Free public tour today of Memorial Coliseum (a.k.a. "The New World Auditorium")

 

(photo by Jeremy Bitterman)

Sorry for the short notice on this, but today (Tuesday) at 5:30PM, the City Club of Portland will be hosting a free tour of Memorial Coliseum. The tour will be led by architect Rick Potestio, who has been part of the campaign to save the building, as well as Rose Quarter guest services coordinator Laura Doyle.

Over the weeks and months as the Coliseum preservation battle has been waged, it has been easy to get distracted from the merits of the building itself. For those who can make it, today's Coliseum tour is a chance to start over and look at this architectural gem with your own eyes.

If you go on the tour, here are some things to think about: specifically, the relationship between the freestanding concrete seating bowl and the surrounding glass box. No other arena in the United States or the world has an interior seating area that is completely open to light and views of the outside world. In Memorial Coliseum, the seats closest to the top that might be called "nosebleed seats" in other arenas may actually be the best seats in the house when the MC's curtain is open, allowing visitors to gaze out at the Portland skyline.

Visitors on the tour will also see a building that in some places has very noticeable disrepair. The ceiling is stained as if from a hundred thousand cigarette smokers, and one side of the seating bowl has some horribly crass structural bracing added to the exterior. But Memorial Coliseum is in excellent structural condition. With the right TLC, its cosmetic disrepair could easily be transformed back into the look of a state-of-the-art arena.

Besides the architecture itself, the Rose Quarter's Laura Doyle may also point out that Memorial Coliseum hosted just as many events as the Rose Garden arena next door: more than 150 events last year. That makes the Coliseum much more viable as a community building than any baseball stadium on this site would be.

In the weeks and months ahead, the city and its Citizens Advisory Committee being put together by the Portland Development Commission will look at a number of potential uses: a velodrome, an arts center, high speed rail, an amateur athletic facility. If touring Memorial Coliseum today, perhaps one could try and imagine these different purposes, and how they would affect the original Coliseum architecture - specifically the relationship between the curving seating bowl and the linear box of the glass exterior.

Or if you're like me, you might want to just stand on the ground floor of Memorial Coliseum and think back to that day in June 1977 when our beloved Trail Blazers became world champions of basketball in Portland's glass palace. And that's saying nothing of Obama's speech there last year, the Beatles concert in 1960, or any of the other events that have taken place inside the transparent box. Or, as legendary poet Allen Ginsberg called it, "The New World Auditorium".

For those attending today, please RSVP by email to amy@pdxcityclub.org.

One other related note about the Coliseum: Last week, America's most acclaimed architectural photographer, Julius Shulman, passed away at the age of 98. Schulman was most famous for his photos of California architecture, such as the famed Case Study Houses in Los Angeles. But the one Portland building Schulman photographed was Memorial Coliseum. What's more, a few weeks ago shortly before his death, Schulman's daughter told a friend of mine, interior designer Rosanne Sachson, that when they would look at his pictures together Schulman would often stop at the Coliseum to express his admiration for the building.

If you'd like to read further about Memorial Coliseum, I have written two recent articles about the building, its history and the preservation campaign, for Architecture Week magazine and The Architects Newspaper.

Comments

[Andrew]

Yes, a Velodrome please.

[paul]

how about something that serves more than just a handful of people? maybe something that actually brings lots of people there to activate the area, rather than yet another use that does nothing to help fix the area?

[Rosanne Sachson]

Would really like to know when there will be another tour.....especially with some advance notification I bet there would be many coming out to support all the efforts for preservation....Please don't wait to long and strike while the iron is hot!

[Evan]

I went to TODAY'S TOUR but sadly i was the only one there.
I came back home and reread your article and it did say Tuesday but it arrived in my email in box TODAY, Wendsday, bummer for me.

[fabiana]

My Dad told me a story how when he and my Mom were newlyweds, back when the Coliseum was BRAND NEW, they were driving from their home in Tacoma (they met in the Army @ Ft Lewis) to Portland...
As they rounded the bend on Highway 99 (Interstate Avenue) approaching the Broadway Bridge they encountered an unforgettable sight that cool modern glass structure, the Memorial Coliseum. So one day as I drove south on Interstate I looked for what he was talking about and it is indeed a a striking vista. Imagine seeing that for the first time! Nowadays it's "nothing spectacular" to paraphrase some people, but frankly I feel they simply lack an eye for the subtle, simple beauty of our landmark and the imagination to see the possibilities...

And while I'm @ it (LOL) can't we somehow find a way to keep the Beavers in Portland? I actually kinda like the idea of relocating them to Beaverton, as they are in the very early stages of exploring. And this is coming from someone who grew up in PDX but only attended 1 Beavers game in my entire life. Still, I guess I'm just sentimental...

[ws]

According to Steve Brown, the man with the idea for using the MC as a velodrome ( a bikeportland thread comment he posted):

"The track in the rendering has been raised to put the rail at street level. All renderings were done to print, meaning a 200M track fits as depicted. The city has already supplied us with the drawings of the building. With a reasonable amount of portable seating a track with these dimensions can host a crowd of 3000. The track actually rests on the second level of seating, not the floor. Using the floor only allows for a 167M track. Plans for the lower level are open. What is shown is a depiction of generic use of the open space." Steve Brown

That seating capacity would be a huge reduction from the MC's current seating capacity.

Baseball out in Beaverton might be fine, but in yesterday's Oregonian, one possible site suggested for the stadium was the land formerly occupied by the Westgate Theatre. I think that particular location would be detrimental to Beaverton's chances of ever linking together the urban and community centers it has into a cohesive downtown. It's bad enough having two major roads split the town. A huge stadium plopped right in the middle of these centers would seem to split it even further. Perhaps a little further west would be better..just west of Cedar Mills Crossing.

[John Horvick]

Thanks for letting folks here know about the event. The Oregonian has a story out today about the tour.

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2009/07/coliseum_tour_gives_backers_ch.html

[mongoose]

i went. just read the oregonian article on the tour. wow, talk about spin! The author made it sound as if all 50 of the attendees were unmoved by the rhapsodizing of the two guides (GM of Oregon Arena Management, and VP of the Trailblazers) over the Memorial's architecture. Such was not the case. Just another example of how out of touch the Oregonian is. Nearly all of us were excited about the prospects.