Visiting The Eliot

Last Friday I made an overdue visit to The Eliot, the downtown condo tower at 10th and Jefferson.

I've followed the project's design and construction since the project was first announced a few years ago, and from the first rendering I saw, I liked the project a lot. But this was my first trip inside, courtesy of Gene Sandoval from Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, the project's lead designer (Ankrom Moisan was also a collaborator).

One of my favorite portions of The Eliot (incidentally, I keep thinking there should be an extra 'L' or 'T' in the name) is its ground-floor entry, a glass box set on a plaza that looks out at the back of the Portland Art Museum. Outside, the entry formally seems almost like a self-contained building, which is a nice effect to pull of in a building this large. Inside, views of the PAM courtyard are framed.

And speaking of courtyards, developer John Carroll and the architects left the space between their building and the under-construction Madison Office Condominiums next door. Here the Eliot includes a series of brownstones that further help integrate with the street and break up the building mass. I actually like this courtyard better than the Art Museum's across the street, where the sculpture garden is cordoned off like a maximum-security prison and the pass-through space a mere leftover. (And that's not even getting into the Jubitz Center's entry/exit on the courtyard that isn't an entry/exit.)

Most any building has a good side, where the design looks best. For The Eliot, it's definitely its east-facing facade, where Sandoval's team fashioned a beautiful glass wall with the help of star local contractor (and Freedom Tower supplier) Benson Glass. There are several operable windows along the facade that open outward but move almost straight up and down. I also love the random pattern of windows and shadow boxes (glass walled in inside with corrugated metal - as per energy codes). And the designers/builders (the latter from Howard S. Wright, I believe) also chose a glass that doesn't feel too dark or too reflective.

The west-facing facade is probably more appealing to some buyers because it has balconies. But from a purely aesthetic point of view, I'm less fond of like the look of this side. That's also because of the gray granite used on this portion of the building. The rest of The Eliot is clad mostly in glass or gorgeous travertine. While granite is a quality material, I just don't like how it looks here. That said, one could find things to nitpick about pretty much any building, so this complaint comes within the context of liking this project a great deal. And besides, the balconies provide good daylighting by helping to shade the units from direct-light glare and add more shaded illumination.

Incidentally, the building also was supposed to originally be taller and thinner, and that would have made a better looking piece of architecture. But of course the developer, John Carroll, is a businessman first, and has to make the project "pencil out".

The only other quibble I have is inside. In both the ground-floor lobby and the interior hallways, somebody has chosen this hideous array of chipped travertine and chipped frosted-glass, either for the number outside people's units or for the front-desk in the lobby. It looks like it belongs in Caesar's Palace, not a contemporary Portland condo. But again, that's a minor thing. And considering that all four tenants I saw inside were old people, perhaps their tastes are different from mine. Besides, when you have views like this (pictured) penthouse has, who cares?

Overall, I think The Eliot is one of the better Portland condos of its era, which is full of them. This is in my opinion John Carroll's best project from an architectural standpoint by leaps and bounds. It's great to see the developer working with ZGF, a huge longtime Portland firm doing work of an increasingly high caliber in the last couple years, to design an unapologetically contemporary building that is of its time and looks great.

Comments

[Lyle]

Brian,
I agree with most of your comments about the Eliot. A couple of notes of clarification ...
1. The east facing units have proved to be the most desirable with their downtown views and some have recessed balconies (northeast corner). And, the east side units also have "Juliet Balcony Doors" which open on the east side offering a balcony feel inside the unit.
2. The Madison Office Condos have been complete for months. They are empty except for the top floor. There is a fantastic empty restaurant space in this building with opportunity for outdoor seating along the accessway between 10th and 11th streets. Given their inability to sell this space I presume that it must be difficult to get a restaurant to buy space (versus lease).
3. I like the chipped travertine light fixtures and unit numbers and no, I am not one of the four "old people" you saw on your visit. The travertine actually matches the travertine used at the Art Museum, a nice touch. I do agree with your assessment of the chipped frosted glass in the lobby, however.
4. All in all this is a great building (to live in) and the location is one of the best in Portland for amenities and access to the streetcar and MAX.

[chris]

I looked at two units here about 9 months ago. One was 7th floor West facing. View was nice, even if it wasn't east facing. The space was very open, to excess. Bedrooms without doors emptying out into dining/living areas. The second unit was south facing on a low floor (level 2 I believe). Layout was nicer with walled rooms, but views of Safeway made me curious what the dwelling looked like from the street. I checked and it was quite easy to peek in from below.

