetical notes of my own:

1908: Oregon and Oregon Agricultural College (later Oregon State) meet in a football game on the field for the first time. (Brian's note: OAC was unofficially known as "Moo U.")

1909: Steel grandstands are built and President William H. Taft visits with 20,000 school children. (Brian's note: Taft, history's fattest US president, reportedly takes up an entire row of seats.)

1923: Years after more seating is added, President Warren G. Harding appears for a speech. (Brian's note: this was on the heels of Harding's "Teapot Dome" scandal. The Sam Adams of his time?)

1930: The University of Oregon football team beats Washington 7-0 before a record crowd of 35,266. (Brian's note: Go Ducks! And as my dad often says, Huck the Fuskies!) 

1931: Former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey spars with four opponents in a series of two-round exhibitions. (Brian's note: Randy Leonard was not involved.)

1935: First NFL exhibition game is played at the stadium between the New York Giants and the Chicago Cardinals. (Brian's note: It's a little known fact the Cardinals have been based in 34 different cities.)

1948: A crowd of 8,000 turns out for a show featuring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. (Brian's note: The show undoubtedly must have been called "The Road to Portland" - and sponsored by Texaco.)

1955: During an exhibition, the Los Angeles Rams defeat the New York Giants 23-17 in first NFL overtime game. (Brian's note: the Rams were led by former Oregon Ducks quarterback and future Hall of Famer Norm Van Brocklin.)

1957: Elvis Presley performs a concert in the infield before 14,600. (Brian's note: It's somehow fitting, although in a way I can't pinpoint, that The Beatles played Memorial Coliseum and Elvis played the stadium.)

1958: Willie Mays leads the San Francisco Giants against the Beavers in an exhibition game. (Brian's note: Say hey!)

1974: The Portland Storm in the first year, the Portland Thunder the next, bring the World Football League to the stadium. (Brian's note: where can I get a Portland Thunder t-shirt?)

1977: In soccer star Pele's last professional game, the New York Cosmos beat the Seattle Sounders 2-1 in front of 35,548 in the North American Soccer League's championship game. (Brian's note: the annoying tradition of single-named Brazilian soccer players began soon after.) The photo below was provided by reader Stephen Himes, whose father snapped the picture of Pele playing at the actual Civic Stadium game.

1980: The 1979 World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates play an exhibition game against the Beavers, drawing 26,912, a year after Pirates slugger Willie Stargell slammed a ball onto the balcony of the Multnomah Athletic Club during a home run contest before an exhibition game. (Brian's note: Aaron - why not just note the 1979 Stargell homer game instead of the 1980 game?)

1985: Another short-lived professional football league, the United States Football League with the Portland Breakers, calls the stadium home and draws crowds approaching 20,000. But, alas, the league lasts only one season. (Brian's note: Go Marcus Dupree! The only Oklahoma Sooner I ever liked. And the Breakers' best jhery curl.)

1992: Evangelist Billy Graham holds a five-day event that draws nearly a quarter-million people.

1997: In the first of a series of matches related to the World Cup, the U.S. men's soccer team defeats Costa Rica 1-0 in front of 27,396.

1999: The U.S. women's soccer team beats Canada 4-2 in front of 23,325 in its final game before the World Cup. 

2002: San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners play an exhibition game in front of 19,778. (Brian's note: fans expecting to see future Hall of Famers Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson are disappointed. But at least it's the major leagues.)

2003: Three doubleheaders are held during the 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup.

I also remember attending another somewhat historic baseball game Fentress didn't mention. In 1983, fresh off winning the World Series against Baltimore, the Philadelphia Phillies played an exhibition against the Beavers. I remember excitedly watching the team's two Hall of Fame stars, Mike Schmidt and Pete Rose, competing for the Phillies. (Yes, I know Rose is not technically in the Hall, but obviously if not for the gambling he'd have been in Cooperstown on the first ballot.) But my greatest excitement was reserved for relief pitcher Tug McGraw, he of the sparkle-covered cleats. However, if I'd known he'd be responsible for country music star Tim McGraw, my allegiances might have been different.

In the controversy over MLS coming to Portland and necessitating a Beavers move to another stadium, with Memorial Coliseum becoming threatened along the way, we may have lost sight of the architecture of PGE Park and how it will change. Although the stadium has lots of history, it's never been an esteemed work of architecture. Portland Timbers and Beavers owner Merritt Paulson has the chance to bring the stadium a great design. And while I think that will be achieved when it comes to fan amenities and experiences -- seats close to the field, more luxurious concourses -- I'm not sure if there's anything about the design itself that will excite people. (Initial plans have been drawn up by Kansas City-based Ellerbe Becket, one of the nation's largest and most prolific stadium designers. They also did the Autzen Stadium expansion.) But there's still time for that to change.

An architectural tragedy: Riverdale has been destroyed [updated]

It is a sad day for architecture and history in Portland. Riverdale Grade School, which carries the pedigree of having beee designed by the two most acclaimed architects in the city's history (A.E. Doyle and Pietro Belluschi), and a school that generations of Portlanders have attended, is no more. In a blaze of bulldozing, Riverdale was leveled like Dresden in World War II. Today all that stands at the corner of Military Road and Breyman Avenue is a pile of rubble. (The pictures used here were provided by architectural historian Libby Farr, Ph.D.)

The board at Riverdale that pushed through the demolition, in order to build a gargantuan new school (the style of which is a trite caricature - faux Riverdale on steroids), are not bad people. They think they're doing the right thing for the community and the students. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to live forever with their irreversible folly.

Historic preservation is never the easy route. Preserving and expanding the original Riverdale building might have been more expensive. It might have required more innovative thinking on the part of architect and client. But it didn't have to come to this. Riverdale could have been a model for historic preservation, which is also a key principle of sustainability. Instead, the stench of this deed is reeking all the way from the district's tony Dunthorpe locale up the Willamette and throughout the city.

"It's a shame the children of Riverdale have been denied the opportunity to learn that preservation and building a sustainable future go hand-in-hand," wrote Steve Jewell of the Preserve Riverdale campaign in an email today. "Riverdale has become a 'throwaway' community, in stark contrast to our traditions and community values. Regrettably, the 'bigger and newer is better' crowd holds the upper hand and has now destroyed the iconic symbol of our community's values and traditions."

Jewell and friends are at least up to one last bit of protest. Back in 1988, many Riverdale community members purchased individually inscribed bricks to help raise funds for a restoration campaign. The school has pledged to use those bricks in the new school building subsequently being constructed, in order to honor the memory of the previous building. But preservation supporters have arranged with Riverdale to allow individuals who bought a brick back in 1988 to have the brick returned to them upon request, instead of having it used in the new school. 

I wish more could have been done to save this poor wonderful schoolhouse. Not to go all Oskar Schindler on you, but certainly I could have done more. The City could have done more. The architecture and historic preservation communities could have done more. But in the end, if you can't convince the building owner of the value of his or her historic property, it is a very difficult uphill battle.

Even so, what can we do to at least make Riverdale a wakeup call for Portland? How can we strengthen lax preservation laws that allowed this to happen, or galvanize the community of sane people who opposed such destruction?

For starters, Portland has not updated its historic buildings inventory in more than 20 years. City Council could be committing funds to creating an updated list of buildings in this city worth protecting, and then put some teeth into their protection. We also need to look at the freedom this district had to self-immolate without much of any buy-in needing to be secured from the rest of the city. Shouldn't destroying a historic Portland school be a little harder? And we need, apparently, to educate both children and (especially) their parents about the value of historic buildings and our collective responsibility to preserve and protect them.

Meanwhile, no amount of good wishes will bring back Riverdale from the dead. The city will recover from this wound, just like we did when past historic treasures were leveled. But hopefully those at Riverdale will never forget the sobering destruction they have perpetrated.

UPDATE: Many have noted from the photos here that the building was not torn down in a way that allowed for proper salvaging of the building materials. Although some supporting Riverdale's efforts have written in promising that salvaging will happen, I wanted to highlight this comment from Nigel Barnes, who runs the architectural salvage department at Rejuvenation The Rebuilding Center:

"I can tell anyone who doubts it that this demolition was obviously done in a blitzkrieg style, with little, if any, consideration for materials re-use. They may perhaps have saved a few "prestige" pieces, like the lanterns, fancier windows, and cornerstones, but clearly the majority was simply smashed and will be completely wasted."

Contrary to that comment is one from an anonymous commenter called Enough Already, who seems to be writing with the inside knowledge of the Riverdale board. This commenter's most recent entry, defending the demolition, ended by simply saying, "This was about doing what was right for the kids." Enough Already went on to accuse preservationists of choosing a building as more important than the students attending. As I write this, I suddenly feel unable and unmotivated to come up with a witty or even angry retort. All I can say is the mindset here is as sad as the blitzkreig we see in these photos.

A renovated Elks lodge

Mike Francis had a nice piece in The Oregonian yesterday about the renovation of a historic YWCA building turned-Elks Lodge at North Williams Avenue and Tillamook Street in the Eliot neighborhood.

"A few years ago, it was a dilapidated building with holes in the roof and dry rot in the floors," Francis writes. "Yet it was one of the last reminders of a time when the close-in north and northeast Portland neighborhood was a lively cultural center for African-American Portlanders and immigrant communities. Now the building is a crisply refurbished meeting hall and event center, following a community-wide effort to save and restore it to its prewar elegance."

The YWCA was constructed in 1926, largely for African-American women, who were excluded from the downtown Portland YWCA. $12,000 in funding (no small amount at the time) came from Portlander named Mary Laffey Collins, who would go on to establish one of America's most prominent foundations, the Collins Foundation. There is a plaque at the lodge from 1939 honoring Collins on behalf of "the Negro citizens of Portland."

During World War II, the building became a USO for African American soldiers, and after the Vanport flood of 1948, it was used as a shelter for families who lost their homes. The Elks, a chapter of the national Elks organization for minorities, purchased the biulding in 1959, which it remained for decades. Below is a 'before' shot of the building prior to its renovation this year. (This and the photo at the top of the post were provided to The Oregonian by Faye Burch.)

The push to renovate the building came from a volunteer coalition let by people like Wanda Broadous-Mills, Faye Burch, and James Posey, the latter of whom is the outgoing president of the National Association of Minority Contractors of Oregon. Today the building is a meeting hall and events center available for rental.

Congratulations to everyone who helped save and refurbish this humble but beloved community building.

Riverdale preservationists offer alternative design that saves Doyle building

Preserve Riverdale, the grassroots group that came together in an effort to save the A.E. Doyle-designed (with later contributions from the great Pietro Belluschi) Riverdale School, lost a potential political solution to their quest last month when the school's board was re-elected. Now, the preservation effort is trying a new tactic: offering up an entirely different design by a new architect.

Path Architecture has created for Preserve Riverdale a scheme that renovates the Doyle building while expanding the campus outward. Their design is the part of a mailer being sent out by Preserve Riverdale to residents of the district.

"Preserve Riverdale provides this mailer," the text goes, "to help our community see an alternative RGS renovation plan that could help unify our community, save a significant amount of money, and preserve the idyllic nature of our school. This is but one idea, and it is not submitted as a conclusive, final proposal. We hope it helps begin a new community conversation."

"This proposal preserves the existing A.E. Doyle school (with significant upgrades), and compliments the historic structure with new buildings and a campus-wide  site improvement." The goals of the design, it goes on to say, are to improve the health and safety of students/faculty, improve the architecture to fully support program and clarity of education, improve access to technology, and protect capital investment."

An important feature of the Path-designed plan is that, unlike the Riverdale demolition and new building about to begin construction, it would not require the student body to be relocated to another school for a year. As it stands now, these kids are about to spend the next school year being bused to another location and back every day. This plan would be built in phases, allowing students to stay on the Riverdale site with just a few temporary trailers. Admittedly those trailers are awful, but they're very very common in K-12 schools, as most of you know. And being on the Riverdale site, they'd be much more convenient and much cheaper.

Path has so far made its name designing small mixed-use projects and single-family houses, but partners Corey Martin and Ben Kaiser's firm is exceptionally talented. Before joining with Kaiser, Corey Martin previously worked at Allied Works, the Portland firm headed by Brad Cloepfil. I previously wrote about their work as part of a Dwell magazine story about the 11xDesign homes tour that their firm co-organized.

Mahlum Architects, designers of the replacement building planned for Riverdale, is a much larger firm, and their Portland office is an offshoot of Mahlum's Seattle headquarters. Overall Mahlum has designed a lot of schools, including Ben Franklin Elementary, which was included in the 2005 American Institute of Architects/Committee on the Environment Top 10 Green Projects list.

Both firms are talented in different ways. Path is more of a boutique firm, while Mahlum offers a broad range of experience and expertise.

In providing me with this mailer, from which the above images are drawn, Corey Martin emphasized how preliminary the design is. They only had about two days to come up with it, apparently. Rather than being considered the actual Riverdale renovation-and-expansion plan (if there was one), this is meant to demonstrate that it could be done in a way that meets the schools needs.

Preserve Riverdale has also worked with another firm, GEN Architects, to produce this video comparing the scale of the original Doyle and the new structure:

Unfortunately, though, the Riverdale board -- while not people I wish to vilify personally -- seems to be hung up on the issue of security. The Mahlum design is for one big multi-story building. Nevermind that it would tower over surrounding homes. Or, of course, that it would destroy the Doyle. Or that its neo-historic style is arguably a trite caricature of the original. 

In conversations with one member of the Riverdale board (who did not wish to comment on record for this post), he continually emphasized to me that they and parents wanted a single building because it was safer.

If the Doyle building gets destroyed, in the end, because of concerns not about education or architecture or programmatic needs but out of security concerns, that would be a tragedy.

Obviously we want our kids in public schools to be safe, and over the years there have been some horrific acts of student-on-student gun violence, both in Oregon and elsewhere in America. But it would be a disservice to students and to the educational experience overall if a culture of fear -- the obsession with the one-in-a-million scenario supplanting everyday needs and concerns like education and design -- drove Riverdale's plans.

Riverdale is on a very tight schedule. I'm told they're looking to start demolition this month. This month! The school has to fit construction into the window of time Riverdale students are temporarily occupying the other school. So unfortunately there is very little, if any, time to convince Riverdale's board to consider this plan. If you're reading this and want to help, I suggest contacting Preserve Riverdale or Riverdale School itself.

109 and young again: visiting the restored Claire Apartments

Looking at this decade's apparently now-completed economic boom times, it's easy to focus on big buildings by big developers: the tall condo towers, the industrial neighborhoods transformed into dense urban enclaves, or the companies like Gerding Edlen, Williams + Dame and Hoyt Street that made them happen.

But another trend during these boom years has been people from outside traditional design and construction or development and real estate communities trying their hand at building, or people who had heretofore only dabbed their toes in development by flipping single-family houses escalating their efforts to create larger multifamily condo or apartment projects.

Frederic Dupeyroux falls in the latter category. Originally he emigrated from France to Oregon to be a program manager at Intel. But over the years he began remodeling houses on the side. Then came a significantly bigger opportunity: the chance to renovate a circa-1900 apartment building in Southeast Portland.

"I’m a big fan of modern architecture myself," Dupeyroux told me. "But I also believe that when rehabilitating a structure, one must allow the building to speak for itself, so to speak. This building was built in 1900 and had suffered a rather ghastly 'modernization' at some point that involved encasing the whole thing in stucco. We felt that restoring the original design and balcony structure and exposing the original siding and trim was most fair to the building and the surrounding neighborhood."

The building, at 13th and Taylor between Hawthorne Boulevard and Belmont Street, was restored from plans by Communitecture, the Portland firm headed by longtime architect and community activist Mark Lakeman that specilizes in sustainable, community-oriented design.

 

What is community-oriented design? According to the firm's website, Communitectur's work "often includes public processes to involve communities in design and decision-making for public place-making projects and individual buildings. This process can often involve public presentations and educational workshops."

