Portland Architecture

THA Architecture multiplies on Division

3330 SE Division (rendering courtesy THA Architecture)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Whether designed by a prestigious, award-winning firm or a mediocre one with cookie-cutter tendencies, most mixed-use condos and apartments routinely take a similar boxy form determined as much by lenders’ stipulations as design solutions.

Before they provide capital for this kind of building project, banks have a checklist: things like net-to-gross square footage, and the percentage of the building’s skin in relation to the interior. It results in boxes built out to the limit of the available land, with units on the sides and corridors down the middle.

This may maximize potential profit and help guarantee the loan gets repaid, but it creates a ubiquity stretching across different architects’ plans and, worse yet, creates units devoid of natural light as one moves further away from the exterior windows deeper inside. You’d be surprised how many Portland condo owners are living in units that resemble bowling lanes.

“In the typical approach, you minimize the length of the main hallway and you make the building as deep as you can on either side of it. There are nuances on finishes and that kind of thing. But if you look at the majority of new multi-family housing in Portland, that’s the model,” says THA Architecture principal David Keltner. It’s not to say good architecture can’t be done within these constraints. THA’s own Cyan apartments and Atwater Place condos are two good examples. But for each one of those, there may be countless other projects across the city that are not only bland shoeboxes, but ubiquitous ones.

3339 SE Division (rendering courtesy THA Architecture)

Now, though, a series of condos currently rising on Division Street, developed by Urban Development Partners and (in two cases) designed by THA (the other is by Works Partnership Architecture), are demonstrating the benefits of greater design flexibility. Funding is coming via a real estate investment trust rather than conventional funding, so there is not the same set of restrictions on the design itself, as long as the cost remains comparable.

“These guys have to hit the same cost per square foot, but they can design them any way they want. And that has had a big impact on the architecture,” explains Keltner.

THA’s mixed-use residences at 3330 and 3339 SE Division, right amidst the area already teeming with a wave of new restaurants, feature small units under 600 square feet but with a better distribution of light.

“The problem with the shoebox is that the bedrooms and bathrooms get buried. If you relax a bit on skin area metric and make up the cost in other ways we can actually make units that will have light and air from two sides,” the architect adds. “With one of the projects we took the basic shoebox configuration and made these big cuts into the plan, so the bedrooms and bathrooms have windows.  With the other project the architect rotated the units ninety degrees and arrayed them around an internal courtyard. “Urban Development Partners have an interest in giving back to the urban edge: some cool outdoor space, or interesting way through their site.”

Courtyard of 3330 SE Division (rendering courtesy THA Architecture)

There has been ample recent controversy about new apartment/condo buildings in Portland neighborhoods and the amount of on-site parking they have or don’t have. These projects come with some parking, but not a spot for every potential tenant. And to do so would be a mistake, creating a suburban-style building out of touch with its centrally located urban site.

The projects that have been garnering outcries from neighborhood residents are the ones that try and fit many more units without parking onto a site. Not too far from where these projects developed by Urban Development Partners are going up is another project by a different developer with more than 80 units and no parking. That’s the kind of project that can cross the threshold into difficulties for the neighborhood. Its progress was recently halted by the City of Portland on a technicality involving its entrance, despite already reaching four stories in height. But it's parking that local officials, at Mayor Hales' behest, are concerned about. "The right thing to do in this case—-sort of the land-use version of the Hippocratic Oath—-is do no more harm," Hales told Willamette Week's Aaron Mesh in a story published earlier today.

But smaller projects without parking should not be made to include lots of parking, nor should there ever be a one-to-one ratio of residences to parking spots in these buildings. To do so would be to transform a vibrant, pedestrian and transit-oriented neighborhood into Gresham.

“If you were to provide a parking space for every car going into these, you’d significantly increase the cost of being able to rent,” Keltner adds. “You’d basically be building structures that are good for nothing but parking.”

Meanwhile, after some five years of recession, the real estate economy is clearly picking up steam. Many of the top firms in Portland who were designing lots mixed-use buildings and residences before the downturn, such as THA, Works Partnership, Lever Architecture, Vallaster Corl and Holst Architecture, seem to be busy today with a host of projects. Places like Division Street may never be the same, but they’re changing for the better, with transit-oriented developments along major arterials such as this being built -- with some noteworthy aforementioned exceptions -- quite thoughtfully.

Whether it’s the banking industry or NIMBY neighbors, there are plenty of pratfalls for developers and architects looking to produce high-quality designs emphasizing natural light and a transit/pedestrian-oriented lifestyle. But with the right marriage of designer and client, projects as these are showing the way forward.

 

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A peek inside the US Custom House as it undergoes renovation

Entrance to US Custom House, from north (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For most of its history since opening in 1901, Portland's U.S. Custom House has been a kind of gilded monolith: a grand Italian Renaissance structure one walks past with admiration and quiet awe but never steps inside of. Even for an architecture writer like me, the building's interior has for too long remained a mystery, somewhere low-level federal bureaucrats toiled but where you never saw anyone actually coming in or out of unless it was part of a Grimm or Leverage TV episode.

Yesterday, though, I and a small group of architects were able to pass through the Custom House's normally closed courtyard gates and into this magnificent structure, which is being renovated by its new owner, Boston-based Eastern Real Estate, into offices, as overseen by GBD Architects and an assist from historian preservation expert and architect Peter Meijer.

