Portland Architecture

Bill Steel of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network discusses earthquake preparations

Cascadia Subduction Zone (image courtesy National Park Service)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

If you're like me and thousands of others living west of the Cascades, you were left stunned and scared by a recent New Yorker magazine article suggesting that it's almost inevitable that Seattle, Portland and other Pacific Northwest cities will be "toast" (as one Oregon State University seismologist put it) when a massive Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake arrives, causing what is predicted to be the worst natural disaster in American history.

In the days and weeks following the article, there was a lot of arguing amongst other seismologists and the general public as to just how dire the circumstances are. Is it guaranteed that we'd be hit by a 9.0 earthquake or more? Is it really overdue by decades or could it come in another 75 years? Will we really all be camping outside our houses for over a year without electricity?

Recently I spoke with Bill Steele of the University of Washington's Pacific Northwest Seismic Network to separate paranoia and fear from cold hard facts, and to learn more about just what Portland buildings are under the greatest threat.

From the beginning of our conversation, it was clear that one particular type of building is the most vulnerable: unreinforced masonry, where load bearing walls and other portions of the building like chimneys are made of brick, cinderblock, tiles, adobe or other masonry material that is not braced by reinforcing beams. Steele believes it's just not realistic for us to keep most of them, which is sad, because these old buildings are a huge portion of our city and our architectural character.

"Going back and trying to bring old buildings back up to current standards now that reflect the hazard we face is extremely difficult and in some cases impossible without very expensive base isolation or other strategies," Steele explained. "You wouldn’t employ that unless it was a very special building like a city hall. What you want to do is try to identify those historic structures you absolutely want to keep and find ways of improving their life safety so they don’t collapse on people. And you want to find ways to improve other old buildings or in some cases replace them. One way or the other you hope for all your structures to come up to minimum life safety standard. But it is costly and many of these buildings may have to be torn down after the quake even if the retrofit works. Maybe you were able to evacuate but the building is damaged beyond its reasonable repair. That makes it an expensive proposition to invest in. That’s the challenge: you do you do that? How do you bring everything along?"

But, Steele adds more optimistically, "I think Oregon’s doing a lot of right things. And I know the city is now working on an unreinforced masonry ordinance and involving stakeholders as we speak. I think Portland and Oregon are moving forward, but it’s going to take a significant investment." He says a recent visit to downtown Portland revealed a lot of unreinforced masonry buildings there.

Steele also says our plethora of bridges poses an extra problem. "Some were built to minimum code standards. Oregon didn’t always have as high of a code as Puget Sound. It didn’t adopt Uniform Building Code level 3 [which has more rigid seismic protections] as early as Puget Sound did. There are a lot of important structures that are really quite weak and need retrofitting. I know Oregonians have worked to improve the I-5 bridge to Washington over the Columbia. I think that kind of investment is going to be extremely helpful. Even if you lose one or two bridges, if you have alternatives it doesn’t make you an island. So that’s important."

Bill Steele (image courtesy Pacific Northwest Seismic Network)

I asked Steele to further explain the UBC levels, which haven't traditionally been as high in Oregon as in California and Washington. "The Unified Building Code was one of the first with seismic standards built in based on the hazard. UBC [level] 3 is essentially designed so the building will not collapse when subjected to 30 percent of the force of gravity in horizontal shaking," he said. "UBC 4 is designed to withstand 40 percent without collapse. It doesn’t mean they will always be safe, but they won’t kill people. That’s the first level of engineering that you want to achieve, your base level. Nowadays Oregon and Washington have adopted the International Building Code, which has some different ways of approaching these standards. It’s more adaptable. It takes the USGS seismic hazard maps and takes the probable shaking levels a building will receive on a given site and establishes level 4’s criteria based on that."

Why stricter standards for Seattle? "Because Seattle has a big crustal fault that has produced quakes. It’s uncertain in Portland with the Eastbank Fault. We both have the Cascadia Subduction Zone, but Seattle has more possibility of local quakes. If you go down to Eugene it will probably be a bit lower than Portland from all sources. It’s all kind of grounded on the best science available, but in some cases like crustal earthquakes we have less experience with it. We have a 10,000-year history with the Cascadia Subduction Zone, but less info about the crustal faults. Many have one earthquake we know about from paleo-seismologists. It’s kind of hard to predict based on one quake in the past."

Steele also said that more rigid codes are not always the answer. "You don’t want to make the codes unnecessarily strict so it unrealistically increases the cost," he explains. "You also don’t want someone to make the investment and then have it destroyed during a quake. That’s what they’re working on with the IBC, to find the level best suited for the areas. If you’re a police station or a hospital, you just build to a higher performance standard than the basic minimum code. I think key bank is one of the first to do so in the private sector in Portland. They wanted to use their bank after the earthquake. These performance-based standards are coming into play. UBC can say, here is the minimum life safety value. What level do you want to achieve? It becomes much more tunable, if you will."

Does this threat of a massive Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake make Oregon a more dangerous earthquake zone than California? Steele says no. "California has a much higher hazard. They have about two-thirds more risk than we do," he says. "That’s based on the frequency of big quakes, how close their built environment is to active faults like the San Andreas and the Hayward. There’s a whole suite of them. They have more deformation, more quakes, bigger faults near their population centers. It makes sense that they need to build to a higher standard."