 

Lakeman's firm has been instrumental in bringing the annual Village Building Convergence here each year, and has also put its design stamp on the city with projects like Rejuvenation The Rebuilding Center on Mississippi Avenue (pictured below), which is in its own way a kid of present-day architectural icon that epitomizes the dusty do-it-yourself spirit of place. The firm is also responsible for the traveling 'tea horse' that hosts neighborhood gatherings all over the city. Communitecture is also about to unveil its first net-zero-energy home.

In the past, although I have always had a healthy respect or Communitecture, I have occasionally referred to Mark Lakeman, Patrick Donaldson and their colleagues there in a flippant way as 'hippies'. This is not at all fair to these talented architects and planners doing good work. So I'm sorry for that. It's not 1967, and these people are not unshowered, tie-die-wearing flakes merely building communes and naming their kids after solar systems. Perhaps Mark Lakeman was right when he said recently by email that the term hippy "...reminds me of the Roman use of 'pagani' to marginalize all things not of the empire." If these guys are barbarians or Gauls, I'll take them over the Romans anytime.

One finds in the Claire building, which holds 20 single bedroom, studio, and two-bedroom apartments, the kinds of materials here that would never be found in a new building, such as the Ionic columns in the foyer made with hundreds-of-years-old Douglas fir. Inside, the building's historical accuracy has been thoughtfully maintained. I especially like the claw-foot bathtubs and FSC-certified red oak floors.

Although the Claire Apartments did not seek LEED certification (because of the estimated $5,000-7,000 extra cost), it is an admirably green project. The money saved from not seeking LEED went to things like added insulation, zero-VOC (volatile organic compound) paint, ultra-efficient windows, dual-flush toilets, and forced-air heat. Water usage is metered to each unit, which studies show can cut consumption by almost half.

Congratulations to Monsieur Dupeyroux and Communitecture on an excellent project. And hopefully the new economic reality will not dissuade the more enlightened non-developers out there from trying their hand at architecture.

 

Latest Designs on Portland discussion: Memorial Coliseum - past, present and future

Have you followed the controversy over Memorial Coliseum in the last few weeks and wondered, "What's the hubbub?"

Memorial Coliseum is unique to Portland architecture in more ways than one. It's one of the most prestigious and acclaimed designs ever created here, yet most people - even those who have visited the arena numerous times - haven't been able to see the building's best features. It's the older, smaller, less-well-kept stepsister of the bigger, newer Rose Garden next door. And why would we need two arenas? But here's the thing: the Coliseum is your grandma's diamond necklace and the Rose Garden is the big hunk of cubic zirconium. If you uncover this arena from the curtain almost permanently shrouding it, Memorial Coliseum becomes an interior space that can feel like the outdoors.

To share and celebrate the Coliseum and its greatness (however covered in dust), we've made it the topic of this week's Designs on Portland talk.

Every two months Designs on Portland, which I host at Design Within Reach in the Pearl District's landmark Wieden + Kennedy headquarters (1200 NW Everett), brings a new guest to discuss the city we share and how the best designs bring it alive. In the past we've talked with architects like Thomas Hacker, Jeff Kovel, Carrie Schilling and Bill Neburka. We've talked with urban designers like Arun Jain, magazine editors like Randy Gragg, even the occasional roboticist like Daniel Wilson.

The latest talk, scheduled for this Thursday (May 21) at 6:15PM, will look at Memorial Coliseum, the aging arena that quickly went from neglected to hotly debated this year when the city announced a plan to demolish the building in favor of a minor-league baseball stadium.

Memorial Coliseum's future has been looked at in political, financial and programmatic contexts since its future was put in doubt by the baseball proposal. A mayor under heavy scandal-induced fire saw the Rose Quarter plan as a way to jump-start an under-performing area of town. The building has been compared and contrasted with its newer, larger neighbor next door, the Rose Garden arena, and subjected to discussions about how having two arenas could be economically viable. Will an entertainment district be the solution, or something else?

But this discussion will seek to look at the design itself: what makes Memorial Coliseum unique among the world's arenas and concert halls, why its design represents the very best of Portland and post-World War II modern architecture, how it and other modernism represents the unofficial birth of sustainability, and what the building needs to be restored to its former glory.

Skeptics have said things like, "Memorial Coliseum isn't the Taj Mahal." It's not designed by Mies Van Der Rohe, Le Corbusier, or other of 20th century modernism's superstars, they say. But Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is as prestigious and historic a 20th Century American Architecture firm as they come. And regardless of the name attached to the design, Memorial Coliseum's formal purity -- the teacup inside the glass box -- gives it enduring value: the kind of architecture that transcends function with poetic form, even as it functions beautifully. After all, the building's transparency also makes it easy to navigate.

As always, I will be moderating the discussion, and joining me will be some of the designers and preservationists who have worked to save the Coliseum, such as Stuart Emmons of Emmons Architects, Rick Potestio, and Randy Higgins of Vizwerks. We also hope to have a special guest or two from the original Memorial Coliseum design team drop by.

We also would love to hear at the talk from those of you with Coliseum memories of your own. My mom saw The Beatles in the arena in 1965. My beloved Trail Blazers became world champions there in 1977. I saw Clyde Drexler dunk on most of the NBA's best players numerous times there throughout the 1980s. I also saw several cheesy concerts there like Rush, Van Halen, (gulp) Bryan Adams, Billy Joel, and Sting. (Hey, I grew up in a small town. I have better taste now!) But more importantly, what are your Coliseum memories? Were you there for the Dalai Lama or Barack Obama? (Hey, that rhymes!) Led Zeppelin or Luciano Pavarotti? Come be part of remembering the past, living for the present, and securing the future of this Rose City and modernist landmark.

Thanks also to Design Within Reach (a Portland Architecture sponsor) and studio proprietor Kathleen Nash, as well as the DWR staff, for their help making this talk and the broader Designs on Portland series a reality.

The event is free and refreshments will be served. Design Within Reach is located at 1200 NW Everett. Doors open at 6PM and the talk will begin shortly after 6:15PM.

Time for regime change? Riverdale preservation may hinge on this month's School Board election

When Portlanders vote on May 19, the battle to preserve the historic A.E. Doyle and Pietro Belluschi-designed Riverdale Grade School may effectively be decided.

The Riverdale School Board is the entity that chose to demolish the building and build a newer, much bigger, and eerily similar-looking school in its place. Nevermind research showing voters may have been misled by the Board's bond measure into thinking they were voting for a renovation instead of demolition. Or that a majority in the community do not favor razing the building. Full speed ahead with the bulldozers next month!

But three Board members on the Riverdale School Board are up for re-election. If the community were to elect members less zealous about demolishing history, Doyle's Riverdale building might still have a chance to survive.

The election also gives a chance to learn more about the incumbents who did the deed.

The incumbent for Riverdale board Position 1 is Ron Penner-Ash, a winery owner. He's being challenged by Thomas Hatch, a physician who also coaches a girls basketball team at Riverdale.

Position 2 has financial adviser Christoper Hall as the incumbent. To his credit, Hall said in a recent Oregonian article, "We need to heal the community and move forward with the spirit that has been the hallmark of the Riverdale district for over a hundred years." To play devil's advocate, though, the need for healing comes from the controversy caused by Hall and other board members. The demo campaign is the knife in this wound.

The incumbent in Position 5 is Steven Klein, a educational researcher and policy analyst. He's being challenged by Douglas McCaslin, a financial adviser.

The three incumbents have their own website, where you'll find a statement saying, "Riverdale is flourishing under the leadership of our current Board. The District’s excellence is contributing to enrollment growth, attracting new resident families and increasing numbers of transfer and tuition students."

You'd almost think by reading the campaign literature these guys hadn't taken the school they've pledged to serve and protect to the brink of outright destruction, using bonds procured in a confusing demo-versus-reno measure and dividing an otherwise tranquil, cooperative community.

Admittedly, I've never met any of these candidates, incumbent or challenger. And elections should not normally be decided by a single issue. But if someone's trying to push you over a cliff, should you really ask them for more?

Alfred Staehli: 1929-2009

The Portland architecture and historic preservation communities lost one of their most accomplished members this week when Alfred M. Staehli passed away on Monday, May 4, six months shy of his 80th birthday.

Born in Pasadena to an immigrant Swiss woodcarver but a Portlander singe the age of 2, Staehli graduated from Lincoln High School, then received an architecture degree from the University of Oregon. After serving in the Air Force in the early 1950s, he worked for ten years at Broome, Selig and Oringdulph, which would later morph into a firm still around today, BOORA.

However, it's after Staehli went back to school for a master's degree in history from Portland State University and in Rome at the International Centre for Conservation that the architect found his calling as a historic preservationist.

Staehli would go on to play a key role in saving such Oregon landmarks as Crater Lake Lodge, the Pittock Mansion, and the Kam Wah Chung building in John Day. He was a consultant for restorations of the Capitol dome in Salem as well as for the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission. He also served on the State Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation for two terms.

"Not only was Al an incredible resource for historic preservation issues, but more important to my relationship with him was his wry sense of humor and always challenging assumptions!  I guess as an educator he never feared asking  'Why not reinvent the wheel?” on any particular issue," said Henry Kunowski, a former colleague of Staehli's, by email.

Staehli was inducted into the American Institute of Architects' College of Fellows (the profession's highest honor, a quasi-hall of fame) in 1992. He also acted as an archivist. The photos you see here of the Lewis & Clark Exposition in Portland were part of his collection.

It's through his involvement with the Fellows that I got to know Staehli in 1999 and 2000 while I worked for the AIA. I used to take notes for the monthly Fellows committee meetings he attended, and it was fun to sit in a conference room and listen to some of the most accomplished architects in the city alternately chitchat, talk shop, tell stories about the city's architectural past, or target some kind of do-gooding action like trying to help Portland State get accreditation for its architecture school.

I got to know Al better when the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Gordon House was threatened with demolition in late 2000. He and I spent a day together down in suburban Charbonneau along the banks of the Willamette near Wilsonville, where the house was originally located. The compromise for the Gordon House was that it got preserved but had to be disassembled and moved to a different location. It was a better solution than outright demolition, but the house had been designed specifically in accordance with and to take advantage of the views of the river and Mt. Hood.

Staehli asked me to act as an assistant for the day while he photographed the Gordon House with a large-format camera, the kind great, serious photographers from Ansel Adams to Julius Schulman always used. Even today that kind of camera achieves better precision than digital photography, but it takes forever just to set up one shot.

My memory of that day out there with Al is not of the things we said to each other, but the silence in between. It's rare you can stand in silence with someone, particularly if you're not already well acquainted, and have it not be awkward. But there was a kind of serenity out there photographing the Wright house on the eve of it being eradicated from its intended place. At least if it had to go, the two of us were at least lucky enough to spend a day with the Gordon House, alone.

But of course he wasn't mute, either. I also took notes when we did talk while photographing the Gordon House that day, and used some of his comments in a piece for Willamette Week. Here's one of his observations published in the story:

"Wright's houses are delightful to walk into. Unlike in most McMansions (or what I call 'big-hair houses'), you don't walk into some totally inappropriate corporate-sized lobby where you feel lost. You enter this house through a small, constricted opening with a low ceiling and transition into a dramatic high-ceiling area. You always have a sense of moving through a sequence of different-scaled spaces. Wright's Usonian houses are of a scale that you can live in. I'm not the kind of architect who could design, say, a 600-square-foot bathroom, so I relate to these designs.

Wright was especially known for using wood and masonry for their color, their texture, their warmth. A lot of the Northwest-style architects like Walter Gordon and Pietro Belluschi did that, too. People here like to be able to look out the window to the trees but also have a cozy feel on the inside.

You would not find this kind of detail in most builder-made houses today--it would be too expensive and require more attention to detailing. But that's exactly what some architects are now arguing for: more modest-sized spaces but spending the money on finish and detail and materials.

We're losing landmarks monthly throughout the state. A little bit goes here, a little bit there, and first thing you know you've lost the integrity of the land. It isn't as if this was one of Wright's major buildings, but in the context of surviving Usonian homes it's actually very important. And it's definitely the only work of its kind in Oregon."

I only talked to Al Staehli once or twice in the ensuing nine years, and even then only briefly. So it's not like I knew the guy exceptionally well. But when I put together the incredible collection of buildings he is credited with helping to save and his gentle, warm, guileless personal manner, it's a major regret to have to say goodbye - or to not have done so with more reverence.

A neon rose by any other name would seem just as ridiculous

As I wait here in City Council chambers for the chance to testify against demolition of Memorial Coliseum, Council is right now hearing argument from Randy Leonard for adding a neon rose to the Portland Oregon Visitors Center building, designed by the great John Yeon, when it becomes home to the Rose Festival Foundation.

A neon rose? On the waterfront? Sitting on top of Yeon's building? Is this a joke?

If I weren't so busy arguing against Memorial Coliseum's razing, I would be fighting this to the hilt. Putting a neon rose on the building makes me want to wretch. It's a slap in the face to the building Commissioner Leonard wants to save on behalf of the Foundation.

If you feel similarly, please consider making your voice heard.

The Rose Festival Foundation is a wonderful institution, and it's great that they will be the tenants of this building. It's also a great boon to the city that the building will be preserved. But the neon rose is just absoluely preposterous and in very, very bad taste.

Potestio's protestio: tearing down Coliseum "absolute stupidity"

Award-winning architect Rick Potestio is the latest to join in the growing crusade to save Memorial Coliseum, and has written the following guest post:

The Memorial Coliseum should not be torn down to make way for either an "entertainment environment" of the sort that is viable in Kansas City, or a minor league baseball stadium.

Portland is a growing city. As such, it will need multiple venues for sports, concerts, entertainment and so on. The more the city grows, the more the need increases. As we know, costs only go up, and in historically cheap Portland, we are always challenged to make the projects happen or happen well.

Replacing a viable, fully functional, and extremely well built 12,600 seat multipurpose sport and concert venue with a (most likely budget driven, therefore cheap) 9000 seat single purpose/sport stadium makes absolutely no sense.

I repeat, it makes no sense to replace 12,600 fully paid for, top quality, all weather multipurpose seats for a (who knows how the heck we will pay for it and for how long and at what compromise, mortgaged to the hilt), mediocre 9000 seat, summer only, (and not in a rain-out) single purpose venue.

This is absolute stupidity. It reminds me of the mentality that tossed billions of dollars at Wall Street, and the saw a whole hell of a lot of it go to the dogs that created the junk financial products that have tanked our economy.

From the standpoint of pure one-to-one economic value, this deal stinks. But there is more.

Consider the location as it relates to baseball.... Is this really the best location for the stadium? Is the school site better?

I say no to both. Neither is well served by transit. Yes, there is a stop at the Rose Garden, yet would people walk from that stop to the school site? There are freeway on/off ramps, and these dump vehicles onto Broadway/Wiedler. That has not been a great situation for NE, and extending traffic jam season to year round doesn't make sense... but I expect people will choose to drive over mass transit.

Placed in another part of town, the stadium would provide economic stimulus. It might as well at the MC site, but lets face it... it is not Fenway Park, or Wriggly Field or even the new Giants Stadium. Those are in neighborhoods, old and new, and energize the areas around them... but the Rose Quarter is not a neighborhood, and will not become one. It is a parking lot complex next to a convention center on one side and an industrial area on the others.

From an economic impact consideration, the only area that would benefit would be the Rose Quarter.

The MC is both an architecturally historic and artistic statement, a major work of modernism. It is also a war veterans memorial. It was also built by the people of Portland, and is owned by them.

The Blazers, who manage but do not own the Coliseum, have mothballed it such that it is a drain on the city, and failed to responsibly maintain the building such that it would seem ready and prime for demolition.

This is wrong. The building has merit as a work of architecture, as a memorial, and as a historic venue, a place where many great moments in sports and culture have occurred.
Anyone who has been in Portland long enough to see the leaves change color knows that we will go ballistic to save buildings with far less merit in terms of architecture or historic value. In fact we even save that which we do tear down. Ask the Rebuilding Center.