"It's my favorite building in the city," Meier said yesterday while leading the AIA/Portland Historic Resources Committee tour. And this from an architect who has participated in some major architectural renovations like City Hall. By phone after the tour, I asked him to explain why. "It just strikes me as the height of a building style," Meijer explained. "It’s Italian Renaissance [style], and it’s so extremely well done and just very highly ornamented, both inside and outside. I’m always finding new stories about it."

Custom House entry (photo by Brian Libby)

On yesterday’s tour, Meijer noted as an example, tour visitors discovered that one of the terra cotta keystones on the front facade was upside-down. And that speaks to the duality of this building's charm. On one hand, it's exceptionally grand, the kind of building where nothing was done on the cheap, and this is a sharp contrast to today. There are door thresholds and bathroom dividers in the Custom House, for example, made of marble. But after 112 years, the building also has a wonderful patina.

That's why the renovation planned by Eastern, while perhaps troubling in that it includes no seismic protection, is pleasing in that it's a light restoration of the surfaces. Wood windows are sanded and polished, for instance, but not so much that you can't see the scratches and the wear of a century.

"It’s really cleaning it up, getting rid of everything that was added to, and restoring it back to its original ceiling heights, taking out extraneous material over the years. It’s preparing the shell and core for tenants to move in. I think they have an astute business approach: let's highlight the most attractive elements of this building and get people to come in and lease the space, and work with the tenants to bring it further."

Entering the building, one comes to its architectural centerpiece right away: a grand staircase clad in marble and carved wood. For the first three floors, the staircase is wide like you'd expect for a major public building, like that of Central Library only more open. Yet the most intriguing part of the stairway may be the portion leading to the fourth floor, when it narrows by about half and appears to be floating.

Custom House staircase (photo by Brian Libby)

Throughout, the building has a charming array of architectural details. As Bart King explains in An Architectural Guidebook to Portland, "Columns, scrolls, quoins, arches, dentils and keystones abound. Find the terra-cotta lintel stones over the window arches showing interesting governmental symbols like the staff of Aesculapius, and the dreaded glove on a stick. Among the profusion, images of scales adorn the building. These reflect both the weighing of goods inspected for customs and the traditional scales of justice. Courthouses were originally intended for the top two floors of the Custom House, and revenue from customs duties was an important function of Portland's waterfront."

King's book also notes the two towers visible from the front of the building to the west, which are for ventilation - a nice example of what today would be called sustainable design. It's too bad the now-defunct Oregon Sustainability Center project (which GBD also co-designed) didn't try to re-use this wonderful old landmark instead of starting from scratch near PSU. But, curiously, the towers had an added function. In 1906, King explains, "a small metal tower was built near the north chimney that dropped a large 'time' ball each day. Sailors would sight it and set their ship clocks accordingly." Construction east of the Custom House eventually obstructed the tower, so it was removed in 1925.

The biggest previous renovation done to the Custom House happened in the 1970s, so in some ways the current work has been more about undoing that work than changing the original. The '70s restoration added drop ceilings, for example, that have now been removed to reveal what are up to 16-foot ones.

A recent American Institute of Architects tour of the renovation (photo by Brian Libby)

The fact that the Custom House is set to become merely an office building might feel like a slightly underwhelming fate given that some of the others interested in owning it over the past decade have had more ambitious, public-oriented plans.

A few years ago, a hotel chain won a bid to purchase the building from the General Services Administration. That deal fell through, but by then it was too late to let the losing bidder take over. That bidder had been a partnership between the late developer Art DeMuro (who restored numerous historic buildings in Portland) and the University of Oregon's Portland satellite. Instead, the UO moved into the historic White Stag Block, a cast-iron building on the waterfront. The latter project turned out wonderfully, but it might have been even more special to have UO in the Custom House (although it might have bothered PNCA given their plans for colonizing the North Park Bocks). More recently, local firm PREM Group had and then gave up its own plans to renovate the building.

But thinking of what might have been with a hotel or college in the Custom House is pointless, and it's not to say they wouldn't have had difficulties; for all we know, Eastern is maintaining more of the historic integrity than those other suitors could have. The important thing is that the uncertainty is ending, and somebody is finally moving forward with some kind of restoration and opening up of the building.

Eastern seems to be doing enough renovation to the Custom House to stop just short of triggering legally obligated seismic upgrades, but Meijer believes that, unless it's a particularly high-magnitude quake (the so-called "Big One"), evidence so far indicates that the building is strong and sound, maybe more than other large public buildings of similar vintage. The Custom House has lived through a century of small quakes, and it does not show any cracks or other damage, while the circa-1914 Multnomah County Courthouse, for example, does.

View of Custom House entry courtyard from fourth floor (photo by Brian Libby)

"We have been fortunate we haven’t had a major quake in the Portland area, but for me it’s a larger question too. There really has not been a significant body of research and performance study done on the redundancy of older buildings," Meijer says. "Yes, we know there are some weak points that have been demonstrated through other earthquakes, but there haven’t been any studies showing what the strengths are. A number of years ago PPS tested one of their school buildings. They surprised the structural engineers. The walls did not crack where they thought. They turned out to be 5x stronger than code. As far as I know, no one else has done that testing in Portland. That is the type of research that’s needed for all existing buildings."

Besides having wonderful architectural character in its own right, the Custom House is part of or perhaps slightly prefigures one of the eras in which Portland transformed itself with a wave of new architecture. The Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition, a major turning point in city history--when we transitioned from frontier town to major American city--came just four years after the Custom House was built. Within a decade would come landmarks like the Governor Hotel and Meier & Frank Building in 1909, and the Jackson Tower and Benson Hotel in 1912.