Overall, both were rather dark units that I felt didn't really blend in with the grand entrance of the building, which I loved.

[ws]

The Eliot's east side entry way plaza is really quite nice. I like that they used stone for paving rather than concrete. Very pleasant to use the public thru-way between 10th and 11th, but I wonder how owners of units adjacent to the thru-way feel about the affect it could have on privacy for people living in those units.

Generally speaking, I don't personally see that the Eliot's external appearance is an asset to Portland's cityscape.

[MarkDaMan]

Up front I love the east facing facade on the Eliot. It has an artistic quality that is appropriate being across from the art museum. However, when I was standing at the column in Washington Park, I couldn't help but notice how awful the back side of the building is.

[brandonpdx]

A few comments from having lived in the building:

I'm fortunate enough to have a corner unit so I get plenty of light, as opposed to the cave like shot-gun units that are all too common in JC's buildings.

The bottom few floors have a lot of twenty and thirty somethings. Age seems to increase the higher one gets in the building.

Recycling and bicycling seem to have been an afterthought in this building. Instead of having recycling station on each floor in the trash chute room, one has to go down stairs through corridors of hallways and doors to recycle. This certainly doesn't encourage recycling and I'm sure a lot of people do the easy lazy thing and just throw everything down the trash chute.

They also have bike racks crammed in some storage unit they didn't sell. It's an awkward tight space that wasn't designed with bicycle storage in mind.

Other than that, it has been a joy to live in the building. With the location and all of the finishes and amenities there really isn't much to complain about, other than the above.

[Craig]

I'd like to echo ws on the stone paving in the plaza. Its makes a huge difference. The overuse of concrete in new plaza's is disturbing. Concrete looks fine the day its done, but within a few months it begins to crack and buckle and ages horribly, especially when used in vast amounts of space. The stone pavers add so much more detail and will get much better with age.

[Brian Libby]

I'm glad some of you have praised the paving in the plaza. I really like it too and didn't emphasize that enough in the original post.

I also really like how the glass-cube entry is set back from the street, which allows one to have a better view of both the Eliot entrance itself as well as the Art Museum.

[Nikos]

I was in the area to see the Rembrandt exhibit in the disaster of a museum building that is the PAM. I love the travertine plaza around the Eliot glass "entrance cube". Then we entered the uninspiring entrance of the Portland Art Museum, no sense of a welcoming or grand public space, no sense from the way the interior is designed as to where is what or where to go next, but I digress. The Eliot entrance made me wonder: why aren't there more inspiring or grand public spaces in Portland buildings. The only one I can think of that I like is the Porland Center for the Performing Arts lobby (although even that is a bit claustrophobic.) The Keller entrance lobby is also unpleasant(one has to imagine the Keller fountain as the lobby, which makes it fine). Why cannot we have something like the lobby of the McCaw Hall in Seattle...

[ws]

My feeling is that the original 9th Avenue entrance of the PAM, continues to be the museum's best entrance, as far as presenting the museum as a notable place that would encourage people to want to visit.

I'd have to say that I really enjoy the walk-thru just to the north end of the original PAM building, where you enter both the original building and the newly re-designed addition. It's strange though, to approach these entrances from 9th, and as you enter the thru-way, eyes scanning the area, one of the first things they see, is the loading dock.

The newly re-designed PAM building on the north side of the thru-way (formerly the masonic temple...I forget what they've named it now) really seems like a missed opportunity to have designed an entrance that could have been at least far better than what was created.

I mean, before the re-design, this building's wall that faces the thru-way, was nearly a continuous expanse of uninterrupted brick. A great entrance might have been placed anywhere along its expanse. Instead, plain glass doors were installed, leaving an impression that's not much better than you have entering an ordinary office building or a doctor's office.

I never really liked that big glass fissure they installed in this building's wall face, especially when they made the glass green. It does though, provide some interest, and an anticipation that the entrance, as long as you don't look at the one that is actually there, is one that might be grand.

The PAM's sculpture court to the south of this thru-way is nice, what you can see of it from the outside. If you had the feeling on the outside in the narrow section of the thru-way leading to 10th, that you have on the inside of the fenced sculpture court, it would be fine, but I guess the feeling I have, is that it's a bit claustrophobic.

But this thread is supposed to be about the Eliot. At least as far as the character of the city is concerned, the Eliot's entrance plaza and thru-way design tops the PAM's, far and away.

It would be marvelous if the PAM could think about doing something to its plaza thru-way that would bring it a little closer to providing the pleasure offered by that of its immediate westerly neighbor, the Eliot condo.