Tearing the MC is not an act of sustainability. It is not adaptive reuse. It is not justifiable on any terms if we state we respect the imbedded creative, physical, and material energy the building represents. It is not sustainable if we consider the great energy of sport and art, and audience the building has hosted—let alone the bad karma of tearing down a memorial building paid for in part by children’s' door-to-door fund raising efforts.

Tearing down the MC tears down more than a building. It tears down a vessel of memories and a monument to remembrance of sacrifice.

Further, the MC is a uniquely community oriented building. The concourse level is mid-bowl. Therefore it is at a mid point between the most expensive and the least expensive seats. In the old days, when every one in Portland at least said they were born here, the concourse was the great unifier. Everyone came to the center before and at half time, and promenaded around the bowl taking in the great views of the city and saying hi to friends they would run into. In later years, bars were set up in the corners, and often fans were still out side the arena well into the second half of a game... as well, people would cruise the inner ring between the two principal levels of the bowl and scan the crowd for friends.... try to do either at the Rose Garden... or any other venue in this country.

The MC reinforced Portland’s sense of community, expressed in the purest and most egalitarian of architectural terms and enhanced by stunning views of the city.

By comparison, the Rose Garden is a segregated experience that is all about money and status.

Portland can and should fight back against this stupid and shortsighted plan.

Offices by Emmons, YGH

The slumping economy has meant Portland's once robust collection of construction cranes erecting new buildings has dwindled to a scant few. 

And while offices buildings such as One Main Place and B-side 6 are soon to open their doors, many companies have chosen to renovate spaces in existing buildings rather than build from the ground up.

Recently two Portland firms, Emmons Architects and YGH Architecture, saw completion of new office projects in existing buildings.

The Emmons design, for financial services firm RV Kuhns & Associates, which I visited last month, occupies a few floors in the historic Smith's Block on Naito Parkway at Ash Street, just across from Waterfront Park. The Smith's Block was originally built in 1872 and designed by architect William W. Piper. Piper also designed the better known New Market Theater, which was built the same year and restored to wonderful effect by SERA Architects and architect William Hawkins in 1983. (The two photos at right were taken by Stuart Emmons.)

Both the Smith's and the New Market are among Portland's are among the oldest surviving cast-iron buildings in the city. The building is actually comprised of four narrow, virtually identical structures. "If you like this particular Italian Renaissance style," writes Bart King in An Architectural Guidebook to Portland, "tough luck; the rest of the several buildings that once sported it in this area have been demolished. (Even the southern portion of this block was razed for parking.)

Inside the new RV Kuhns offices, Emmons Architects highlighted the building's original interior brick walls by using glass and skylights to dramatic effect to introduce more natural light. Shafts of light carry illumination through the roof and down through lower floors, while also acting as a bold, almost monolithic piece of functional interior sculpture. Stairways are enclosed in glass as well. It's not only a treat to be in an old building so bathed in soft natural light, but also to see historic and contemporary design elements blended together so seamlessly.

Stuart Emmons, the Harvard-trained head of Emmons Architects, has often been known best in Portland for his outspokenness, writing editorials and taking stands on a variety of city policies and design decisions. This activism is a credit to Stuart, and example to architects about getting involved. That said, it's also possible that Emmons Architects' work can be a bit overshadowed as a result, which is too bad, because the design is very good. Emmons Architects performed master planning for much of the South Waterfront district as well as the Naito Parkway area, and the firm has been close to getting major commissions a couple of times over the last decade.

Meanwhile, YGH Architecture (known for most of its history as Yost Grube Hall) has also completed offices in the US Bancorp Tower (a.k.a. 'Big Pink') for the law firm Smith Freed & Eberhard. Big Pink was originally designed by the Portland office of venerable national firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in collaboration with legendary Portland architect Pietro Belluschi.

The 25,000 square foot project showcases 360 degree views of the city and includes a reception and conferencing center located on the north side of the building, large lunch room for employees located in a premium location (the Northwest corner of the building); offices and general office space. (The photos above to the right are by Pete Eckert.)

This is a relatively small interior office project for YGH, but the firm has also been responsible for many larger offices, like the LEED Gold-rated North Mall Office Building in Salem, the City Development Center in Portland, and even the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi. Then there's the plethora of international work YGH has done, spearheaded by principal Joachim Grube, in developing countries like Sudan and Kazakhstan. Grube received a lifetime achievement award at last year's inaugural Root Awards from Portland Spaces magazine.

Congratulations to YGH Architecture and Emmons Architects, not only on jobs well done but on finding ways to chug along in tough economic times.

Riverdale preservationists seek your support as demolition nears

Riverdale Grade School, the historic schoolhouse designed by one legendary Portland architect (A.E. Doyle) and renovated by another (Pietro Belluschi), is inching nearer toward demolition. But an intrepid band of preservationists is still fighting the good fight to save this local landmark. And they want your help.

Steve Jewell, head of Preserve Riverdale, writes: 

"Those wishing to demolish the Doyle building are seeking land use approval to build a massive, two-story structure on Breyman Avenue where the Doyle building stands today.  Plans show this new building would tower above and close to the street, dominating the adjacent neighborhood. It is the antithesis of the architectural sensibilities A.E. Doyle so gracefully created in his own design."

The proposed additions, crafted by Mahlum Architects, would result in a huge increase in the size of the Riverdale campus - 64% larger - in spite of flat or declining enrollment. It's incredible to think of all the funding problems that inner city schools like Jefferson High have just maintaining the space they have, and yet Riverdale wants to balloon out when there isn't a substantial growth in enrollment and when it would sacrifice a building with tremendous architectural pedigree.

Jewel and Preserve Riverdale ask that those who favor preservation of the original building write to the city's land-use hearing officer, Sylvia Cate (sylvia.cate@ci.portland.or.us), expressing their objections to the Type III Conditional Use Permit being requested.

In a sample letter to the hearing officer, Jewel writes, "...the proposed expansion, particularly the proposed central classroom building is massive. It will dwarf anything and everything in the neighborhood. Its location at the top of a slope and close to the street will cause it to loom over the sidewalk, street, and neighborhood."

He adds that "the decision to demolish the existing historic and beloved A.E. Doyle building was made without sufficient public notice or input. The process was marred by suppression of dissenting voices and lack of transparency."

Saul Zaik: mid-century master and Energizer bunny of Portland architects

This month Portland Modern, realtor Bob Zaikoski’s website, is featuring a profile that Bob and I wrote about architect Saul Zaik, FAIA.

Portland Modern is a sponsor of this site, but this post is not intended to be extra promotion. Rather, I’m writing this to spread the word about Zaik, an 82 year old architect of great significance who, despite still coming to work everyday, confesses to feeling like an “invisible man” compared to the presence he once had on the local architectural scene. If I were a young architect, I'd be taking this guy out to lunch and soaking up Zaik's knowledge like it was au jus for my French dip sandwich.

Zaik has practiced continuously here since 1952, creating a portfolio that’s extensive as it is impressive. Early in his career, he was influenced by legendary local architects like Pietro Belluschi, John Yeon, Van Evra Bailey, John Storrs and others. Zaik was part of the “14^th Street Gang”, a group of practitioners in the generation immediately following Belluschi and Yeon who distinguished themselves with exceptional mid-century modern houses.

The article is too long to reproduce here, and Bob has a huge collection of photographs that were taken and digitized from Zaik’s personal collection, so it's worth going to the source. Even so, I’d like to share a few extra thoughts.

Zaik has had a few different partners over the years but has always run or co-run some kind of small firm, save for the start he got working in the Portland office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill not long after graduating from the University of Oregon.

Single family residences and vacation homes have comprised the majority of the Zaik portfolio, and a couple of houses are particularly celebrated.

Best known of these is probably the Zidell House, which was designed and built in 1970 for shipping magnate Arnold Zidell. It’s octagonal in shape and built around a 48-foot ship’s mast (seen at left in an archive photo).

“He was a crazy guy, Zidell,” Zaik told us for the article. “The mast idea was his. He came in with that thing and said, 'I want to make it round.' It was built like an umbrella or a ski-lift tower—just bolted on. At one point he wanted to make it rotate.”

An earlier house from 1956, the Feldman House, is also a gem; it was included in last year’s Street of Eames tour and is pictured below in a shot I took earlier this year while visiting with Zaik, Zaikoski and a group of designers from Path Architecture.

 

Originally built for Philip Feldman, heir to the Mt. Hood Borax Company, the structure has a cantilevered, low-pitched gable roof and cedar siding. Its combination of ample glass and broad overhanging eaves is quintessential Northwest Modern in the tradition of Zaik’s forebears, Belluschi and Yeon.

The same could be said of Zaik’s own house, built in 1959, which the architect and his wife still occupy. (The picture below was taken the same afternoon as the Feldman House visit.) Nestled into a northwest Portland hillside near Skyline Boulevard, it has two distinct boxy spaces connected by a walkway, allowing light to permeate the space and retain a human scale to the residence.

Zaik has also designed apartments and condominiums, banks, shopping centers, schools, medical buildings and commercial buildings. When Nike was first looking to build a campus in the 1980, the company came to Zaik with a location near Wilsonville in mind (the job later went to Thompson/Vaivoda, now TVA Architects, and a location in Beaverton was chosen instead). Zaik also designed lots of homes and buildings at two forward-thinking landmarks, Sunriver and Salishan.

Although he has always worked in a contemporary architectural language, Zaik also has a special touch when it comes to fitting in with historic architeture. In 1968 his firm designed an addition to Timberline Lodge (pictured below in an archive photo) that is vastly more congruent with the original then the Wy’ East Day Lodge constructed later. Zaik has also done lodge buildings at Crater Lake that, like the Timberline work, express historic forms with a contemporary palette of clean lines. Restoration has also been a specialty. Zaik helped oversee the restoration of historic Vista House at Crown Point in the Columbia Gorge.

It’s patronizing to remark how an 82-year-old guy still has a lot of energy, but during the several visits Bob and I had with Zaik at his office, I always noticed how he practically would leap for a ringing phone, palpably excited at the prospect of a new client. Zaik could have sat at home collecting Social Security since before the Clinton administration began, but he has a contagious enthusiasm for architecture. Last week when I was on the 11xDesign homes tour, there Zaik was checking out all the houses; he’s a big fan of the emerging architects and firms. And lest that comment about his lurching for the phone paint a picture of a designer merely hungry for business, it was equally clear that Zaik was happy as a clam talking architecture with us for hours.

But it needn’t be over, especially if you ask Saul. Anybody need a house designed by an outright living legend of Portland architecture?

(Meanwhile, here are three more shots of Zaik's home and two more of the Feldman.)

More than a brasserie returns: Visiting the renovated Calumet building

Most Portlanders remember well the Brasserie Montmartre, a French restaurant on Park Avenue downtown where the walls were decorated with customers’ crayon drawings and jazz musicians played into the night. My first year living in Portland back in 1997, I went there for my birthday. The restaurant is now closed, or I'd have recommend the lamb rack I had that night. But both the Brasserie and the building are poised for a comeback.

The building, originally known as the Calumet Hotel, was built in 1907, part of a boom of building here in the years following the Lewis & Clark Exposition.

It was designed by noted Portland architect Joseph Jacobberger, a French immigrant who got his start in the prominent firm Whidden & Lewis. He also designed Portland buildings like the 1920 Knights of Columbus Building, St. Mary’s Cathedral, and parts of St. Vincent Hospital.

The Calumet, which Jacobberger designed with a blend of French Renaissance and Edwardian style, rented rooms for $1 per day and offered new luxuries like private baths in every room.  The hotel’s heyday continued into the 1930s. 

The ground-floor Brasserie came in the 1970s and continued into the 1990s, but seemed perhaps a bit outdated as the farm-to-table movement rose here with restaurants like Wildwood, Paley’s Place and Higgins.

The building is being developed by Carl Coffman, who previously headed an excavation company (it’s now digging the Park Avenue West tower’s parking garage). He described renovating the Calumet, which is being re-branded as Esquire on Park Avenue, as a labor of love, but Coffman is also being sensible about the project: It is poised to earn at least a Gold LEED rating.

The renovation, overseen by Vallaster & Corl Architects of Portland and completing this spring, will create five stories of apartments from 625-950 square feet, as well as a 1500 square foot penthouse. When I visited, Coffman showed me an irresistible added feature to the penthouse: a rooftop deck with plenty of room for parties and a stellar skyline view.

Vallaster & Corl, by the way, has quietly done a very nice combination of new architecture and historic renovation over the years.

The building also includes a four-story open-air atrium in the middle of the building (with large skylights into the banquet facility), and the original steel stairs wrapping around a new elevator (it uses a fraction of the energy a normal elevator uses). There are also original Douglas fir floors that have been refinished.

Thanks in large part to an innovative heat recovery system, Coffman says energy consumption in the building will be reduced by 42% compared to traditional technologies. There is also a rainwater-recovery system which collects rain from the roof, channels it to four 1000-gallon tanks in the basement, and filters it for use in the commercial restrooms.

Coffman purchased the Brasserie Montmartre restaurant name with the building, but is exploring several restaurant opportunities. That said, when I visited, he was leaning toward bringing back the restaurant under its original name and focusing on affordable French bistro fare. (One idea I had: move Pascal Sauton’s excellent but off-the-beaten path downtown restaurant Carafe here.) Coffman expects a restaurant to open in July of 2009.  More information can be found at www.esquireapartmentsportland.com.

Did Riverdale fudge its bond measure and deceive voters?

Today I received an email from Steve Jewell, one of the activists trying to save Riverdale Grade School, designed by the seminal Portland architects A.E. Doyle and Pietro Belluschi, from demolition.

Since the Riverdale board has already voted to demolish the school, Jewell and others have been scrambling a way to prevent the tragedy. And now, if Jewell’s research is accurate, they may have found a smoking gun. Here is the text of Jewell’s email:

A January 9 letter to the Riverdale School Board, signed by ninety-two registered voters, calls into question the validity of the use of Measure 26-101 bond funds to replace the historic Riverdale A. E. Doyle building.  The letter documents six reasons that the November 4 vote on Measure 26-101 was tainted by uncertainty and confusion.  The signers seek a clarification vote of the people on the question of whether bond funds can be spent without renovating the Doyle building.

The Board has not responded to the voters who signed the letter.

Additionally (not mentioned in the letter) further problems resulted from conflicting messages sent to voters by School Board members regarding the fate of the Doyle building.  This resulted in a muddled public process and compounded voter confusion. 

This was the chain of events:

First, Board communicates that the Doyle will be replaced if Measure 26-101 passes:

1. On September 18, 2008, the Board passed a resolution recommending "full replacement" of the Doyle building, primary buildings, and art building.  The Board minutes reveal the reason for this resolution in saying,  "There has been concern expressed by community members and professionals that a decision has not been made to renovate or replace; not making this decision could hinder the ability to pass the bond."


2. At a Community Forum on October 14, the Board made clear that passage of the bond would result in replacement of the Doyle building and presented the proposed plan for the new building.  When asked if the Board would consider changing its position, the reply was "no."


3. On October 18, Board Chair, Chris Hall, wrote an email to a voter explaining that the Board's decision regarding replacing the Doyle building, saying, "through the various coffees that we have held in the (sic) September and October the attendees demanded that the board make a decision so that the community would know what they were voting on." 


4. Throughout the bond campaign, the campaign website showed the replacement plan as the only option. Board members did not object to this presentation.

The issue became confused when voters became aware of the plan to demolish the Doyle building, and objections were raised.

Next, Board's message is now changed to say that no decision has been made about the Doyle building:

1. It appears that over the weekend of October 18-19 a new message was crafted by those supporting demolition of the Doyle building.  On Monday, October 20, campaign workers began saying no decision had yet been made regarding the Doyle building, in spite of the Sept. 18 Board resolution and prior Board statements.  This appears to be the same weekend during which the letter below was drafted. 