The Custom House, one comes to realize, is the connecting thread between those buildings and landmarks of the early 20th century by the likes of architect A.E. Doyle, and an earlier generation of Portland buildings from the late 19th century such as the aforementioned White Stag building from 1883, the Blagen Block from 1888, and Union Station from 1896.

Inside the Custom House (photo by Brian Libby)

Most symbolically of all in this turn of the 20th century, Peter Meijer notes, the US Custom House replaced the Pioneer Courthouse as the major federal government outpost. "The federal presence was growing along with the city growing," he says.

Both the Pioneer Courthouse and the Custom House were perceived as being too far from downtown when originally constructed. In 1869 when the Pioneer Courthouse was completed, the area around it (including what's now Pioneer Courthouse Square, the consensus epicenter of downtown Portland, right across the street) was a residential enclave and the true "downtown" was along the waterfront, mostly to the south.

"The Custom House too was even further north of downtown," Meijer explains. "It was really in the swampy land, the flood area of the city. All of a sudden the Park Blocks grew up around it. It was really part of the formation of what we know as Portland today."

That flood-plain topography is the reason the Custom House was built raised several feet above the sidewalk. This, as well as the stone archways fencing in the building's front courtyard and the ironwork covering the first-floor windows, have helped to make the building a bit standoffish from its surrounding neighborhood, as has the restricted nature of it being a federal building. Even though private companies likely won't love the idea of one wandering unchaperoned through their spaces, the building will still feel more open with it taking on life.

Renovations inside the US Custom House (photos by Brian Libby)

What's more, the real targets in terms of tenants leasing space in the Custom House should be creative industries, for whom the architecture is a calling card. It will be in tenants' self interest to show off their space, or otherwise they might as well move to an office park in the suburbs.

And after an exceptionally long-overdue peek inside the Custom House yesterday, I can't wait to think of a future in which both inside and out of this building feel like a familiar and cherished piece of Portland's urban fabric.

With the 511 Broadway building (1918) currently being restored by Allied Works for PNCA just a couple blocks down Broadway, and following the restoration of the Daisy Kingdom building into art galleries and the Museum of Contemporary Craft a few years ago (not to mention the new Lever Architecture-designed PNCA dorm under construction, or the sleeping giant of the Postal Service facility just north of 511, eventually set to be vacated), the North Park Blocks are undergoing massive change once again: a cultural flood instead of an aquatic one.

Perhaps this era of transformation on the North Park Blocks could also be the impetus for NW Broadway itself, a grand boulevard disguised as a lifeless thoroughfare for most of the past half-century, to finally transform as well. Still, much of this is hypothetical, as a Custom House restoration had been for so many years. Walking inside this dusty but magnificent old Italian Renaissance building, I was just glad that the doors were finally opening.

 

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Columbia Crossing, biggest boondoggle of our time, lurches closer to reality

Interstate Bridge from Vancouver, WA (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In an era of depleting budgets and limited resources for infrastructure, nothing could be more heartbreaking than a region committing billions of dollars to the wrong project. But yesterday the horrifically ill advised Columbia River Crossing took another step to reality when a joint Oregon Legislature/Senate committee voted Monday night in favor of the $3.4 billion bridge proposal, which now sends it to the full Legislature.

Those on the 16-member committee cited the jobs that will come as a result of the construction. They pointed to seismic concerns about the existing Interstate Bridge. They said 18 years of community meetings and planning had produced a viable project. "We have listened," Republican Senator Bruce Starr of Hillsboro told The Oregonian's Richard Read. "This is the art of the possible. It ain't perfect."

Indeed the Columbia Crossing is an imperfect project, but there is no artistry involved, unless you're counting the performance art of the highway-industrial complex, which has convinced our leadership to support a bridge project that will sap billions from other, more necessary transit projects around the state, all while accomplishing little in the way of improving congestion in Portland and Vancouver.

Unfortunately, highway building (including the bridges that serve these highways) is an almost unstoppable force because of the vice-like grip the associated construction industries have on Democratic and Republican leaders alike. Republicans wind up being swayed by companies poised to benefit financially from such construction, and Democrats by the unions that would gain temporary employment. As a result, they commit to a project that seems to have everything but what the metro area needs.

An article in today's New York Times about a similarly controversial bridge project proposed for Louisville and southern Indiana indicates how the CRC flies in the face of Portland's values. The proposed $2.6 billion bridge is the largest in Kentucky's history. And those opposed to the bridge are holding up Portland and its prosperity as an example of why not to build such a bridge. "The project comes at a time when some cities are moving in the opposite direction, dismantling downtown bridges and expressways in favor of public transportation," the Times' Bobby Allyn writes. "Among the most skeptical of the plan is the grass-roots group 8664, which has drawn nearly 12,000 supporters online. The group is asking that only part of the project be built and that Interstate 64, which runs along the river, be shifted to the edge of downtown so that the city’s sprawling waterfront could be revitalized with 'Portland-style vibrancy.'”

The Columbia Crossing is a move against 'Portland-style vibrancy' right here in Portland.

It's not to say that we don't need better bridge service over the Columbia. The current Interstate Bridge creates sizable bottlenecks when it's raised for river traffic. But an alternative plan - one that would build a local bridge to Vancouver - has been ignored by local and state leaders because it isn't favored by the highway building companies and their unions.

