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Fred Leeson

Henry Greybrook also designed the interesting serpentine Westmoreland's Union Manor in Sellwood. He was closely connected with organized labor and designed the modernistic Portland Labor Center that eventually suffered financial collapse and was expanded into a suburban-style office building just outside the freeway loop south of downtown. If memory serves me, Greybrook's career ended with suicide after the financial troubles with the Labor Center were revealed in the mid 1970s.

Jomie Williams

I want to visit Smith Tower on my next tour in Vancouver.

Bradley Maule

That's interesting, Fred; I didn't know that. You're right: the 9/9/76 Oregonian says he was found dead in his car from carbon monoxide poisoning at his home in Vancouver, while he was under investigation for diversion of funds (among other things) for the Portland Labor Center.

Fred Leeson

I worked at the time with the reporter who broke the Labor Center story at the Oregon Journal. Greybrook declined to talk to us. The story we heard later is that the articles eliminated his ability to wheel-and-deal. Ironically, the statue of limitations had run on any alleged wrongdoing over the Labor Center, so he was in no legal jeopardy, whether he knew it or not.

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