2. On October 21 a letter was received by District voters stating, "IF YOU WANT TO PROTECT THE RIVERDALE DOYLE BUILDING - VOTE YES on Bond Measure 26-101." This statement was in direct conflict with what the minutes of the September 18 Board meeting said, and what the Board presented at the October 14 forum. 

Significantly, two Riverdale School Board members, Chris Hall and Steve Klein, admitted after the election that they had vetted the October 21 letter.  This was because some of the signers of the letter said they would not sign the letter without School Board certification that the letter was truthful.  Hall and Klein revealed their involvement in the October 21 letter publicly at the November 10 Board meeting.

Board member involvement in the October 21 letter was a very significant factor in creating voter confusion, and represents an abrogation of these members'  fiduciary responsibility to assure an open, clear, and transparent public process.  It seems they wanted to "win" at any cost, including voter deception.

All of this has regrettably led to putting the validity of the Measure 26-101 bond in question. Will the Riverdale School Board seek to clarify the question of the fate of the Doyle building by bringing the matter back to the voters, or will they attempt to sell the bonds with a cloud hanging over the validity of Measure 26-101?

Pagoda Chinese restaurant, Hollywood District landmark, threatened with demolition

Granted this may not be the same a losing a historic building by an acclaimed architect, but numerous people have emailed me about the planned demolition of the Pagoda Chinese restaurant in the Hollywood district at Broadway and 39th. My pal Matt Davis of the Portland Mercury reported on this today, but Matt actually got some key info from a Hollywood neighborhood association newsletter.

The impetus for Pagoda's destruction, apparently, is a new Key Bank branch being planned for the site. If a restaurant closes at a key urban intersection, no one can blame some other business for choosing to relocate there. However, Davis's description of the planned Key Bank as "dreary" seems pretty inarguable.

With just a little creativity, Key Bank could make an exception to whatever cookie-cutter franchise design they usually employee. It sounds inherently silly to keep the faux Chinese architecture of a low-rent chop suey palace, but wouldn't it be a lot more fun to have the Pagoda building preserved as a Key Bank? Even if Key Bank is rolling its collective eyes at the prospect, they'd surely garner more community good will by preserving the Pagoda building. (Unless it was designed by Sienna, apparently.)

This is basically pop culture history more than architectural history, but pop culture is worth preserving too. If we can go out of our way to preserve neon signs, there's no defense necessary in preserving the look and memory of a beloved Chinese restaurant.

You are free to consider this last point of mine to be your fortune cookie message of the day, minus the cookie of course.

The Hollywood neighborhood association will meet next Thursday, January 22 at 7pm at the Hollywood Senior Center, at 1820 NE 40th.

Celebrating, defending A.E. Doyle

Tonight at 7:30pm, author Philip Niles will read from his book, "Beauty of the City: A.E. Doyle, Portland's Architect" at Powell's City of Books (1005 W. Burnside). Niles is also profiled by Jeff Baker in today's Oregonian.

Niles, Baker writes, grew up in the Portland area and his parents had a beach house in Neahkahnie near the vacation home Doyle designed and built for his family. At Reed College, the author commiserated with Doyle's campus there, which the architect considered among his best work. Niles also has an astute take on how Doyle's old buildings were preserved and now contribute to one of America's better preserved downtowns:

"The thing about Portland that's so unusual is that for a long period of time, nothing happened," Niles told Baker. "The Public Service building (an early Doyle design) was the tallest building in town until the end of World War II. Portland was something of a backwater  in that there wasn't much money for new architecture, and by the time things changed, at the end of the 1960s, people were more aware of the value of old buildings and downtown was preserved. I taught outside Minneapolis for many years, and it was just gutted. There was no respect for the past."

Speaking of having no respect for the past, local architectural historian Libby Dawson Farr, Ph.D., recently had a letter published in The Oregonian that I wanted to pass on, regarding the planned demolition of Doyle's Riverdale School:

As an architectural historian, a Riverdale alum and a former Riverdale parent, I believe the decision to demolish Riverdale School is deplorable.

Designs for a new and updated school facility that don't consider the historical importance of the original A.E. Doyle building or try to retain the perimeter walls of the original Colonial-style structure show a lack of foresight. Doyle was adept at utilizing classical styles on many types of buildings, including houses, and the choice of an elongated, rather low building was brilliant at the time.

The site was large and open then and the area itself was more pastoral. The design is taken from the European palace form from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, utilized in many art museums and government buildings throughout the country.

It has a dominant central section topped by a cupola and flanking wings running out from each side. It was filled with light on the East, South and North sides from the large sets of windows lighting every classroom. There are some significant design details throughout the structure as well. I can remember every teacher I had when I attended Riverdale from first through the eighth grade because of the position of each classroom in the building.

It was a modest building, yet Doyle's successor in the firm, the late Pietro Belluschi, was called upon several times to design alterations to it after Doyle's death in 1928. Riverdale students and parents pride themselves on providing educational excellence far beyond most school districts in the Portland area. What will the demolition teach students about the importance of history, the need to preserve (and yes, update) culturally important structures? 

From one Libby to another: well said.

Riverdale demolition: "vandalism", says Oregonian

Today's Oregonian includes an editorial about the planned demolition of Riverdale School set in motion by its recent school board vote.

The editorial focuses primarily on explaining Doyle's historical significance. "If you ask knowledgeable Portlanders about the architect who did the most to compose the city's early style, you'll hear about A.E. Doyle," they write. "He designed some of the most significant buildings and features in the area, from Multnomah Falls Lodge to the Benson Bubblers." And Central Library, and the Benson Hotel, and Meier & Frank, and tons of others.

In the last two paragraphs the editorial gets down to business:

"The trouble with history is that it can cost money. Buildings develop leaks and dry rot, old boilers shudder to a stop, tenants decide they need more room or different configurations. But communities benefit when they can maintain the historical fabric and take pains to integrate it with the new."

"Dunthorpe -- and all of Portland -- will be a poorer place without Doyle's Riverdale school. Not only will the students in that district lose a living link to Portland history, but the character of the neighborhood will be eroded in favor of charmless efficiency. That's an unfortunate lesson for us all."

When I went to the OregonLive.com website to find the article for linking in this post, there was already a comment from someone saying that the editors displayed "a lack of focus on...the students."

Well, let's look at this from the students' perspective. Sure, we want them to have a school designed to optimal green building standards. Luckily, that can be done by renovating the Doyle. And re-use of the existing structure is a paramount principle of green building. Others commenting on my previous post have discussed cramped surroundings inside the old school. But nobody is saying liberties can't be taken with significantly altering the inside of the building. Renovate it any way you want, wider hallways or whatever. And part of educating students is indoctrinating them to the fabric of local history that exists all around them. It's a huge privilege for them to be learning in a work of historic architecture by the city's all-time two favorite sons of architecture.

I and others who are passionate about saving Riverdale have perhaps done some unintended harm to the process by vilifying the school's board and decision makers for approving the demolition. After all, these are parents and community members who want the best for their kids. At the same time, the fact that a groundswell of support for saving Riverdale continues to gain steam throughout the community is an encouraging sign that the spirit of preservation remains in Portland - even if one of its toniest enclaves has its historical blinders on.

Earlier today I happened to peruse the Riverdale website to see about goings-on at the school. Now here's some irony for you: According to the most recent Principal's Newsletter, principal Jeremiah Patterson writes, "I'm thrilled to be back in the classroom, teaching an elective for 7th grade students called 'School Design.'  Right now we are studying changes in the American schoolhouse throughout history." How about studying the architectural pedigree of your own school, the one that your own board has voted to demolish?

Looking at his picture here, Patterson looks like the kind of fresh-faced enthusiastic person one would want leading a grade school. Deep down, I wonder what he thinks about tearing down the historic building where he works, and if his students succeed in learning about school design and architectural history in that class, what they will remember about what their parents tried to do.

Riverdale board votes to demolish school by legendary Portland architect

In the words of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, "The horror. The horror."

Four of five board members at Riverdale Grade School, which was designed by the great and seminal Portland architect A.E. Doyle, have voted to tear the one-of-a-kind historic building.

If I were speaking only in symbolic terms, I might as well write that the school agreed to impale itself. My goodness what an outrageous display of short-sightedness, of irrevocable damage to the community, to the architectural history of Portland, and to the past, present and future kids studying there.

"I believe replacement is fundamentally the best option," board Chairman Chris Hall (no relation to Neville Chamberlain) told Kimberly Melton in an article from today's Oregonian. He said renovation would expose the school to too much financial risk. According to the article, renovating the structure would have put the district at least $500,000 over budget. "I see more potential with a lower number that gives us the most flexibility and starts us fresh from a campus perspective."

I'm especially troubled if the $500,000 is the sticking point. Riverdale is situated in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the Portland metro area. And besides that, America is about to see one of its biggest influxes of public works spending from the incoming Obama administration in order to save the downward spiraling economy. Is Riverdale's board really saying that half a million is the difference between preserving irreplaceable architectural history and erecting a cookie cutter new campus? Besides, this is a school that just approved a $20 million bond in November.

Is it possible to impeach a school board?

Riverdale understandably wants a state-of-the-art sustainable school that will give students there the best possible environment for education, with ample natural light and more efficient use of energy or other resources. But whether it's designed by Mahlum Architects (the firm hired to do the job) or anyone else, they can't replicate the past.

The board has made its decision, but I urge everyone in Portland's architecture community to contact Riverdale and urge them to reconsider. It's not just their school; it's the community's. Riverdale School can be reached by phone at 503-636-4511. The principal's name is Jeremiah Patterson and he can be reached by email at jpatterson@riverdale.k12.or.us.

Meanwhile, maybe we had better start keeping a sentry of some sort at Portland's other architectural landmarks, in case a Riverdale board member comes threatening the Portland Art Museum, or the Doyle designed Central Library, or Pioneer Courthouse Square. After all, if this is their attitude about historic preservation, what's to stop them from blitzkrieging the rest of our treasures? At this point, I'm thinking they may have been in on that eruption that destroyed Mt. St. Helens back in 1980.

Despite my rhetoric of anger, shock and frustration, obviously the people volunteering for the school board at Riverdale aren't actually bad people. I'm sure they want the best for their children and the community. They no doubt believe they're discarding a dusty old relic to create a proper learning environment. They've seen the evidence that sustainable schools foster better learning. They want all the best amenities for the school and the most flexible, efficient use of space, not to be caretakers of some chilly old brick schoolhouse of yesteryear. They're just, in my obviously biased opinion, tragically wrong. Their decision reminds me of a quote by Mark Twain: "Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty."

Portland has enjoyed a long history of historic preservation that has seen buildings in places like the Skidmore and Yamhill historic districts preserved. In recent years, though, that track record has become spottier. This Riverdale demolition is another decision that, even if the current school board is firm on board with, their grandchildren will regret.

Leftbank has the right idea

After the annual Time-Based Art Festival concluded in September, I didn’t expect a return visit to the decaying old cluster of buildings by the Rose Garden where TBA located its temporary Works bar and performance space. But as it happens, there’s a lot more to Leftbank than just TBA. It’s about to become the next big renovation of an old Portland warehouse into a Mecca for the creative class.

Leftbank consists of three buildings that sit on a kind of automobile island with the Rose Garden to the south, Vancouver Avenue and an I-5 offramp to the east, Broadway and the Portland Public Schools parcel to the north, and the river (and Broadway Bridge) west. This is actually the most frequently seen architecture in Portland because of the amount of cars that pass Leftbank regularly. Yet it’s for the last several years or even decades been the kind of boarded-up architecture one goes right past and doesn’t even notice.

Leftbank’s most notable architecture is clearly the Hazelwood building, which was built in 1923 and designed by legendary Portland architect A.E. Doyle. The Hazlewood is notable outside for its arched windows, and has a very colorful past. Doyle, along with Pietro Belluschi, is Portland's most accomplished and important architect. Particularly as Riverdale School goes forward with its ludicrous, ill-advised, backward-thinking, hopelessly bad idea to demolish its prize Doyle-designed school, it's very refreshing to see a developer take a Doyle building with less pedigree and in worse physical shape and make it sing for generations to come. The people behind Leftbank could "school" Riverdale's board on civic history and preservation.

Doyle's Hazelwood building first housed a fashionable restaurant of the same name with a bakery, creamery and confectionary above. The City Club of Portland used to hold some of its earliest meeting there. A decade later, it transformed into a beer parlor and was later occupied by a variety of tenants: the Home Owners Improvement Co., Century Metalcraft Corporation, and St. John’s Welder Supplies. But it’s in 1945 that the real fun came via its new occupant: the Dude Ranch, which would become Portland’s premier jazz club. In his book Jumptown: The Golden Years of Portland Jazz 1942-57, Robert Dietsche writes,

“There never was and there never will be anything quite like the Dude Ranch. It was the Cotton Club, the Apollo Theater, Las Vegas, and the Wild West rolled into one. It was the shooting star in the history of Portland jazz, a meteor bursting with an array of the best Black and Tan entertainment this town has ever seen.”

After the Dude Ranch closed a few years after its opening, Mutual Wholesale Drug Co. bought the two existing buildings and added a third structure in the L-shaped leftover space made by the other two buildings, and opened connections between them. It’s been a few more companies’ home since then, but has largely sat empty.

I visited Leftbank a few days ago with Andy Powell, who is not the building owner but acting as a kind of hybrid developer-designer in collaboration with the owner, Daniel Deutsch. DiLoreto Architecture is the architect of record in a renovation that will see a variety of tenants representing new, cool Portland: a microbrewery, a bicycle frame-building school, and so on. The developers have been strategic and deliberate about finding not just any tenants, but ones that will comprise a vibrant community in the building.

If all goes according to plan, Leftbank will upon completion have the same rich but rough-around-the-edges feel of warehouse renovations into creative flex space like Beam Development's Eastbank Commerce Center and Beam's Olympic Mills Commerce Center with Works Partnership. Powell stresses that this project is "mission-driven" rather than "commerce-driven," however.

Indeed, Leftbank is an intriguing rabbit warren of spaces given how three buildings have been connected. In one building, for example, you see what was once an outdoor advertisement for a motor oil company before more space was added on. There are stair treads re-milled from old Douglas fir in the floors and beams. There is exposed brick everywhere and, even better, a palette of unique clay blocks that give the interior an unexpected texture. There are also dramatic wide-open spaces at Leftbank, free of columns and revealing huge unfettered floor plans.

I’m very interested in Leftbank’s location as well, not only the challenges it faces today but the promise this site holds for the future. As we all know, the Rose Quarter needs to better integrate into the urban fabric; it’s even more of an island than Leftbank. But having people working and hanging out here will help, as will the eventual redevelopment of the Portland Public Schools land across Broadway. Moreover, the ugly concrete Rose Garden parking garage could eventually be torn down and, along with the Coliseum’s surface parking, be turned into a new high density residential or office building. There is also the dilapidated old hotel across from Leftbank and the Rose Garden that has previously housed its employees and now, I believe, is used by Central City Concern to house the less fortunate.

All told, this is a huge amount of untapped potential. Given the proximity here to downtown, to the river, to both Northeast and Southeast as well, to two freeways and a MAX line nearby, the area surrounding Leftbank ought to eventually become a much more vibrant, pedestrian oriented area that’s thriving not only with basketball games and monster truck pulls, but a distinct place where people live, work and play. Right now Leftbank’s location is somewhat of a hindrance, but in the future it will be a gold mine.

I took the photos you see above during my recent visit, but here are some historic shots of the building, provided by Andy Powell and Leftbank...

A.E. Doyle's Riverdale School threatened with demolition (updated)

Although not as internationally renowned as his protege, Pietro Belluschi, A.E. Doyle is every bit as important to Portland architecture. The list of buildings he designed in our city is a list of irreplaceable landmarks: Central Library (1912), the Benson Hotel (1913), the Meier & Frank building (1909), and much more. The guy designed 35 buildings in Portland.