A local bridge to Vancouver would cost one tenth as much as a new Columbia Crossing replacing the Interstate Bridge, but it would produce the same results. Pairing this with upgrades to the existing nearby rail bridge, as Jim Howell of the Association of Oregon Rail and Transit Advocates argues in an Oregonian op-ed, would also elminate 95 percent delays from bridge lifts.

Think of it this way: if the Marquam and Fremont Bridges carrying freeways over the Willamette River in downtown Portland were the only bridges we had, would you replace them or would you build a local bridge like the Hawthorne, Broadway or Morrison Bridge? 

The fact that Kitzhaber and newly elected Portland mayor Charlie Hales would support the Columbia Crossing over a better alternative at a fraction of the cost is disappointing. Kitzhaber is in his third term as Oregon governor and has gained a great amount of praise for his leadership in areas like health care, but the Columbia Crossing support is a stain on his administration. Hales has been a very laudable leader on behalf of mass transit during his previous tenure on Portland's City Council. During the campaign, he said what he supports is not this Columbia River Crossing but reined-in version of it. Yet even if the project were scaled down, it wouldn't change the fact that a local bridge would still be cheaper and would accomplish more integration between Portland, Vancouver and their economies.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not writing this as a Portlander who only walks, bicycles and takes mass transit. I own a car, and when I'm driving on Interstate 5 or any major highway, I'm hoping for as many lanes as possible, and praying there won't be a traffic slowdown. I see highways and their corresponding bridges as a vital component of the metropolitan infrastructure, something that ideally can pay for itself in greater ease of movement and, thus, economic activity. But even if one were to evaluate the Columbia River Crossing solely as a driver, it's still a bad idea. The project will cost so much that it will use up a lot of our state and federal transit funds. Yet because it's only replacing an existing bridge, save for a few extra lanes it won't give me much. The local bridge to Vancouver would give drivers in both cities easier access to the other side of the Columbia without having to get on a freeway. It would give us easier access to the waterfronts on both sides, and would save finite highway dollars for other places where it's needed, like for a third lane between Salem and Eugene on I-5 to the south, or to build a tunnel for I-5 drivers to replace the Marquam Bridge and related overpasses on Portland's east side. That, unlike the CRC, would dramatically transform the city for the better. On the Columbia Crossing, we're cashing in almost all our chips just to upgrade something we already have.

And that's not even getting into how ugly and banal the CRC design is from an aesthetic point of view.

Honestly, I believe it's likely too late to stop the Columbia River Crossing. Although the Oregon legislature has not yet voted on the project, the 14-2 recommendation by the joint panel indicates that Democrats and Republicans alike are guzzling the Kool-Aid. But theoretically there is still a chance to affect the legislature vote. It would require all of us to contact our state representatives and plea for them to come to their senses. If you're reading this, will you make the call or send the email? Right now we are our only hope.

In my 13 years writing about design and construction in Portland, I've long since gotten used to this city patting itself on the back for being different from other American cities: willing to eschew the domination of automobile-oriented planning, committing to promoting pedestrians and mass transit, choosing density over sprawl, and favoring common-sense transit projects over the tangled concrete spaghetti of Robert Moses-style freeways. (In all honesty, I do a lot of the civic back-patting.)  But if we build the Columbia River Crossing, Portland should no longer be able to make such claims. The Columbia River Crossing puts us in the realm of Houston, Phoenix and Las Vegas, letting our metro area be driven by special interests hoping to pave our one-time paradise even when all the statistics and all the common sense shows a better alternative.

In a time of bitter partisanship, the Portland metro area has found a way for Democrats and Republicans to come together, but only in the shame of misleading and misspending on the biggest boondoggle of our time.

 

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Humble landmarks in North, Northeast await wrecking ball or champion

St. Paul/Gesthemane church (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

To move west on Failing Street from Northeast Portland across Martin Luther King Boulevard and Williams Avenue into North Portland's Mississippi district is to witness the changing demographics and architecture here. And chances are the view will keep changing.

My first of two destinations was a church at 801 NE Failing, built in 1905 and originally known as the St. Paul's Evangelical & Reformed Church.

Built by Volga German immigrants (ethnic Germans who came from Russia), it was an outpost of hymns, prayers and culture for generations who called this neighborhood "Little Russia." In 1973, after the community became populated with African Americans and Little Russia uprooted, the church was sold and rechristened as the Gethsemane Church of God in Christ.

Today the church sits empty, but it's for sale by a family member of the late Gesthemane pastor. That worries neighbors and residents of broader Northeast Portland, who justifiably fear the century-old church will be razed in order to build housing. 

St. Paul/Gesthemane church (photos by Brian Libby)

Indeed, according to Anna Griffin's recent Oregonian story, the church's realtor, Tod Breslau, "has received numerous nibbles, most from builders intent on razing the church and putting up houses or a duplex...A builder can earn a larger profit by tearing down what's there and putting up three new homes -- what the law allows on this particular 7,500 square feet of land -- than by making the repairs and structural changes necessary to retrofit three condos inside the church."

Even if another congregation comes along wanting to renovate the church, it would likely face the same problem numerous other central-city houses of worship seem to: parking. When these neighborhood churches were built, most people walked there. Today, many come from the suburbs and don't want to hunt for street parking or walk several blocks to their salvation. Yet there aren't enough religious people in the immediate neighborhood looking to attend services there either.

The asking price is only $449,000 despite having 7,500 square feet of land. Most all of the single-family houses in my Southeast Portland neighborhood sell for more than that, despite having less than half the square footage. 

