Portland Architecture

City proposes new permitting process allowing murals to escape advertising regulation

For many years murals were a welcome and much enjoyed presence in Portland. But when advertisers got more aggressive about putting up billboards, electric signs and, yes, murals of their own, non-commercial murals fell victim to the strictures of regulating crass ads. (The picture above is of a mural on Hawthorne Boulevard called "Share the Road" by Sara Stout.)

Now the City of Portland hopes to bring to life the art of public murals once again through a new permitting process. With the aid of a Murals Working Group and other stakeholders, the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is proposing a new process that allows murals to be permitted separately from sign regulations or from the Regional Arts and Culture Council's Public Art program.

Original art murals meeting specific definitions and placement requirements will be allowed through a new mural permit.  The permits will be administered through the Bureau of Development Services in their Development Services Center.

“The city should not restrict artists from doing art,” said Planning Commissioner Howard Shapiro. “Murals enhance the community. They are a civic treasure that should be encouraged. The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability has released a proposed draft for the Original Art Murals Project in anticipation of the Planning Commission's Public Hearing on this project to be held on May 12, 2009, at 12:30 p.m. The draft and more information can be found online.

City Council will likely review and vote on the proposal in mid- to late June. BDS plans to hold an open house on the administrative rules governing the procedures in July, and the new program should become effective in August.

A murals town hall

Apologies for the short notice on this, but today from 5:30 to 7:30pm at City Hall's council chambers there will be a town hall meeting on how murals are permitted. The intent is to facilitate more community-based art murals without opening the flood gates to crass advertising.

One of the related issues, a friend in the planning bureau tells me, is how murals should (or should not) be regulated in design overlay districts.  That is, in places where we  have design review, should murals be subject to some extra rules to ensure they don't negatively impact the architectural character of buildings?  Are there ways to integrate murals into architect-designed buildings without undoing the architectural vision of a building or a district?  The law is tricky on this: we can't regulate speech and we can't apply different restriction to those whose murals are selling something. So any such rules would be about the size, location, and process, rather than the content of murals.

This has been an ongoing issue and balancing act for Portland for a long time. Murals were exempted from the city’s sign code for many years, until legal challenges left no choice but to reluctantly discontinue the exemption in 1998.  As a result, for several years the production of community murals came to a near standstill. Under Mayor Vera Katz a compromise was developed wherein the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) became empowered to approve murals through the city’s Public Art Program.  These discussions, city leaders hope, will create an alternative process for the City to consider community murals for those who may not choose to apply for funding through RACC’s Public Art Mural Program.

Anyone who drove west over the Morrison Bridge a couple years ago noticed the egregious electric sign there. But murals are also a wonderful urban phenomenon. How do we pull of the balancing act?

White Stag sign: preserving a tradition since 1995 (and PSU's insecurity)

Over the last several days I've received a few emails from readers asking what I think of the developing controversy over the University of Oregon's proposal to change the text of the "Made in Oregon" neon sign that overlooks the Willamette from the top of UO's new White Stag block to "University of Oregon".

I was uneasy about commenting because of my own bias: I am the world's biggest Oregon Ducks fan. Granted, my football/basketball team of choice has little to do with what an old sign in Portland says or doesn't say. But I'm just nuts enough to make it a factor.

For those of you who don't know, the sign has a long history - of change.  Its current moniker only dates to 1995. Before that it said, "White Stag", after the long defunct company previously residing in the building. Before that it said "White Satin" for the sugar company previously residing in the building.

So a legitimate argument could be made that if UO wants to preserve tradition, a change to the sign is a better execution of that principle.

I happened to read a column about Brad Cloepfil's Museum of Art & Design this morning in the Wall Street Journal by the legendary architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, and one thing she said seems fitting here: "I part company with those who believe that copies and replicas are acceptable substitutes for the real thing. Once the original is gone or beyond salvation you are faking it; when it's lost, let it go and move on. Blind sentiment and perverse tunnel vision kept the argument going."

Before reading Anna Griffin's Oregonian column this morning, I was prepared to say that UO doesn't need to change the sign, that their presence is already solid enough here in Portland and that, while "Made in Oregon" signifies a store that doesn't reside there any more, the phrase can easily be taken to constitute not a brand, but an idea of home-grown pride.

But in Griffin's column I started reading the ridiculously asinine comments of those opposed to the sign. Chief among them is Ethan Seltzer, head of Portland State University's urban studies department. In Griffin's column, he is quoted as calling the proposed change a form of "civic plagiarism" and refers to the UO White Stag campus itself as "Potemkin University".

Anna sidestepped the comment, saying "If I knew what that meant, I'd probably agree." But as you can read on Wikipedia, Potemkin refers to two principal things. First there is a series of fake villages resembling stage sets that a Russian minister erected to impress empress Catherine II during her visit to the Crimea in 1787. It also refers to the landmark Sergei Eisenstein film, which documented the Potemkin uprising of 1905 by Russian sailors against their tsarist superiors. (I guess actually that's three things.)

In other words, Seltzer is calling UO Portland a fake village and a brutal regime.

Ethan, what in the world are they putting in your Seltzer?

It's one thing if people don't want the sign changed. But a neon sign on a University of Oregon building being changed from the name of a store no longer there to the name of the current occupant is no crime. It's not even in bad taste. And yet to hear PSU people tell it (at least if Seltzer and PSU student body president Hanna Fisher are representative), the changed neon sign would reverse all the decades of work that Portland State has done to transform itself from a middling commuter school to a thriving urban university. Is PSU's success really that fragile that a little neon would hurt their itty-bitty feelings so much to flip out like that?

Quite honestly, I have to confess that I really don't care all that much whether the sign says "Made in Oregon" or "University of Oregon". It'll still have the trademark White Stag deer with the Rudolf nose during the Holidays either way. If anything, I have to confess that I'd find an Oregon State University neon sign pretty darn ugly. (65-38: tee-hee!) But if the criticisms continue this way, I'm going to put a giant neon duck on Lincoln Hall.

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?