But in tony Dunthorpe, one of Doyle's signature designs, Riverdale Grade School, is now under threat of demolition. The biggest threat? Riverdale's own school board. Earlier this month a $21.5 million bond measure was passed for upgrades to the facility. The board has recommended that Doyle's school be demolished and replaced with new buildings.

Luckily there is already a grassroots effort underway to save the original Riverdale. As the Daily Journal of Commerce reported on Friday, last week a petition with 540 signatures arguing for preservation of Riverdale was submitted to the board.

Dunthorpe is fortunate to have plenty of funds to enhance the learning environment of children attending Riverdale. Apparently the school needs more space, which is understandable. And considering how studies show that students literally learn better (higher average test scores) in green buildings with abundant natural light, it's natural to seek that kind of architecture.

However, given the historical significance and understated beauty of Doyle's 1920 Riverdale school, the solution here seems to be a compromise: renovate the original buildings, but add on to the space with new architecture as well.

If Riverdale is not designated a historic landmark, that makes it harder to preserve. But it also might make compromise easier. What if the original school were a brighter, greener building after being upgraded?

Speaking of upgrades, Doyle himself oversaw two renovations of Riverdale in 1923 and 1927. The second renovation was overseen by Pietro Belluschi, who became Doyle's principal designer that year; Doyle passed away in 1928. That means there's extra pedigree to the architecture: not just Doyle but Belluschi too.

Mahlum Architects was hired by Riverdale before the bond measure to design a replacement.

Now let me ask this: Sure, the economy is tumbling, and architecture firms need work. Mahlum has designed many high quality K-12 schools and university buildings. They could surely design new educational facilities for Riverdale that would please the board, students and parents. But if Mahlum participates in a project that necessitates demolition of historic architecture by one of the city's all-time greatest architects, do they bear a responsibility in the tragedy of the Doyle loss? I'm not saying they necessarily do. Quite honestly I'm not sure the right answer here. But the first thought I had when learning Doyle's building was threatened and Mahlum was signed on to design the replacement was, if I were running Mahlum I would pull out of the job as a matter of principle. But again, it's easy for me to say sitting here in my sweat pants. Even so, Mahlum's LeRoy Landers said at the last school board meeting, "Saving the Doyle is the thread running through every person in this room." Right on, LeRoy.

According to the DJC article by Sam Bennett, the Riverdale board has a meeting scheduled for today and could decide right then and there to approve the new school and Doyle demolition. Or they could postpone the decision and decide to study a possible renovation.

If you'd like to make your voice heard, Riverdale School can be reached by phone at 503-636-4511. The principal's name is Jeremiah Patterson and he can be reached by email at jpatterson@riverdale.k12.or.us.

Update 11/25: The Riverdale board has postponed its decision until December 15. Meanwhile, there is now  an online petition to save Riverdale school, at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savedoyle/

Newly discovered early-career Pietro Belluschi buildings at Mt. Hood

Wednesday evening at Froelick Gallery, longtime Pietro Belluschi scholar Libby Dawson Farr will give a 6:30PM presentation on some new buildings in Oregon discovered to be the work of Belluschi, the top architect of Portland's past.

Farr has authenticated a series of plans out of AE Doyle's office (Doyle of course was a Portland architecture legend himself, responsible for Central Library, the Meier & Frank building, and much more) for some simple camp buildings on the way to Mt. Hood near Sandy, used principally by girl scout troupes over the years. 

According to Farr, for Camp Namanu Belluschi designed four structures, which she descibrs as "woodsy, appropriate to the woods and trees and terrain." The designs came just after Belluschi arrived in Portland from Italy. "They weren't given Job Numbers, as I have the entire catalogue of Doyle and Belluschi's office work, and there is only one mention of Camp Fire in the oldest of the list of works," Farr says. "But even in 1927-29, and in the 1930s Belluschi was already designing very simple buildings similar to the barns he loved so much. And even when he was designing some classical revival things for Doyle's office, he designed these buildings and they are the beginning of the Northwest Style, earlier than his houses and churches.

I will post photographs of the buildings as they become available, but you can also see the work in Farr's presentation tonight. Now more than ever I can say, "Way to go, Libby!"

Skyscrapers versus mothballs: City contemplates added density for Skidmore historic district

The city of Portland is considering a series of code amendments in the Skidmore/Old Town area that would allow taller buildings and greater density. The city council is set to vote on the matter this week. And they're receiving conflicting messages of support and opposition from within.

The city's Planning Commission has endorsed the code amendment, which would increase maximum building heights and floor-area-ratios on select sides around the edges of the district, which is one of only two in Portland to be on the National Register of Historic Places and a National Historic Landmark due to its concentration of historic iron-age buildings there. It's also got the Skidmore Fountain (pictured below in a shot by Aaron Ziltener borrowed off Flickr).

What's key to know about the proposed height increases, though, is that they would come only off the transfer of development "air rights" from existing historic buildings. In other words, we'd only be allowing extra height in new buildings that's unused by the smaller old works of architecture. Say historic building #1 is 100 feet tall but allowed to be 200 feet. That means the new skyscraper can go 300 feet, using the allowed 200 and the 100 unused by the historic building.

Even so, the city's Historic Landmarks Commission is opposed to the code amendment. In a letter to Mayor Potter (you know, the guy keeping Sam's seat warm after Vera left), HLC chair Art DeMuro and his fellow committee members wrote:

"The Skidmore/Old Town Historic District is where the City of Portland began. It is truly one of the most special places in the city, featuring signature works of architecture, intimate open spaces around the Skidmore Fountain, and unique streets not found anywhere else in the city. In order to acknowledge, celebrate and protect its robust collection of buildings with intricate cast iron facades, the district was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977 in recognition of its national historic significance. It is one of only two such nationally designated landmarks in the City of Portland."

"The Landmarks Commission recognizes that there are numerous sites for potential redevelopment within the district—sites currently used for surface parking—that present challenges to the district's continuity and character. However, the Commission believes that the City’s first duty is to “do no harm” to the character of the historic district, and to preserve and enhance the quality of the district’s historic structures and scale. The vitality and future success of this neighborhood is directly related to reinforcement of a cohesive historic identity and not in blurring the perception of the district."

I'm glad to see people out there fighting to protect the integrity of a historic downtown district. But I also don't see any harm in some taller buildings accompanying historic ones. In fact, I see one complementing the other. What's more, I believe the city has an implicit responsibility to re-invigorate the Skidmore district after abandoning the Fire Station 1 design competition that would have helped transform and improve the built environment there with density and compelling contemporary design.

What do the rest of you think: Should we leave the Skidmore historic district alone and place top priority on preserving the old buildings there, or is it putting the area in mothballs to resist its being part of a high density 21st century city?

One other part of this story is that, as of a recent decision involving the Irvington Squire condo project, the city now believes that legally, historic design guidelines trump zoning strictures. This may give the Landmarks Commission a leg up.

Morgan Building strip-down: BOORA's new LEED Platinum office

Whenever an architecture firm gets to work on its own new or remodeled office space, it's an opportunity: to show the firm's prowess, to work without the constraints of a client, and to change the culture of the firm itself. In recent years firms like SERA Architects and Thomas Hacker Architects have done just that with ultra-green new office jobs, while Zimmer Gunsul Frasca and Ankrom Moisan have new HQs in the works for the next year or two.

BOORA Architects thought building a better office would entail moving out of their leased space in the Morgan Building downtown, on SW Washington just around the corner from Broadway. After all, it was an old building they didn't own. But after extensive research into the building itself, negotiations with the Morgan's owner, and a thorough examination of where BOORA's employees live and how they arrive at the office, the firm decided to stay put.

However, if you visited the BOORA office before its renovation and see it today after a $2.5 million renovation, these are two very different spaces occupying the same 26,000 square feet.

In the old office, the entry lobby provided not the slightest glimpse of architects working. Today one can look in any direction coming out of the elevator and see wide open spaces, tall exposed ceilings, beautifully rough-textured wood and concrete, and a focus on communal teamwork over individual desk work.

As it happens, the circa-1913 Morgan Building was designed and built before air conditioning was prevalent and when electric light could be unreliable. So it had excellent preconditions for two very important 21st century green building needs: natural daylight and ventilation. An independent analysis by engineering giant Arup (collaborators with Koolhaas, Foster Herzog & De Meuron and virtually every famous architect working today) confirmed that it had ideal green possibilities. 

The Morgan was designed by legendary early 20th Century Portland architect A.E. Doyle, whose firm was then called Doyle, Patterson & Beach. Doyle also designed the Central Library, Benson Hotel, US National Bank, Meier & Frank building and numerous other downtown landmarks. Pietro Belluschi also got his start in Doyle's office.

The brick and terra cotta Morgan building is E-shaped on the back, so it allows natural illumination to penetrate deeply into the space. Once BOORA took out the ceiling, revealing another three feet of space, they were halfway there to a much more pleasant environment. But they left the giant concrete columns exposed, which both figuratively and literally anchor the space.

The natural ventilation system is rooted in operable windows, but that's not where things end. BOORA installed exterior temperature sensors to alert employees to when outside temperatures are ideal for opening the window, and then when they do, ceiling fans spread around the air. (That could also work well when someone has too much chili for lunch.)

BOORA's office renovation isn't just physical, either. Traditionally the firm has operated like a series of small studios, each headed by a particular principal. It's felt in the past, for example, like Heinz Rudolf runs an in-house firm designing green K-12 schools. John Meadows, Stan Boles, Michael Tingley and others divide up the various condos, university projects and arts facilities. or something along those lines. But the new office emphasizes that everyone works or at least weighs in on every project.

In that way, BOORA's new office and the culture they're trying to create seems to resemble a lot of firms, particularly the larger sized ones, in endeavoring to create a more collaborative, democratic design environment. After all, if you're a talented young architect, where would you rather work: at a place where the principals make all the key decisions, or one where you have a voice?

Right now BOORA is heavily involved in work at Stanford University, and they also have their second large condo for Hoyt Street Properties about to complete: The Encore. The firm has been around for many, many years. In fact, their 50th anniversary is this year. Having the right kind of office is, as for any company, the way to insure they stay around for another 50.

Being downtown also affords BOORA some nice views of the central city. I took these shots on a recent visit. Sure beats the dumpster my office looks out on. The above images, by the way, were provided by the firm.

Triangle and Fitzgibbon Glass: visiting two NW Portland warehouse conversions beneath the Fremont bridge

Michael Flowers and Judson Moore both grew up in west Texas and attended Texas A&M. After graduation, they followed a professor to Montana State University and briefly taught there. Ultimately they set up practice in Portland, but many times drove back and forth between College Station, Texas (home of A&M), Bozeman, Montana (just like the hero of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), and Portland.

As a result, they came to love, as legendary French architect Le Corbusier did when he visited the United States a century or so ago, the simple agricultural silos and other architecture. It make sense: Texas A&M's team is of course the Aggies. It's for that reason, and their west Texas heritage, that their new-ish architecture firm, established last July, is called Farm Architecture and Research. I found this a personal bond as well, having been raised in McMinnville and having farmers in the family. I don't miss living in cow country, but I love some of the old agricultural buildings in my old 'hood.

Moore and Flowers came to think of Bozeman, College Station and Portland as a personal geographic triangle, and coincidentally, one of their first completed building projects as Farm Architecture is for the Triangle Building, a renovated warehouse at 1800 NW 16th Avenue near the base of the Fremont Bridge where Naito Parkway meets Thurman Street in Northwest Portland (the building is pictured in these first three shots, all of which were provided by the firm).

Visiting today with Tim McCarron of Pettigrove Venture, the developer, we started in a coffee shop on the ground floor of the Triangle that was designed with another small firm, Bolighus (whose work I already liked and blogged about here a couple years ago). There is also space above and behind the cafe for creative and building industry tenants, or whomever.

The architects and developer apparently wrestled with whether to seek National Register status for the LEED Silver-rated building, but decided against it because they wanted to add larger window openings. And whether it's inside the cafe or upstairs, I can vouch for it being a good decision, at least as it relates to being inside the building. For an old brick warehouse, it's teeming with natural light.

All of the brick was left exposed, as were the old wood-framed ceilings. All of the wood flooring is from timber reclaimed onsite. It's really a lovely little building.

A couple blocks away I also paid a visit to another warehouse-to-creative-flex-space conversion by the same developer. The Fitzgibbon Glass building at 2001 NW 19th Avenue is a LEED Platinum-rated renovation. These next six shots, the first of which was provided by the developer (I took the rest) are of the Fitzgibbon.

On its public corner, the building is a pretty reserved but well-done version of a standard warehouse turnaround, but the back parking lot (which they hope to eventually expand the building into, as the original client, Nau apparel, was planning before going out of business (since resurrected but owned by someone else). On that back side, there are a succession of double-height spaces for lease, and an elevator core at the corner clad in natural wood panels. The architect for this project was Stem Architecture of Portland, which frankly I don't know anything about yet but hope to find out.

Nearby the Triangle Building and Fitzgibbon Glass building is not only the base of the Fremont Bridge, but train tracks, Naito Parkway, and a succession of new waterfront condos, as well as numerous industrial buildings such as a gear manufacturer. There is also a Montessori school across from the Triangle, and while we were at the cafe, a group of the kids were playing basketball on a playground in front of us, with a train going by behind that and the river further back still, not to mention the cars moving by overhead on the bridge. 

It's a subtly incredible intersection of cars, trains, and boats as well as industrial and burgeoning condo districts. 

And nearby on the other side of the Fremont Bridge's base, you'll soon have the Northern edge of the Pearl District, an open-field park, and the Centennial Mills redevelopment. 

This is one of those sleepy little areas of close-in Portland that is about to wake up, it seems, in a big way. And it's often these kinds of slightly out-of-the-way or in-between pockets of land where smaller firms such as Farm and Stem get a chance to show what they can do. Funny how in Portland how these tiny industrial pockets and million-dollar condovilles can be right next to each other.

You call this a "preservation triumph"?

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood because of Greg Oden's injury last night. But turning from the sports section to an editorial in today's Oregonian didn't help matters. 

The editorial hails the saving of the Ladd Carriage House, which was moved back to its original location on SW Broadway a few days ago, as a "preservation triumph". "The city owes thanks to a church, developer, and group of activists who saved the Ladd Carriage House."

I'd love to join in the applause if it weren't ignoring the other half of the story.

The editorial also begins by quoting a 1988 Oregonian article by Mike Francis on preservation in downtown Portland:

"In Portland's core, where the preservation movement has largely run its course, civic leaders seem satisfied to retain the flavor of old Portland in carefully bounded pockets, such as in the Yamhill and Skidmore-Old Town Historic Districts. Elsewhere, almost any city block...is in play. If the right deal comes along, new buildings will supplant structures that have the ill fortune of having been built on the wrong lot."

Today's editorial argues that a "tip of the hat" for the fact that such rules apparently don't apply any more: that new buildings no longer supplant old ones cursed with being on the wrong lot.

But as I've mentioned many times before, in response to the wave of back-patting being done about the Ladd Carriage House, there was a beautiful building right next door to the Ladd Carriage House torn down: the Rosefriend Apartments. Quite simply, a new building supplanted this one because it had the ill fortune of having been built on the wrong lot.

I'd suggest maybe the Oregonian editorial writers forgot about the Rosefriend Apartments if not for the fact that the building was directly across the street from The Oregonian's offices. 

I can see lauding the Ladd Carriage House effort. I'm glad too that it was saved. But I am fed up with people trying to re-write Portland's preservation history and say this was only a win because the Carriage House was saved. Imagine if the paper reported on the Blazers' 20-point opening night loss Tuesday evening but didn't mention that Greg Oden hurt his foot 13 minutes into his first game after a year's wait because of another injury? 

In the best possible scenario, this was one win and one step back. But to read the editorial's rhetoric, you'd think there was no controversy, no disappointment, no tragedy, not even a slightly raised heartbeat or even the tiniest hint of mixed emotions.