St. Paul's church (image courtesy Save the Old Church)

The problem here is a community one: the loss of North and Northeast Portland's patchwork of historic churches. But to save such a building, or any building, it needs a champion: someone willing to step in act.

One local community member, Diane Benson, has spearheaded an effort to build a nonprofit community center there. But Benson will need a lot of help. Her website, Save the Old Church, is the place to go if you'd like to offer support and learn about the vision.

Even if it doesn't become a nonprofit community building, the right investor could certainly have found creative use of the existing church building. For example, a few blocks from where I live is a former church that was divided up into apartments. On the St. Paul's/Gesthemane property there is a sizable piece of vacant land to the east of the church. That could be the target for a new residential property, while the church itself could be renovated into a series of residences. Naturally from an architectural perspective it would be better if a use could be found that didn't gut the interior: something that preserved the sanctuary and pews. But failing that, even to save the outside would be help maintain the architectural character of the surrounding neighborhood.

St. Paul/Gesthemane church (photos by Brian Libby)

Walking the blocks around the St. Paul's/Gesthemane facility, I was struck by the dichotomy still prevalent in this corner of the city. On one hand, this relatively close-in area of North and Northeast between Killingsworth to the North, Broadway to the South and the riverbank to the west is among the hottest areas in the city for small-scale development. Particularly going west towards the North Mississippi district, there are countless houses, apartments and retail establishments going up. Yet you walk around a corner and there are also boarded up and abandoned buildings, overgrown vacant lots, and chipping paint plaguing even the occupied homes.

Heading west on Failing from the church, crossing the MLK and Williams/Vancouver thoroughfares, I made a left onto Albina just before reaching the high street of restaurants, bars and shops North Mississippi has become. My destination was the Edwin Rayworth House, which seems to have an even bleaker future than St. Paul's/Gesthemane. Built in 1890, it's one of the oldest homes in the neighborhood, and though small in scale, it's a quirky but compelling example of Victorian architecture in Portland. Our city used to have perhaps the greatest collection of Victorian homes on the West Coast, enough to rival San Francisco. But one by one they have disappeared.

Edwin Rayworth House (photo by Brian Libby)

Now, a developer from Lake Oswego (naturally) has purchased the property, which was lost by its owner to foreclosure in 2010. According to online reports, the intent is to raze the home and build a two-family structure on the same site, which will turn more of a profit than fixing up the home and selling it. Apparently the developer, in a gesture of mild humanity, is willing to allow the Rayworth house to be moved off the property rather than having it demolished. But one way or another, this nearly 125-year-old piece of Albina history is no longer going to be there.

Every neighborhood remains in constant flux, as residents come and go and demographics change, as old houses and structures are cleared away to make for new ones. To a large degree, we have to accept it. But if enough of us keep the conversation going, the greater the likelihood that the right person - someone with both resources and vision - will come along and change the grim course on which these two buildings appear to be headed.

What's frustrating is that, while we know there can be value added to a property if it's split into multiple tenants, there is also an economic value in architeturally unique spaces. Particularly in the case of the Rayworth house, another developer or homeowner could easily have come in and renovated, and would have wound up with a valuable restored Victorian house in a burgeoning popular neighborhood. To simply demolish and start from scratch is potentially more profitable in the end, I would suppose, but it's ignoring the value of what's there.

Rayworth house (photos by Brian Libby)

But what we're all probably realizing too late is that the Rayworth house and the St. Paul's/Gesthemane church are most valueable to the broader community. Although they may not be architectural masterpieces, they provide something these increasingly popular neighborhoods are in danger of losing: their authenticity, and their connection to the past. In a predominantly white city, they are reminders of our immigrant roots. In an gentrifying section of the city, they are examples of the humble working-class communities that birthed North and Northeast Portland. And in a city that prides itself on quirkiness and low-rent charm, they're an invitation to do better than demolition at the community's expense.

 

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The Architect's Questionnaire: Darin Dougherty

Darin Dougherty (photo courtesy of the architect)

BY LUKE AREHART

Leading off the Architect’s Questionnaire series for 2013 is Portland architect and retail design/experience expert Darin Dougherty. After honing his skills at a host of prestigious architecture firms including TVA Architects, Architropolis and Gensler, Darin founded Seed Architecture Studio, where he designed notable residences like the Twigg House, which was included in the Portland Architecture and Design Festival homes tour last year. Currently, Darin has crossed over his innovative skill set and way of thinking to become a designer of environments, fixtures and identity, among other things for many high profile brands including Nike, Coca-Cola and Starbucks. Darin is currently serving as the Senior Environment Designer for Ziba.

Portland Architecture: When did you first become interested in architecture as a possible career?

Darin Dougherty: I’ve always been into art and design. As a kid, I would re-arrange my bedroom every few months. At one point, my parents let me paint walls and hang wallpaper. I was lucky in that my parents were supportive of this. I would re-arrange the living room furniture as well. They might not have liked what I did with it, but they let it stay until I re-arranged things again. I’m not saying I did anything amazing, nor was I very intense about it, but every couple weeks I would think how the room would feel if we moved a chair or couch. It was about trial and error and space making. I was very interested in how my environment framed my emotions. In junior high, my school offered things like wood shop and architectural drafting. Our high school was the only one in the city that had hand drafting [classes] and a computer lab with AutoCAD. Back then, the computer was much more trouble than it was worth. I’ve been connected to architecture ever since. 

