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The ground-floor Brasserie came in the 1970s and continued into the 1990s, but seemed perhaps a bit outdated as the farm-to-table movement rose here with restaurants like Wildwood, Paley’s Place and Higgins.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

Comments

[Eric Cantona]

FINALLY! this is part of my work neighborhood and has been under construction for what seems like five years. i'll be very interested to see the units, and find out what they're going for.

as far as the brasserie, i was really bummed when they did their renovation that eliminated the speakeasy/hole-in-the-wall entrance they used to have. it made it all exclusively and super-french feeling, what with the cool jazz going on downstairs, and all. didn't it get purchased by that guy that tried to open, like, six restaurants at once? oops.

hopefully it'll get filled by someone who can optimize it's potential. and stay in business at the same time...

[robert]

Valaster Corl has quietly done some of the best small condo projects in Portland. From Flanders Loft to this example. Jefferson, Hawthorne, etc..

[Dennis H. Coalwell]

Wow! What an improvement for such a great little street/area.

[val]

Another fine example of historic preservation as sustainable development. Architects and developers please take note of this great project. It would be great to see more like this.

[robert]

Correction: Vallaster with 2 l's
Here's their site: http://www.vcarch.com

[ws]

Nice to see this building gleaming again. The light as seen in the shot with the stairwell is good, at least for now. It's always great to be able to step off busy Morrison into the relative quiet Park Ave where this building is located.

A little different spin on the Brasserie might be needed, but I really don't like the thought of this currently closed restaurant's beautiful signs with that distinctive font going away. It was a real improvement when the restaurant's owners put out some dough, relatively recently, to have those signs created to replace the ones existing before them. The Brasserie always had just about the right kind of easy going yet elegant ambience for downtown too; decent place for jazz, nice lighting, facilities were always kept top notch.

Someone from way back, filled me in on a little history about that location: in the 60's it was The Headless Horseman, an amped up trippy rock club.

[Brian Libby]

Robert, thanks for the correction. My apologies to Vallaster & Corl. To readers in general, if you ever see an error in one of my posts, I urge you to email me at [email protected]. Posting in the comments is fine too, of course, but I can get the correction made more quickly if contacted directly.