Here are two videos so you can decide for yourself. The first is The Oregonian's footage of the Ladd Carriage House being moved. The second is of the Rosefriend being destroyed. What does the footage tell you?

Demolition of the Rosefriend Apartments from Brian Libby on Vimeo.

I know some people must be tired of me bringing up the Rosefriend, or of me raining on the Ladd Carriage House's parade. But every time I tell myself I'm going to forget about it, somebody comes bounding in unqualified enthusiasm about how great it was to save the Carriage House, without ever even mentioning the complicating factor of the Rosefriend. We already lost the building itself. Can't it at least have a place in the history and memory of the city without this story being white-washed?

Have you visited the Ford Building....lately?

When it was originally built in 1915, the Ford Building at 2505 SE 11th Avenue at Division was just that: an assembly plant for Ford automobiles, and the only one in Oregon. They built Model Ts here, Falcons, and maybe even an Edsel or two.

Now, courtesy of Portland's Emerick Architects and a California developer, the massive 82,000 square foot brick building has new life as a flexible office and retail space intended for creative industries. And indeed, when I visited recently, strolling through the several floors and cavernous halls, it seemed like nearly every one of the scores of units was occupied by some sort of photographer, yoga studio, or web design company.

The Ford Building also is also calling upon one of its tenants, Gallery Homeland, to curate art for all of the public areas in the building, of which there is a lot: more than 5,000 square feet. I recently reviewed one of the current shows, by artist Susan Murrell, for The Oregonian, and was taken by what an installation opportunity this building is. The Ford isn't the first old warehouse conversion that has filled its public spaces with art; Beam Development's Works Partnership-designed Eastbank Commerce Center and Olympic Mills Commerce Center warehouse rehabs in the Central Eastside do much the same. Still, it's an encouraging trend.

Emerick Architects has done a few other noteworthy building renovations in the past, such as the circa-1920s Porter Building in the Pearl District, a new-old headquarters for Grand Central Baking near the burgeoning North Mississippi area, and a grand old Masonic temple that's become the headquarters for SEIU local 503 (and I love the idea of working-class union guys taking over for weird elitist Masons). The firm's Northwood Home along the Willamette was also the first house in the area to receive the US Green Building Council's LEED for Homes designation.

But chances are the Emericks (principals Brian and Melody) won't ever design and/or renovate a building of this scale again, unless somebody comes calling for a stadium or a blimp hangar. The Ford Building also occupies a unique site that's somewhat removed from the rest of the Central Eastside, which lies to the west and north. The Ford occupies a small stretch of Division Street at 12th Avenue that, with Genie's restaurant, Lovecraft Biofuels and Ramekin's Cafe (among others), is becoming one of numerous little retail clusters scattered throughout Portland's neighborhoods.

Although the brick facade and the massive scale are impressive, ultimately the Ford Building will benefit from more storefront retail on the ground level. It's an imposing structure with too much streetfront space shut off to the outside. But as businesses like Seyta Selter's terrific Dutchess clothing/tailor shop (home of the swell $500 individually tailored suit) occupy some of that retail frontage, the Ford will really come alive even more -- and not just when one a freight train rumbles just a few feet outside.

It's been decades since Ford Motor Company produced any automobile designs to get me excited. You'd probably have to go back to the late '60s Mustang for that. (It could be worse, though: they're not GM or Chrysler. Have you seen the PT Cruiser? Or the Chevy HHR? Eeewww!) But the Ford Building seems to epitomize much of what's right not only with preservation in Portland, but those occupying the spaces.

[UPDATE 10/15: I'm also adding some photos below (in addition to my own) provided by Val Ballestrom of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation]

Visiting the Center for Architecture

Although I've been to the American Institute of Architects' new Center for Architecture in the Pearl District several times since it opened earlier this year, last week I was given a tour by one of the architects involved in the design, Dave Otte of Holst Architecture.

Fist, though, in proper disclosure: AIA/Portland is a leading sponsor of this weblog and a former employer of mine. Although Portland Architecture is a blog and not journalism, I want to be upfront about the fact that I'm writing about a sponsor here. Particularly in its new home, the Center For Architecture seems very relevant to local architects and design enthusiasts as a place to connect.

Occupying what was originally a brick horse stable on 11th Avenue, and much more recently also was home to the SK Josefsberg photography gallery, the CFA is defined by its spatial flexibility and sustainable design and construction. 

The 5,000 square foot project is slated to earn a Platinum LEED rating from the US Green Building Council.

In addition to Otte, the design team also included architects and past AIA/Portland presidents Stan Chesshir, Nancy Merryman and Doug Benson as well as Brian White of Architecture W. "It definitely was a lot of cooks in the kitchen," Otte told me. "It made it a more lengthy process, but I think it was still better for it, getting all of those ideas into one project."

At the old AIA space on 4th Avenue, the many committee and community meetings held there were in the back of the space; here, they're upfront along a bank of large windows. Coupled with numerous skylights that are outfitted with movable louvers, the natural light is more than plentiful enough to render artificial lights unnecessary.

A massive rainwater collection system stores water underground, and the water tank itself includes a system of steel beams that actually provide support for the rest of the building (a seismically bracing wall was removed during construction for more openness). An underground forced-air HVAC system delivers heating and cooling, while the concrete floors (poured with a high concentration of recycled fly ash) hold their thermal mass to prevent any temperature extremes.

On the exterior (pictured above in a shot by Katy Cannatelli - the interior shots are mine), there is also a green or living wall beginning to grow on a vertical trellis. The system was originally supposed to be flashier, with a metal and modern-looking apparatus. But for budgetary reasons it was cut back, and as it happens, this simpler trellis seems more fitting anyway.

This month the in-house gallery at the CFA features a display on the design and construction of the building. And this Friday afternoon at 4PM, the Center For Architecture will also play host to a salon and discussion with Eric Cugnart of Mulvanny G2 Architecture on the proposed SMART Tower.

Next time you're out gallery or restaurant hopping in the Pearl, check out the Center For Architecture. And although it's an AIA office and gallery now, the CFA may be poised to become its own nonprofit organization promoting the cause of design in Portland. Congratulations to Saundra "Big S" Stevens, the longtime AIA executive director, as well as the rest of the AIA staff, the CFA's financial and design supporters, on a job well done.

Checking the signs

Two vintage retail signs marking seemingly long-gone businesses have come under threat lately.

The first and most prominent one, for the Hung Far Low restaurant at NW Couch Street and 4th Avenue in Old Town, is already down. But it's the one with a safer-looking future. The Portland Mercury's Sarah Mirk first reported the unintendedly sophomoric laugh-inducing sign being taken down last Friday. Although Hung Far Low moved to 82nd Avenue three years ago (part of a larger migration by the Chinese community from Old Town eastward), and didn't need the old sign, it has become a quietly beloved part of the neighborhood topography. 

There's good news, though. Walking past the Hung Far Low corner (so to speak) over the weekend, I found a small notice taped to the window; it explained that the sign had to be removed because of disrepair, but that it was being fixed up and would be re-installed. Obviously we can only breathe easy when that promise is fulfilled and the sign is back, but perhaps the alarm bells needn't sound just yet.

The other sign, which Sarah Mirk also blogged about for the Mercury last week, is for Ryan Gwinner Press on Northeast Seventh Avenue near Broadway. Although the sign stands alone several yards from a delapidated home on the same lot, it turns out there really is still a business by that name operating in the house. However, in this case the sign is either already torn down or will be soon by none other than Richard Gwinner, who runs the stamping, embossing and foiling business.

"Back in the 50s, the sign was neon," Mirk explains. "But once the tubes broke, the family never replaced them and since then it's been slowly becoming a beautiful safety hazard."

The issue of saving old retail signs last came up a few months ago during the case of the former Crown Motel, which was razed to make way for the new Patton Park Apartments, a new affordable housing project. In that case, the sign was saved when someone agreed to store it. But there was some quandary about whether REACH Community Development and SERA Architects, the developer and architect, might have tried to keep the Crown Motel sign right where it was.

As we see more signs like Ryan Gwinner Press taken down, though, it feels more like there needs to be a safe have for these signs, and that some day a collection of these restored 20th Century auto-age artifacts would make a fun display and attraction. There's been talk of a design museum in Portland; might the signs be collected there someday? Or perhaps something more lowbrow and low-tech is needed, like a graveyard for signs where they could be seen by the public but allowed to continue aging. At a certain point, the patina that has developed on these signs is an inseparable part of them. What's the best way to preserve such signage?

Grand opening and first impressions at UO's White Stag block

Today begins a four-day grand opening celebration for the University of Oregon's new home at the renovated White Stag block, in Old Town at Naito Parkway and Couch Street beside the Burnside Bridge.

I got a jump on the proceedings by visiting yesterday. Overall I like this project a lot. It was designed by Fletcher Farr Ayotte of Portland along with the university. And I think it will be a tremendous step forward for the University of Oregon in Portland and for the school of architecture.

It's also exciting to think of how this will invigorate the Old Town area, particularly its relationship with the waterfront. Having the school there will also transform not just the buildings, but the feel of being in this place. The Oregon College of Oriental Medicine is also set to move in nearby in a year or two, so this stretch of Old Town will soon be crawling with students. And that should mean a new generation of retail, restaurants and other amenities moving in too.

I really loved the public spaces created by the White Stag. As one enters, there is a dramatic stairway that defines the ground floor space. Even better is a skylight there that actually exists in the space between the White Stag and its adjacent buildings. So when you look up, the skylight seems like a small winter garden as it canopies between the old brick facades. Standing here, bathed in natural light with a blend of new and old architecture so visible is a joy.

Crossing Naito, I also really enjoyed seeing the building from Waterfront Park. This building isn't big enough to occupy a big presence on the skyline, but because it fronts the park and the water, it's part of the skyline's front row. That these late 19th and early 20th Century buildings are being well preserved by people like developer Art DeMuro (whose Venerable Properties developed this project) and developer Jim Winkler is a major credit to Portland. Buildings like this also make a wonderful contrast with newer contemporary architecture, at least when the latter doesn't try to kowtow by deliberately looking old.

Oh, and this project has just been awarded LEED 'Gold' certification from the US Green Building Council. Never easy for historic preservation to pull off.

Other aspects of the project, though, seem less successful - at least to me. For example, although the White Stag building looks out at Naito Parkway, Waterfront Park and the Japanese American Historic Plaza memorial, with retail frontage of the ground floor Duck Shop, you can't enter the building that way. All the doors are locked. Virtually the same goes for the connecting door with First Avenue and the MAX stop right outside. When I walked out that door, it would let me out but was locked as I tried to re-enter.

Instead, the only way to enter the building is through a side entrance on Couch Street. They've put a little modern canopy over the door and hung a long, tall sign outside as well. But I'm sorry: it just seems totally absurd to lock all the doors except for on Couch. I understand that the university is concerned about security, and that having everyone enter through one door allows them to keep a measure of control. Even so, the feeling I get from that entrance is not just that it feels architecturally incorrect, but that the university is at least implicitly saying, "We've made this move down to Old Town, where there are a lot more vagrants and dirty people walking around, so we're going to hedge our bets by putting the clamp-down on our security, just in case."

If any of those undesirables do make it past security, though, they can recline in the lobby on a quartet of Eames lounge chairs. These babies retail for $3,600 to $4,500 apiece on the Design Within Reach website. Was the budget for White Stag sizable enough to spend over $15,000 on four chairs, or was there a donation made? (And if it's the latter, where do I get mine?)

Moving through the rest of the building into its upper floors, I was also surprised at the lack of transparency. Most of these spaces, as I understand it, are classrooms and offices. I can't speak to all the functional needs here, and of course this is a historic building with a different feel from open-spaced newer buildings. Even so, I'd have liked to see much more done to bring natural light, both its illumination and its visual connection to the outside, brought further into the space. 

The one exception is the top two floors, where the architecture department holds court. Standing up here, where you can see the view outside even from the elevators in the middle of the building, was what I imagined I'd experience in much more of the upper portion of the building. However, a friend formerly at UO expressed to me some concern that there's not enough pin-up space or studio privacy in this area. Indeed, there's a difference between the kind of visual evaluation/reaction I give and one based on actually using the space.

My feelings about the architecture may have been somewhat mixed, but I hope it all is taken within the context of being very glad to see this project come to fruition. I'm sure Oregon State would have done a much lesser job.

Oh, and over the next four days, UO will hold several lectures and panel discussions as part of the grand opening. Today brings a lecture called "Urban Planning and Sustainability" with visiting professor Alexander Schmidt. Tommorow (Thursday) brings a lecture called "Placemaking: Lessons From Portland" at noon and a panel discussion at 4PM on media coverage of the presidential race (I particularly love Tina Fey's contributions).  Friday at noon brings a lecture on multimedia history from Dana Plautz, and at 4PM a lecture from German urban planner Thomas Sieverts as part of the "Suddenly" art and literary series. There'll also be a free classical concert that evening at 8. Saturday brings a series of art and architecture exhibitions....and a very tough game for the football team with USC.

Custom House once again up for grabs

The historic U.S. Custom House at 220 N.W. Eighth Ave. is up for grabs once again, as Nathalie Weinstein reported in Monday's Daily Journal of Commerce.

Back in 2005, the US General Services Administration chose two finalists to redevelop the U.S. Customs House, Venerable Properties of Portland and The Pochter Group of Chicago.

Venerable was trying to turn the Custom House into a new home for the University of Oregon Portland center. The Pochter Group plan, which the GSA instead selected, was to turn the building into an 82-room boutique hotel with Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Pochter held the building for two years and Wyndham backed out of the hotel deal.

In July of last year, Pochter then partnered with Marcus Hotels & Resorts of Milwaukee, and the GSA were supposed to sign a new lease with Pochter within 60 to 90 days. But earlier this May, the GSA terminated negotiations with developer Keith Pochter for unannounced reasons.

Built in 1901, the U.S. Customs House was designed by James Knox Taylor and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It's an absolute gem of Portland architecture. James Knox Taylor (1857-1929) was supervising architect of the US Treasury when he designed this building. An advocate of classical design, Taylor worked with Cass Gilbert (architect of the US Supreme Court Building) before establishing his own practice. Building supervisor Edgar Lazarus is well known for his distinctive Vista House design in the Columbia Gorge.

In his Architectural Guidebook to Portland, Bart King writes of the Custom House,

"This massive and somewhat unusually designed building sits regally within a full city block...Variously described as French Renaissance or Italian Renaissance Revival, the ornamentations of this classical, granite-faced building are fascinating. Columns, scrolls, quoins, arches, dentils and keystones abound...Inside, with over 100,000 square feet, there is a lot of building to explore. A 1977 restoration helps the marble and classical plaster moldings welcome the eye, and a grand cast-iron stairway rises to the fourth floor. The top floors of the east and west wings were added in 1938...In 1906, a small metal tower was built near the north chimney that dropped a large 'time ball' at noon each day. Sailors would sight it and set their ship clocks accordingly."

Weinstein reports the GSA will follow a federally mandated disposal process, which begins by offering the building to other federal agencies. GSA public affairs manager Bill Lesh suspects that the building won't be taken by a federal entity, however. "Since the building has been vacant for four years, I don’t believe there will be federal interest," he told the DJC. "A federal agency would also have to spend a lot of money to upgrade the building." Eligible public agencies have 30 days to notify GSA of their interest.

Meanwhile, if we were to do a little quick daydreaming, what architectural future for the Custom House would be best for it and for Portland?

The last time around, I was rooting for UO to get the building instead of it being developed into a hotel, but now the university has already committed itself to its new Old Town location beside the Burnside Bridge. A boutique hotel might be a lot of fun, but I don't see a hotelier being willing to go forward until both the economy improves and North Broadway develops some more. I mean, there's still a boarded up abandoned Burger King at one end of Broadway at Burnside, and vacant lots growing weeds on the other end by Union Station. As the Pacific Northwest College of Art moves in down the street and the vitality of NW Broadway improves, the Custom House will be ideally situated. But I don't know if that future is yet close enough for a private developer to move on the property right now.