Where did you study architecture and how would you rate the experience?

I went to the University of Idaho, where I earned my bachelor of architecture and master of architecture degrees; the focus of my master’s degree was in urban planning. The College of Art and Architecture has a great urban theory and design program; it was very interesting. The experience was great.  

The architecture program is part of the art department and by default, is rooted in a hands-on conceptual approach to solving problems. We made a lot of models and spent a lot of time in the wood and metal shop. The focus of the projects was generally on concept and how you were standing behind your concept and explaining it. The solutions that people came up with for their projects varied greatly from a literal conversation about the structure of a house to the other end of the spectrum using sculpture or an art installation to make solutions. There was a very wide range of solutions to any given project and the professors were supportive of that diversity; they really pushed us to talk about our projects and the focus behind what we were doing. It was less about technical building and more about the conceptual solution and how you go about selling that idea. It was very enriching.

The Palouse (image via Wikimedia Commons)

The school is located near the Palouse region, and in my opinion, the region is a very captivating and rich landscape. It’s very different than spending time in a more urban environment. Moscow, Idaho is a small city and during the school year the population is mainly students which shrink down considerably during the summer. The city is completely surrounded by the Palouse, which is a region of majestic, rolling hills. When they are covered with wheat, they turn golden, which changes to brown when they are plowed. The color of the ground and the shape of the landscape contrasted with the sky is amazing and hard to capture in something like a photograph. The beauty of it seemed to be an extension of whom you are and where you are.

What is your favorite building project that you’ve worked on?

My first job out of school I had the opportunity to work on several of the buildings on the Nike campus. While most of my peers were inputting repetitive information into drawing sets, I had the opportunity to get into detailing things like custom tables and light fixtures, casework, even exterior envelope components. I was fascinated at what goes into making a building.

Seed Architecture Studio's SIPs residence (photo by Brian Libby)

The most emotionally rewarding projects, though, have always been houses. No client is more emotionally invested in a project. This intimate connection to the project and the client is really rewarding. When my firm, Seed Architecture Studio, was open, we completed a handful of major remodels as well as two ground-up houses. One was the SIPs house that was featured on Portland Architecture in 2009. At the time the structural planning department at the city didn’t recognize SIPs panels as being a viable structural material. When we started the project, it was the first SIPs house in Portland, which wasn’t monumental holistically, but important for Portland. The house is located in the Cully neighborhood, which is an interesting neighborhood that seems to be going through gentrification. You can find one-acre urban farm-type lots right next to the typical 50 x 100-foot lots. There’s a very rural stylistic feel in that part of Portland. The materials that we used for the house, barn wood and weathered steel, are very common rural materials but we applied them in a clean and theoretically justified way.

We have a third ground-up house that was holding during the recession that should be completed very soon. It was recently shown in-progress during the Portland Architecture and Design Festival. It’s on a steep lot in the West Hills; it has a great view, but not a view of the city so it feels like a tree house. The idea for this house was driven by the clients to do something very sustainable in terms of air quality, for example, in addition to the holistic performance of the house and its systems over time. To solve the problems of the challenging site, the aesthetics of the house take a more progressive hard-edged approach. The roof in some areas provides large overhangs acting like a protective cloak, protecting the windows from our harsh winters and focusing your view out to the forest. I think the connection that we have from the interior to the exterior space is an important component to our mood and how we feel about things.

Who has been an important mentor among your colleagues?

This is a tough question. I’ve had an opportunity to spend time with so many types of people. In one way or another, they’ve all had influence on everything, from how I respond to an email to how I approach a design problem. I continue to learn a tremendous amount from the craftsmen that I tap for executing work. I’ve also been fortunate enough to connect with some tremendous clients who continue to teach me a great deal.

Seed Architecture Studio's 14 House (photo by Darin Dougherty)

What part of the job do you like best, and as an architect what do you think you most excel at?

I love the discovery moments early on in the conceptual phase of a project, when you get the feeling that you’re on to a great solution. I also really enjoy being on the job site. I worked on a construction job site in high school and have remodeled a couple of houses myself. I guess it’s a visceral and honest connection to progress that I find really enjoyable. I think I excel most at being the director of the projects I lead. Seeing a project through to completion takes a tremendous amount of skill in different areas. The creative piece is sometimes the easiest part of a project. You also have to be political in terms of being an advocate for the client, as well as the design. There are always budgets and schedules to work within and usually there are multiple people with different personalities and different skills. Taking a project from a conceptual idea thought to a built project is extremely difficult.

The research into the client and project is also exciting.  Brands typically have an important story to leverage into a retail experience and on the other end there are residential clients that you really want to tailor their house to their life style.

What are some Portland buildings (either new or historic) that you most admire?

The Union Bank of California Tower by Anshen + Allen is an obvious choice. John Yeon’s houses are always very special. The Portland Heights residence by Allied Works is one of those special buildings that can only happen on the site it’s on. This house is on a bluff by itself and no matter where you are in the house; the orientation is towards a specific view.   All of the interior materials are well crafted and done extremely well thought out. Every single detail and moment in that house is gorgeous.

Cloud Gate (image courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

What is your favorite building outside of Portland and besides any you’ve worked on?

Not sure I would consider it a building, but the Cloud Gate in Chicago is fascinating to me. When you are there you can feel the surrounding impact through the weight of it and sheer size that’s reflective while experiencing everything else around you at once. The level of craft as well is amazing in the fact that they were able to build it.  

Herzog & De Meuron does some breathtaking work. I spent 2011 in San Francisco working for Gensler, and the De Young Museum seemed to always take on a new life each time I saw it. The way that it is placed on its site, if you walk around it while you are in the tree forested area of the park you can see it peek up like a tree house. The way the metal is rusted gives the building a great quality of movement and it never seemed to feel like a permanent building that was rooted heavily on its site. It felt very light and respectful of where it was.

DeYoung Museum, San Francisco (photo by Kyle Miller)

Is there a local architect or firm you think is unheralded or deserves more credit?

Corey Martin from THA; he’s a fiercely talented designer and a great person. I can’t say enough about THA recognizing his value and making his move possible. He’ll be an exciting person to watch.

What would you like to see change about Portland’s built environment in the long term?

Portland is actually a very accessible and affordable city. I’d like to see it continue along this path. There are so many amazing pockets around the city that have popped up, but they’re all successful because the downtown core continues to thrive. I’d hope this focus on the downtown heart continues to be a priority.

For my master’s thesis project in college, I capped Highway 405. I did all of the research on the history of the city, and why the highway happened; it was interesting to go back in time. This highway was essentially dug out, creating a huge scar through the city, displacing residences and dividing neighborhoods. Capping the highway adds 39 standard sized blocks. There’s a lot of financial potential (both private and public) by adding 39 blocks to the city. I’m not saying it’s the right move, but it’s an interesting conversation to have.

How would you rate the performance of local government like the Portland Development Commission, or the development and planning bureaus?

I think they have a very difficult task. We have big shoes to fill in terms of our reputation in urban planning on a national platform. We’re a great biking community, have easy access to locally produced food, and it’s still fairly inexpensive to live here but really we’re a very small market. I think the PDC and the planning bureaus are doing the best they can with the given circumstances.

Would you rather live in a South Waterfront condo, a craftsman bungalow in Laurelhurst, a warehouse loft in the North Mississippi district or a mid-century ranch in the West Hills?

Currently I live in a West Hills mid-century. We love it because of its proximity and access to downtown, farmers' markets, etc. We have three kids under six, so the schools were the initial draw, but the hills have grown on us. Also, I’m an avid runner. I appreciate the fact that I can’t run in a single direction from my house without requiring a 500-1,000 foot climb to get back home.

Who is a famous architect you’d like to see design a building in Portland?

I’d have to go with Bjarke Ingles. BIG architects are one of the few stars in my opinion who approach a project with a completely open mind to solving problems. In other words, they don’t have a signature style that dictates their architecture. Their projects evolve through filters of analysis. They don’t take themselves too seriously and as a result their work is both compelling and witty. They just completed a bridge design concept (Skuru Bridge) for the Swedish Transport Administration that is absolutely brilliant and would fit extremely well in our city given our climate and our need for our bridges to handle so many types of traffic. If you’ve ever watched Bjarke speak, he’s captivating. He could sell milk to a cow.

Which would you rather be responsible for: an ugly LEED platinum building or a beautiful modernist energy hog?

Neither.

Name something besides architecture (sneakers, furniture, umbrellas) you love the design of.

I’m a big fan of product and furniture design. In another life I think I would work in a shop and build furniture with materials like wood, leather and steel. The ergonomics of how things are built is interesting to me as well as the tiny details that can make all of the difference. There’s something really special when a product is very clean and understated, yet warm and authentic. Maybe this will be the next chapter in my career.

What are three of your all-time favorite movies?

Given the age of my boys, we’re highly invested currently in the Star Wars franchise; I would categorize this as one movie. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is great – I’m a huge fan of documentaries. Lately though I’ve been more into great TV series than movies. I can’t get enough of The Walking Dead.

 

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Derailed ambition: McKim Mead & White's unbuilt 1881 Grand Union Depot

Proposed Grand Union Depot (image courtesy The West Shore, April 1882)

BY ALEXANDER CRAGHEAD

Portland is blessed by the preservation and continued existence of many notable historic structures, not the least of which is its beautiful Union Station. Being the city's first modern unified transportation terminal, the 1896 structure, designed by Kansas City architect Henry Van Brunt, was in some ways the forerunner of today's Portland International Airport. Union Station is not, however, the city's first railway station, nor the first attempt at creating a unified terminal. In some ways, it's not the most interesting either: that honor belongs to one that was never built.

The railroad arrived in Portland in the late 1860s, but at the time it was a rather anemic, short-haul mode of transport.

In the wake of the Civil War both Portland and the Pacific Northwest were merely, as the late Stuart Hollbrook put it, a "Far Corner" of the United States, isolated from the rest of the nation. As a consequence, the railroad remained long unimportant, and as a consequence Portland's urban rail facilities were practically non-existent.

Henry Villard, 1889 (image from Memoirs of Henry Villard, Vol. 2)

Enter Henry Villard. A correspondent during the Civil War, Villard became an emissary of worried Oregon railway investors from his native Germany. Arriving in Oregon in 1874, he quickly deposed Ben Holladay from control of the Oregon & California Railroad, then managed to gain control of the city's storied Oregon Steam Navigation monopoly, a virtual cash machine. By 1881, thanks to an infamous financial scheme called the "Blind Pool," he controlled every rail line to and from the city of Portland and headed up one of the largest business enterprises in US history. The seemingly charmed Villard was the Steve Jobs of his era, and only two years later, Portland was linked to the east by rail.