Besides a hotel, what else might become of the Custom House? I think most of us can agree we just want the building to be preserved with integrity, and for its occupants to be tied with the surrounding community.

(Note: I usually use my own photos for posts, but in full disclosure, this time around since I din't have any of the Custom House, these photos I gleaned from Flickr.com, in a public account of shots taken by 'Fristle'.)

Ladd Carriage House and the quest for a new historic buildings inventory

Yesterday Fred Leeson had a nice article in The Oregonian about how the 125-year-old Ladd Carriage House will next month be returned to its original location on Broadway. 

The historic building, as many will remember, was moved from its site earlier this year to make way for the Ladd Tower. Originally the site's owner, First Christian Church, filed to demolish the Carriage House, but a group of concerned citizens quickly formed Friends of Ladd Carriage House to help protect the building. And sure enough, the tower plan was altered to save this piece of architecture.

The only problem was what didn't get saved in the course of the Ladd Tower project: the also historic, circa-1907 Rosefriend Apartments, which were leveled earlier this year to make way for the Ladd Tower.

So when I read in Leeson's article about the Ladd Carriage House's return, it was with a cringe that I greeted this quote from Cathy Galbraith, director of the preservation-minded Bosco-Milligan Foundation: 

"This embodies historic preservation at its finest." 

Naturally, she was talking solely about the Ladd Carriage House. And Galbraith is one of the good people in the ongoing historic preservation fight, not at all one of the villains. But I think the Carriage House, no matter how nicely it's restored (once a buyer is found - it's for sale), will always be tainted with the demolition of the Rosefriend Apartments.

Still, I don't mean to cast too dark of a cloud upon the Ladd Carriage House's saving. It's great that it happened. Had we preserved zero on this block instead of half of what needed to be saved, things would have been much worse.

Meanwhile, though, architect Paul Falsetto of Carleton/Hart Architecture, who was instrumental in the Ladd Carriage House being saved and is helping to oversee its restoration, has a good idea about how we can still honor the Rosefriend Apartments that First Christian Church destroyed: create a workable ongoing database of all the historic buildings in Portland. When I first started writing this post, I thought he meant that there was no such list. But it turns out there is such a database, but that it's hopelessly out of date and needs resuscitation.

Falsetto says he would like to see such an effort take place from the impetus of what happened with the Rosefriend. 

The Rosefriend was once on the National Register before its owner had the designation removed, but the apartments been on a citywide database of historic properties we were all collectively keeping an eye on, perhaps attention could have been called to its fate before it was too late.

The idea of such a historic register for Portland buildings is still just in the talking stage. But for those interested in helping to document historic buildings for such a database with photos or other information, please feel free to contact myself or Paul Falsetto at Carleton Hart. With some cooperation, maybe we can improve the chances for the next beautiful old building threatened with the wrecking ball of progress. 

Gorge-ous: visiting post-renovation Vista House

Earlier this week, with family visiting from out of town, I made my first trip to Vista House in the Columbia Gorge since its four-year, $4 million renovation was completed in 2005. And while the view is still the thing at Crown Point, where the octagonal stone 733-foot structure is situated on a cliff overlooking the Columbia, Vista House looks better than it has since your grandparents went there

It was designed by Edgar Lazarus, a Portland architect, in 1915. According to the Friends of Vista House website, the building is an example of German art nouveau architecture. "Native Italian craftsmen built retaining walls and bridges for the Columbia River Highway and laid the rock work surrounding Vista House," they add. 

Besides its shape, the materials are what really make Vista House look enduring and substantial. The floors and stairs in the rotunda and the wainscoting in the lower level are made of Tokeen Alaskan marble. Most of the interior of the rotunda is light cream and pink Kasota limestone (marble), including the hand-carved drinking fountains (which unfortunately are still outfitted with push-button spigots that don't belong there).  The inside of the dome and its supporting ribs were painted to simulate the marble and bronze originally planned for the structure.  The exterior is faced with light gray sandstone. The upper windows and rotunda are made with green opalized glass, in keeping with the original. The roof was originally surfaced with matte-glazed green tiles and covered with a copper crown.  During the exterior restoration, a new glazed green tile roof was installed over a protective dome membrane.

Looking down at the incredible view with an assortment of middle-aged motorcyclists in black leather, young families pouring out of minivans, and senior citizens inching along in their Buicks, it's certainly hard to imagine someday looking down at a casino up the Columbia River a few miles, as has been proposed.

But instead of dwelling on such sobering thoughts, I found myself basking in our East Coast visitor’s sheer awe at the Columbia Gorge, be it the blueness and vastness of the river itself, or the rocky forested canyons surrounding it. "We ran out of adjectives," she told our neighbor as we returned.

 Later on after Vista House, we naturally continued down the Columbia Gorge Scenic Highway with stops at a couple of waterfalls, and then lunch in Hood River at a brewpub overlooking an army of windsurfers and the occasional barge.

And my thighs and calves hurt from all the hiking we've done through Gorge trails, aviation museums, the coast, and central Portland. But it's always nice to be told that the place you live is something akin to a Utopian society. Or at least compared to the Hellertown, Pennsylvania. Still, we may have the progressive lifestyle and gorgeous scenery, but the Keystone State still has the best pierogies.

Writing a new tune for Schnitzer Hall

Sam Bennett reports in today's Daily Journal of Commerce that the Metropolitan Exposition Recreation Commission is considering renovations to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall that would include not only an expansion of the 80-year-old venue (formerly the Paramount Theater), but also the construction of a new outdoor venue on Main Street between the Schnitzer and the Portland Center for the Performing Arts.

A recent request for proposal issued by MERC seeks architects to design "a new iconic venue transforming Main Street...into a cultural center and pedestrian plaza" that "could be used to host small classes, seminars and public outreach programs in a cultural arts district setting."

Conceptually, the idea of an "iconic" venue could be exciting, and a wonderful design opportunity. At the same time, I wonder: would it be worth closing down Main street to auto traffic? Of course one wants downtown to be for pedestrians and mass transit first, and cars only after that. Even so, making one's way west in that area by car is already compromised with the next street over closed to auto traffic for two blocks with the Art Museum and Eliot Tower/YWCA. When you add all the construction happening because of MAX and an endless stream of building projects, it's a lot of time wasted for people behind the wheel.

Currently Main Street between Schnitzer Hall and PCPA is a flexible space that can be shut down to traffic during certain performances or other events, but otherwise remains a drivable street. Isn't that a fair compromise? Or am I underestimating the visual, architectural and cultural power that a new car-free space between these theaters could offer?

And speaking of the Schnitz, I also seem to recall an report issued a few years ago and commissioned by the Oregon Symphony (with a few other arts organizations) that said what Portland needed was an entirely new concert hall. After all, the Schnitz is a converted movie house. How about instead of building on the street between these two facilities, we apply those funds to a magnificent jewel of a new concert hall designed by Brad Cloepfil or a world-class architect?

Personally, I'd rather keep the street and build a new landmark elsewhere. What do the rest of you think?

Parks department chooses Bike Republic for Yeon-designed waterfront building (updated)

It's now official: the city's Parks department has selected Bike Republic as the new occupant of the waterfront Portland Visitors Information Center building designed by the great John Yeon. The new facility will offer bike rentals, repair and amenities like a shower. There will also be a Laughing Planet cafe for all your healthy chicken burrito needs.

This is probably the best use for the site in terms of what people will use on a regular basis, especially with the cyclist-heavy Hawthorne bridge next to the building. The selection is also probably not the best one in terms of architecture. Chet Orloff's museum proposal, the other finalist, is close to the building's original intent. But if Bike Republic is what it takes to save this building from demolition or being moved (which an Oregonian editorial made an ill-advised suggestion of), I say, saddle up!

Has anyone yet heard who will be overseeing the design and construction of this project? Bike Republic's owner, Ken Nichols, will hopefully hire architects who really know historic preservation of mid-century modern buildings. With all due respect to the cyclists, we can't let this little architectural gem become a glorified garage.

 

Update 8-15-08: On the BikePortland blog, Jonathan Maus reports that not all of the Bike Republic details are a done deal yet after all:

Ken Nichols, the developer behind the Bike Republic concept told me via telephone today that he has no official agreement with the Portland Parks Bureau yet. Nichols wants to be clear that the only recent development is that Parks has decided to only negotiate with him from now — but those negotiations are just getting underway....he said he has no plans for showers, locker rooms, or long-term bike parking. “My hope,” he said, “is for a cafe, rentals of human powered vehicles (not just bikes), and bike repair and accessory retail.” In addition, he said that at this point, a Laughing Planet Cafe in the building is not a guarantee.

We'll see.

Weighing the two finalists for Yeon-designed former McCall's site

By the end of this month, the city Parks Bureau will make its recommendation to Commissioner Dan Saltzman on which of two finalists should be selected for redevelopment of the circa-1948 John Yeon-designed Portland Visitors Information Center (more recently McCall's restaurant).

One of the finalists is a facility called Bike Republic and would offer bike parking, rentals and repair, with a Laughing Planet restaurant. I could certainly imagine having a chicken burrito and renting a bike here.

The other finalist is a proposal from retired former Oregon Historical Society head Chet Orloff, who proposes a museum exploring the development of urban landscapes: what makes Portland and other cities successful as urban places.

In an editorial from today, The Oregonian argues against the museum proposal, saying the "concept is good, but the fit with the waterfront isn't." However, Orloff's proposal is much closer to the original Visitors Center program. It's just that museums don't usually get created to fill a building space. What about either an existing organization or a new one looking for a home?

For example, a Nike executive and some other colleagues I've emailed with a few times have been pushing the idea of a design museum in Portland, one that can showcase green architecture but also sneakers and virtual reality, industrial products or graphics. Or perhaps the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art could open a small outlet there, which could also be coordinated with the very popular Time-Based Art festival. That would give PICA a home for exhibitions it has lacked since closing its gallery in the Wieden + Kennedy building.

The bike proposal is also a valid one in that it'd be very likely to generate foot and pedal traffic, thereby reinvigorating the space. Even so, though they note Bike Republic has an admirable passion, will and capital, the Oregonian editorial doesn't throw its support behind that either.

Instead, the editorial board makes note of John Yeon suggesting in 1986, before his death, that the building should be torn down. "We should have taken his advice," the paper writes. "It was begging for just one last visitor. The wrecking ball."  That's right after they call it a "lovely little jewel", by the way.

If Yeon were still alive today, I doubt he would be calling for his building to be torn down. He was reacting to the changeover of Harbor Drive into Waterfront Park. Now that time has passed, it's a natural to have his structure along the water. But even if Yeon stuck to his guns and favored the wrecking ball, he'd be wrong. 

Artists don't always judge their own work well. 

The only other question, once one of the two proposals has been selected, is who will re-design the space. Who do we trust to update and expand Yeon's vision? Who is a top contemporary architect on his or her own with new structures but can also give new life to an old building? We're not just seeking one match here (the tenant) for the building, but two.

415 SW 10th, Mork from Ork's suspenders, and the meaning of historic preservation

Tyler Graf has an article in Tuesday's Daily Journal of Commerce about the "checkerboard" building downtown on 10th Avenue (around the corner from the Ace Hotel), which is being renovated, but possibly signficantly altered as well, by developer Richard Singer and the excellent Holst Architecture. Graf was nice enough to quote me in the article on this favorite building of mine:

“'Coming around the corner and seeing the checkerboard building always makes me smile,'” Libby said. “'It’s an architectural Rubik’s Cube: fun, colorful and a bit puzzling. I totally love it...If Portland gets even a handsome modern building on that site at the expense of the checkerboard, I think an important and wonderful part of the city and its architectural past will be lost.'”

But Graf also has what may be some editorializing of his own in the first paragraph:

"Even though its design looks like it was rubber-stamped by a 1960s-era architect who, during a pique of deadline pressure, let his five-year-old son design it using nothing more than a limited set of Crayons, the building located on the block surrounded by Southwest Washington Street and Southwest Stark streets and Ninth and 10th avenues is still a bit of a Portland institution. Or at least it is to Brian Libby..."

I'm not writing this post because I got mentioned in Tyler's article, or because he and I may disagree about the aesthetic value of this building. But, after receiving a call from one reader asking what he could do to help save the Checkerboard building, I was reminded of an important point.

Graf speaks of the building being hopelessly out of style. He compares the Checkerboard's signature facade to a pair of rainbow-colored suspenders, presumably like the kind Mork From Ork used to wear on Mork & Mindy. I'm not saying Mork's suspenders will ever come back in style, but one has to take more of a long view with history and preservation.

Societies often rush to preserve buildings that are 100 years old, patting themselves on the back for not tearing them down like the heathens of the generation that preceded them. But then those same people are equally eager to demolish buildings 50 years old because they're out of style or character.

The reason there aren't more historic early 20th century buildings around is because people in the 1950s tore them down while they were preserving stuff from the 1850s. People in 1900 saved stuff from 1800 but scoffed at buildings from the 1850s. Obviously I'm over-simplifying here, but this is a general tendency that many historic preservation experts have told to me time and time again.

Of course not every midcentury modern building must be saved. But if you drive around Portland looking for mid-1900s architecture with panel systems like the Checkerboard's, there are fewer and fewer all the time, and none with the Checkerboard's sense of color. Some might find that kind of rainbow-suspender look outdated. But why not give your grandchildren a chance to decide?

Rehab of century-old Calumet Building includes Brasserie Montmartre return

Portland's Vallaster & Corl Architects is overseeing renovation and restoration, complete with a targeted LEED Gold certification of the circa-1907 Calumet Building downtown. (Or as they say in the Calumet's promotional materials, "LEEDS". Why does everyone try to pluralize this acronym?)

The hotel was designed by Portland architect Joseph Jacobberger in a French Renaissance/Edwardian baroque style. It opened just after the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, when Portland was growing fast in both population (which doubled between 1900 and 1910) and sophistication. Rooms rented for $1 per day.

Many also remember the restaurant that long occupied this space, Brasserie Montmarte. The building's new owner, Carl Hoffman, bought the rights to the name and will reopen it, with offices and apartments in the six upper stories. I've also been told the plans call for the building's original five-story atrium to be restored, which would add lots of natural daylight as well as some sense of drama inside. And there will also be an eco-roof.

The developer (Norway Development) and contractor (Bochetti Contracting) are also hiring under-privileged kids to work on the project as a means of learning the construction trade. Not to go all Rachael Ray on you good people, but how cool is that?

This is also a building that could have easily seen the wrecking ball given all the new construction happening nearby, from the Park Avenue West condo tower to the new adjacent park. If not for my bad back, I'd sleep better tonight knowing the Calumet--a lovely little fabric building that's in its way as important to the city as its more prominent landmarks--is hear to stay.

Latest 'Designs On Portland' Talk Features Frank Lloyd Wright's Gordon House

This Wednesday at Design Within Reach (ground floor of the Wieden + Kennedy building at 1200 NW Everett) brings the fourth installment of 'Designs on Portland', a bi-monthly discussion series I am hosting in collaboration with DWR. This time our guest will be Larry Woodin of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy to discuss Wright's Gordon House and the legacy of Wright in Oregon.

As many may remember, the Gordon House is the only Wright-designed building in Oregon. In 2000 the house was threatened with demolition when a local couple purchased it with the intention of tearing down the house and building a new McMansion on the site. Word at the time was that they had never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright, who is pretty much a unanimous choice as America's greatest and most famous architect. The Gordon House, which was designed to take advantage of the adjacent river view as well as a perfectly framed view of Mt. Hood, had to be moved from its original location along the Willamette in suburban Charbonneau to the Oregon Garden near Silverton.

Larry Woodin was among a small handful of people along with Saundra Stevens of AIA/Portland (my old boss) who mobilized to help save the Gordon House from demolition. For our discussion, he'll recall that episode but will also focus on Wright's ongoing legacy in Oregon and for designers at large. What can we learn from Wright that's still relevant today?

Back when the home was threatened, I had the good fortune of spending a day at the Gordon House at its original location while it was photographed by a local historic preservationist, architect Al Staehli. Although the house is very small, particularly by today's standards, it was a real gem. And while it was really too bad the Gordon House had to be dismantled and moved, the house has now been restored and occupies a much more public presence. If you haven't been down to the Oregon Garden to see the house, it's a must for any architecture enthusiast. Plus it's just a couple miles away from what is another of Oregon's best architectural treasures: the Mt Angel Abbey library, the only one of only two American buildings designed by the great Finnish architect Alvar Aalto.

The Conrad and Evelyn Gordon House is based on Wright's "House for a Family of $5-6,000 Income" plan, originally published in a 1938 issue of Life magazine. Designed in 1956 and completed in 1964 after Wright's death, the 2,100-square-foot Gordon House is Lilliputian by today's building standards, but it radiates beauty and craftsmanship in a way that most cavernous houses don't come close to. In other words, Wright knew it's not size that matters but what you do with it.

The Gordon House is far from seminal Frank Lloyd Wright. This isn't Fallingwater or the Guggenheim or the Johnson Wax factory. Even so, Wright was passionate about the Usonian homes such as the Gordon that were designed for the average working family of modest means. In fact, that's ultimately one of the best things about Wright. Here was this genius whose talent was matched only by his own ego, a man who sought to spare no expense when the project called for it, bringing great design to the masses more than most any of his contemporaries or disciples.

The 'Designs on Portland' talk with Larry Woodin begins at 6:30pm, with refreshments served. For more information, I also wrote about the Gordon house back at the time of its move for Architecture Week and Willamette Week, the latter of which brought threats of legal action when I came down hard on the homeowners who had planned to demolish the house. I seem to recall writing that their intentions were like finger-painting over a Picasso canvas.

What To Do With Pamplin's Sliver of Donated, Decimated Ross Island

On her blog PDX Green, Oregonian environmental reporter Shelby Wood has overseen a poll asking Portlanders what to do with Ross Island. As you may recall, this parcel on the Willamette River has been almost completely eradicated from sand and gravel mining there. The island's owner, multi-millionaire Dr. Robert Pamplin, had originally promised to return the whole island to the city, but wound up going back on his word and only donating 45 acres, a fraction of the overall area. At least the government is forcing Pamplin to replace some of the lost soil with what was dug up in the ongoing sewer project..

According to the poll, most Portlanders feel that once Portland gets ahold of Ross Island, we should leave it alone. 33% (246 votes) so far say we should leave the island to the herons and other wildlife. 23% (171 votes) favor limited public access that encourages sightseeing but little else. And 32% (238 votes) want a public beach and recreation spot, available for camping and boating. A pesky 11% voted "other".

There is still time to vote on Ross Island's fate. What would the rest of you choose? Personally, I'd pick the middle option, to allow a couple of trails for humans but overall tread lightly.

Checkerboard Building On 10th To Be Renovated by Richard Singer, Holst Architecture

After years of sitting empty, the building downtown at 415 SW 10th Avenue with its unique facade of colored square panels (I call it the 'Checkerboard') has been purchased with a renovation in mind.

The developer is Dick Singer, who has been active for many years with projects in the NW 23rd Street (or Nob Hill) area. The controversial parking garage on 23rd being haggled over by NIMBY residents and frustrated shoppers is his project.

Singer has hired Holst Architecture for the job, which is a great choice. Holst is really hitting their stride these days with several projects finishing construction or about to begin: Hotel Modera downtown, the Clinton Condos on SE Division, the 937 Condos in the Pearl, and a soon to begin headquarters for Ziba Design in that same neighborhood.

There's just one potential worry, at least as it concerns my admittedly biased point of view. In a phone interview yesterday, Singer told me that the project is in design development and no permanent decisions have been made. He said there have been some design possibilities that include keeping the signature colored panel facade, and other schemes that remove it in favor of something more glassy. It's also undecided whether additional floors would be added. So technically, the unique checkerboard facade faces both its best potential in many years but also a threat.

One thing everybody can probably agree on is that the inside will need to be gutted. Much as I and others love the midcentury modern exterior, there's not much original to preserve on the inside. So there's carte blanche between the walls, I'd assume.

I would love to see a Holst design in this prominent downtown location, steps from Powell's Books, the Ace Hotel, the Brewery Blocks, and Living Room Theaters. I have ever faith that John Holmes and company at Holst could do something great.

But as a longtime fan of this building's exterior, I personally am crossing all my fingers and toes that the colored panels on the outside will be preserved. Is this building a masterpiece? Certainly not. But there's an elegant simplicity to this building's facade, and a playful touch of color lacking in most all other buildings. However shabby it may be inside, 415 SW 10th is a work of delightful sculpture, and a quintessential midcentury modern look that can't ever be completely replicated.

How do the rest of you feel about this project? Am I overboard in affection for this building? If so, the countless people who have contacted me out of concern for the Checkerboard since my previous posts are wrong too. So is the British novelist who bought a print of the photo above after a photography show I had a few years ago. But I respect that there are two sides to every story. What should be the fate of this tarnished little gem?

Warehouse Temple: Visiting Works Partnership's Olympic Mills Commerce Center

Yesterday I made a long-intended visit to the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, the circa-1927 cereal mill that has been renovated by Works Partnership Architecture and Beam Development into a series of flexible creative spaces for mostly design-based tenants. Some rough edges not withstanding, I like this building and its rehab a lot.

The original structure, known since 1950 as the B&O warehouse (for the former Baggage and Omnibus Company), has an eight-story concrete grain elevator and extends to nearly a full city block with its two-story warehouse.

A series of four courtyards cut into the warehouse with skylights to bring in natural light. These double-height courtyards, encircled by second-floor catwalks, are the most pleasant and photogenic portions of the building. They’re clad in slatted wood (made of 2x6 flooring) that was re-milled from several wood grain cribs that had been part of the tower’s grain elevator.

In a recent home magazine article I wrote, the homeowner talked about enjoying the high volumes that existed even in rooms with relatively small square footage. I thought of the same with these four spaces. Rather than one huge atrium, like you’d find at Montgomery Park, you have four that are small enough to feel intimate yet large enough to feel expansive. And the slatted wood is gorgeous. This some will surely find too hyperbolic, but while the Olympic Mills Commerce Center may not be quite at this level of sophistication, inside the courtyards of this huge, rough-edged former cereal mill, I felt the hint of a Buddhist temple, or some light filled Alvar Aalto building like the Mt. Angel Abbey Library.

The architects had different plans for furniture than the identical red couches in the quartet of spaces. “We were also hoping that each courtyard would be populated with a different furniture strategy,” Works’ Bill Neburka said in a recent email. “One would be old work tables for impromptu meetings, one would be salvaged wood chairs of all types. I was always really intrigued by how you could see a record of human patterns by the residual chair placement in Bryant Park in NYC: sort of like tracks in the sand. We're still working on that one.”

Even so, getting accomplished a historic renovation like this one, which could have been full of countless surprise-expenses, I don’t think the couches are so bad for a start. Maybe it’ll just need to be up to the tenants to take initiative in creating that kind of community—tables or no tables. There is also a lot of artwork, banners and other stuff hanging from the walls, perhaps too much in my taste. But I can see its effectiveness in encouraging these tenants to form that kind of intra-building community.

Although most of my time was spent exploring the interior courtyards, I also took the elevator up to the top floor of the grain elevator. It is still unoccupied, unlike most of the rest of the building, and there seemed to be some residual construction going on there. But as the tallest building in the Central Eastside (or at least close to it), and just across the river from downtown, Olympic Mills offers some tantalizing views.

When the building was purchased in 2005, the tower and base of the building were painted two different colors, which broke up the mass of the huge old mill. But this time around, the new paint job, a sort of earthy orange, was used throughout the exterior. As a result, one gets a much stronger sense of the building as a big portion of Portland’s east-of-the-Willamette skyline.

It makes me wonder what modern buildings might someday be built in the neighborhood to contrast the wonderful historic industrial structures like this one. Hopefully we won’t make the same mistake as some did in the Pearl District, pairing new faux-industrial with the old warehouses. That’s certainly not happening at the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, though, which has new life but nevertheless feels, in its materials and character, like one connecting thread from past to present and beyond. "It's a super-cool building," Neburka adds. "We just tried to stay out of our own way."

Emmons Architects' Deschutes Brewery and the Magic of Chainsaw Art

Last week at architect Stuart Emmons' invitation I visited the new Deschutes Brewery brew pub on Southwest 11th Avenue near the Brewery Blocks. The building was a familiar one: the former Jim Stevens Auto Body building, where my car was repaired a few years ago after being hit by a Tri-Met bus. I was very happy with the body work, but I think most people will get more out of this building now that Deschutes is here. The pub is right next door to Portland Center Stage's Gerding Theater at the Armory, so this would make an ideal pre- or post-theater stop. (As would, admittedly, any number of other nearby outlets from Sushiland to Henry's Tavern to Pizza Schmizza.)

The goal, Emmons says, was to create a brewpub that was in between two other local pubs' styles: the sleekness of Holst Architecture's Bridgeport brewpub remodel and the homey, lived in quality of McMenamins' approximately 10,000 local pubs. And inside, that's how it seemed. You could tell there was a real architect behind the design in terms of the spatial arrangements. There is lots of character to the place, but I had a sense of the vast wide open space being divided into a series of room-like smaller spaces without the overall sense of light and vastness being taken away.

There was also a lot of fun had on this project in terms of textures and accoutrements. Numerous light fixtures are of the vintage, wrought-iron variety. Like a salon-style art gallery show or the tons of mirrors on the walls at traditional French brasseries, Deschutes is covered with tons of gilded frames, some with historic photos of the building and Portland, others with kitschy drawings and artifacts. What I particularly enjoyed was how even the air ducts were enclosed in gilded frames at their wall openings. There is also lots of raw Douglas fir used throughout the space to give it an appropriately rustic feeling without seeming chintzy. This brewpub feels new, but lived in.

The best part of the new Deschutes brewpub, though -- besides their copious supply of Mirror Pond ale -- may be the cornucopia of chain saw carvings on the entry to each dining room. Emmons tells me the artist works without any drawings or guide; he merely creates with his chainsaw in an impromptu fashion the array of owls, goats and other wildlife. I can't say it's the most sophisticated, refined sculpture I've ever encountered. But God help me: I love it. There are actually some pretty delicate, artful carvings to these chainsaw works. Maybe next the guy could do a chainsaw Portlandia, or perhaps a statue of Tom Potter as a going away present.

Meanwhile, look for Emmons Architects to have an increased presence in town. Educated at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, Stuart has long been one of the better architects in town; his Fire Station 1 design competition entry with Hennebery Eddy was terrific, and now the firm is designing a courthouse in Gresham. Gerding Edlen is actually a co-developer of the Deschutes site; here's hoping Emmons may eventually be designing one of their condos when the market comes back. The Deschutes looks terrific, but Stuart should also be doing bigger better jobs than brewpubs - the brilliance of the accompanying chainsaw art not withstanding. Actually, though, can't you just imagine some of this artwork in the lobby of some ultra-modern condo?

Visiting PNCA's 511 Broadway Building

Today I took a tour of the circa-1916 federal building at 511 NW Broadway that is being taken over by the Pacific Northwest College of Art with the school's president, Tom Manley, and communications director Becca Biggs. The tour was a few minutes late getting started, which actually was good news, because after passing through the security x-ray machines, I was free to peruse the ground floor lobby a little bit on my own.

511 is going to be a magnificent space for PNCA, which was evident as soon as I entered the thin but cavernously high-ceilinged lobby. There is marble everywhere, lots of ornate detailing, and even ceiling panels that have tons of artful workmanship put into them. Upstairs doors and door panels are clad in unpainted stained wood; the doors even have these frosted-glass windows that look they should have the name "Philip Marlowe" stenciled on them. And there is lots and lots of space here. PNCA ought to have plenty of room to grow.

Wherever you go in this building there are wonderful little tarnished gems. It looks pretty drab and dreary right now, of course. The building has federal agency offices upstairs and some Department of Immigration services on the ground floor. The main activity in this grand entrance area, though, is chitchatting between security guards, building maintenance and housekeeping staff. Plenty of working offices still remain here; those were off limits. But there are lots of empty rooms and spaces that we were able to see upstairs - dark places with low ceilings walls that will be removed.

Although this is a historic building to which certain strictures will apply in terms of preserving the original structure, it has already been changed numerous times. I believe originally the building was for the Postal Service. Both on the ground floor and upstairs, there seem to be many, many opportunities to knock down walls and raise ceilings. In fact, to do so would appear to better honor the original architecture than the current interiors do. Over time this grand building was made into somewhat drab offices. But the bones here are incredible. In fact, there's plenty of flesh and skin to go along with it.

While it's a big heavy building that will hold its thermal mass well (staying cool in the summer and warm in the winter), and it can seem imposing from the street with a lack of transparency, this is actually meant to be a building teeming with natural light. There are numerous huge skylights that were actually covered during various renovations; all of which, needless to say, will be made back into skylights.

There is also quite a nice view or, to be more specific, many different view corridors and framed looks at Portland. That includes a rooftop that could someday be a spectacular hangout or party spot, and which my tour guides and I got to glimpse for a few minutes. One side looks down on the post office across Hoyt Street and Union Station just across Broadway, with the Broadway Bridge, the Willamette River, and the Pearl District in the background. The other side looks toward downtown. Even though it's really just some leftover space adjacent to the rooftop mechanical systems, this could be a special little place to have a party or woo a potential donor (or both).

Merely a serviceable renovation of this building as a new building for PNCA would be great news for architecture in Portland on its own. It's got a lot of great stuff to keep. But as previously mentioned, the architect for 511's renovation will be Allied Works and Brad Cloepfil, which makes the notion of a modern building emerging from this dusty, hulk of an old building an extra intriguing one. As Manley and I were walking down a marble back stairway talking about what Allied might do, I said, "This could be Wieden + Kennedy 2." Manley corrected me and said, "No, this building has a lot more to the original than the Wieden + Kennedy building ever did." So it will be interesting to see how Brad and Allied bring the building alive and how much of that is just opening and cleaning it up versus introducing certain material or spacial modernity inside as well.

511 occupies a strange presence, or at least it has until now. It's a wonderful early 20th century work of architecture on one of the more prominent streets in the center of the city. Yet because it's been closed to the public for so long and kept a very discreet profile, it seems a whole generation has gone by without even the architecture enthusiasts and practitioners among us noticing much that the building is really there. In a few years, that's going to change in a big way. And with the post office being vacated, freeing up that land to re-development (although hopefully some of the original building stays), with a MAX line soon to be going nearby, this whole area seems poised to really go through a metamorphosis over the next decade.

Of course the Portland Public Market had also sought 511 Broadway as a home for itself, and I hope there is a place for them in this area. That said, having now been inside this grand old building, I don't see it as a place for a public market with produce and salami and artisan goods for sale. As has been bandied about in the comments following some of my previous posts about this issue, I think a better home for the public market would be the current Greyhound station two blocks east of 511 - contingent, of course, on the bus company's willingness to move. Or if not the Greyhound station, it seems there are a lot of other nearby parcels with potential for the market, which I'll bet a lot of hungry PNCA students would like to patronize, as would the condo residents.

And as I understand it, in addition to PNCA being able to renovate the 511 building itself, the back parking lot is eventually going to be converted to a new segment of the North Park Blocks. The budget doesn't appear to be there for it now, but if the funds were to become available, what kind of landscape architectural wonder might be conjured there, between PNCA and a renovated post office site at the new edge of the Park Blocks?

Congratulations, PNCA. You've just won a landmark of a new home, and then some.