Villard planned a single, unified rail station in Portland, not only to provide greater convenience for passengers or improved efficiency, but as an edifice that reflected the greatness of his creation. A grand station would be the final punctuation mark of Villard's signature across the continent. To do the job, Villard set aside a budget of $3 million ($68.8 million today), and in late 1881 hired the New York architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White to design it.

McKim Mead & White had come into being just two years before, in 1879, when Stanford White joined the partnership of Frank McKim and William Mead. Both McKim and White had been understudies of Henry Hobson Richardson, then American's most famous architect. Villard hired the firm to design at least three structures for him: a private residence on New York's Madison Avenue, a grand hotel in Portland, and his unified passenger station also in Portland. 

The Villard Houses (image courtesy Historic American Buildings Survey)

These three structures have always carried with them a degree of mystique and controversy. Villard's Manhattan palace was built (1884), and survives to this day, although it has been significantly altered to become a forecourt structure for a modern hotel tower. The design quoted overtly from the Renaissance Era Palazzo della Cancelleria (1489-1513) in Rome, perhaps exhibiting the desire of New York's emerging Millionaire Society to identify themselves with the merchant princes of that time.

Portland Hotel (image courtesy City of Portland archives)

Villard's hotel commision became the iconic Portland Hotel, opened after a long construction delay in 1890. It became the social center of Portland, faded from glory in the 20th century, and was torn down in 1951. Its replacement was a parking lot, and its eventual replacement by Pioneer Courthouse Square (1984) is a story well known to most urbanists. McKim, Mead & White's role in the design of the hotel, however, remains murky and shrouded in controversy.

Some scholars argue that, following the long construction delay, the bulk of the structure is the work of William M. Whidden, while others claim the structure as mostly the work of the New York firm. Architectural plans for the hotel are not known to exist, and the matter remains unsettled.

The last of the three structures commissioned by Villard with the firm is the city's passenger station. One oft-used illustration, originally printed in the April 1882 issue of The West Shore, shows a symmetrical building with a large forecourt, spreading wings, and a high central clock tower. Other than this illustration, however, there has never been clear evidence to show that McKim, Meade & White had ever done any design work; the West Shore, notorious for its regional boosterism, was not above showing highly speculative pictures.

Did this illustration have any basis in reality? As it turns out, yes. The Oregon Historical Society holds architectural drawings relating to the Van Brunt station that was constructed a decade later. Buried in with these drawings is a single oversize vellum sheet, cataloged as a drawing relating to the Van Brunt station and penned, it is alleged, by Whidden. The drawing, however, has no relation whatsoever to the Van Brunt design. Instead it is an elevation of the 1881 Villard commission, and is labeled as the work of "McKim, Mead & White Architects, 51 Broadway, New York."

Architectural elevations for Grand Union Depot (images courtesy Oregon Historical Society)

The structure shown is handsome, built of stone with long arched arcades of doors and windows on the ground floor and generously proportioned windows on the second.

The tower in some ways resembles the walled city towers of Germany's Romantic Road, with a central arched passageway at the base, narrow windows that resemble mediaeval arrow-loops above, a high and large clock face.

Crowning the tower is an an arcade and roof that resemble a late Venetian campanile.

Details of Grand Union Depot design (courtesy Oregon Historical Society)

If the article in The West Shore is to be believed, if built, it would have been not only a grand statement for Portland, but the largest railway station in the world. The footprint suggests this is not hyperbole: the station would have occupied the entire property now used by the Post Office, and would have been larger in surface area than Seattle's Safeco Field.

To construct it, fully twelve blocks would have been occupied, and perhaps for the first time in Portland's history, there was public controversy over breaking up the small block grid with big, obstructing super-blocks. The West Shore dismissed these concerns as "silly twaddle," noting that the site was "an unsightly swamp; has no streets, and never will have any, unless the railroad companies see fit to make streets."

Rough footprint of the station design in red (gray area is current USPS facility)

Though a grand thing, this incarnation of Villard's unified station for Portland was brought to a halt by financial panic in international money markets. Villard lost almost everything, including his control of Portland's railroads. Under financial strain, the railroad management that replaced him axed both the station and the hotel plans. While the hotel found local champions who eventually completed that scheme, the station plan was not revived until the early 1890s, and then in a new location with a less ambitious footprint and a different architect.

Many questions remain. Was Whidden really responsible for this drawing? It's possible, as he had worked in the McKim, Mead & White offices in New York in the early 1880s. More importantly, is this the only surviving drawing of this building? If not, where might the remainder be?

Rendering of station design for Portland (illustration by Alexander B. Craghead)

More intriguing is to contemplate how different the city would be had the McKim, Mead and White station been built. The city's railway station was for sixty years its most important transportation facility, and its location at the head of the north park blocks would have dramatically altered how downtown functioned. As The West Shore noted:

"The principle entrance will be at Park and H streets, and should the idea be carried out of throwing the Park blocks into one continuous boulevard, it will give the city pleasant and very necessary recreation grounds of over two miles in length."

It seems likely that it would also have made the streets lining the park blocks more retail in character, turning them into the main commercial boulevard of Portland. The likely conclusion is that Broadway would not have developed as it did.

As for the building itself, even with the splendid elevation drawing that survives, it is difficult to grasp how it would feel. It is likely that the closest experience possible is the San Francisco Ferry Building (A. Page Brown, 1892), whose vast arcades and Beaux Arts central clock tower tower at least echo the scale and general massing that had been planned for Portland. Walking through that structure provides a hint of what we might have had, if only Villard's money had not run out.

 

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