If Portland were to have a large crustal earthquake, though, that might be different. "If you had a magnitude 7 on the Portland Hills fault, the impact might be greater because you have more vulnerable buildings than San Francisco does," he says. "In that sense, when the earthquake does occur it’s going to be every bit as bad. Buildings like hospitals should consider that standard or even more. We're only talking about a small percentage of the building’s cost. It’s something worth thinking about, so your hospital is functional after the earthquake. And I think with schools it’s something to consider. And it’s a question: are we going to keep this old reinforced masonry structure? We can’t build the building anywhere near where it should be. Maybe we should consider taking it down and building a modern structure. It’ll be much safer for the children and actually may cost less than retrofitting the old one. Those are the decisions that have to be made."

As dire as the forecast may be, when I told Steele that I worried about all of Portland's historic homes being destroyed, he took less of a fatalistic tone. "It’s less of a problem for a number of reasons," he says. "One, wood framed structures tend to perform pretty well in earthquakes. Many aren’t bolted their foundation though. But for a small percentage of the cost of your home you can do so, and you can create what’s called a pony wall so the house won’t rack over without any reinforcement and drop onto its foundation. You strengthen that and bold to the foundation, and you’ve made a good improvement. It’s also important to strap down your hot water heater so it won't tear the gas lines from your heater."

"What I’m not sure about," he adds, "is if the ground will shake enough during a Cascadia quake to shake homes off their foundations. It’s difficult to anticipate with any accuracy how strong the shaking’s going to be in any neighborhood. There’s great variability. That said, it would probably be around 20 percent shaking. It takes 30 and above before houses are shaking off their foundation. Crustal quakes, things come off their foundations fairly easily. But that’s not the most common hazard. Those really high accelerations are probably not going to happen."

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from our conversation is that the New Yorker article can provide a wake-up call that saves lives.

"It takes good planning and a focus of our resources," Steele says. "If it’s something we really love, those areas should get some public investment to do what’s necessary to protect those buildings. Secondly, the public has some skin in the game. We can say, 'We want you to spend lots of money to protect these structures.' The public needs to look for ways to help property owners make those improvements and share some of those costs so it’s doable. You don’t want buildings abandoned so no one can afford to do something. But really tearing down some old buildings that aren’t iconic is really the best option."

"It’s a balancing act, isn’t it? It’s trying to take advantage of the opportunities. After the quake a lot of unreinforced masonry buildings are damaged, and some of those you’ll want to rebuild. But there would be a lot of federal dollars and other resources that would flow in that would allow some significant improvements. There are advantages you can achieve when part of the deck is cleared."

"You can’t do everything," Steele says. "I just wish we were a little more systematic about strengthening our infrastructure. Seattle has failed so far to pass an unreinforced masonry ordinance. Hopefully Portland will have a little better luck. You’re still looking at ways of helping landowners meet the requirements. The engineering part is the simplest. It’s about how you implement this and bring everyone alone. It’s everybody’s problem. It needs to be everyone’s solution."

 

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Portfolio: Art Hupy's photos of Veterans Memorial Coliseum

Memorial Coliseum (photos by Art Hupy, courtesy University of Washington archives)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Our occasional series offering photos and renderings of past, present and future Portland architecture continues on a personal note.

Several months ago I received an email from a local architect who wanted to know if I was interested in some copies of Pacific Architect & Builder magazine from April 1961 that had belonged to her father. The issues he kept, all from the same month, featured a cover story on the newly completed Memorial Coliseum in Portland.

Naturally, having volunteered since about 2009 with the Friends of Memorial Coliseum, working first to save the arena from demolition (for a minor-league baseball stadium) and then in the ensuing years toward convincing City Council to invest in an overdue restoration, I was excited to see the issue.

The cover story began with a statement from the building's architects — Skidmore, Owings and Merrill — that encapsulated the design intent well:

"Many coliseums, because of their solid enclosures, give no hint of the activities going on within. We desired to develop a scheme for the Portland Memorial Coliseum that would provide visual excitement and a sense of action from both inside and outside the building. The structure viewed from Interstate Avenue at night with the lighting of the seating bowl and the people and activities on the concourse level is the best illustration of this concept."

The architects go on to describe the decision that would ultimately make the MC almost one-of-a-kind in the world, an interior seating bowl with views to the outside, something most stadium architects are only now embracing a half-century later:

"While some arena activities require light control, most do not. It was felt that the ability to vary the visual environment from within the seat bowl would lend drama and versatility to the space. The curtain concept was developed to permit spectators within the arena to have the benefit of the feeling of the total space and volume during events where light control was not required." In other words, having a 360-degree view from one's seats to the outside could be a breathtaking experience."

But more than words, what caught my eye was the array of photos in the article, dramatically portraying Memorial Coliseum at night, its curving bowl glowing from within like a flying saucer about to take off into the stratosphere. I'd seen some great photos of the Coliseum before, because America's greatest 20th century photographer, Julius Shulman, made this the one Portland building he ever photographed. But these photos, by Art Hupy, were a perfect compliment, and just as compelling as anything shot by the better-known Shulman.

Both I and my Friends of Memorial Coliseum co-chair, Stuart Emmons, tried to scan the Hupy photos directly from these gifted copies of Pacific Architect & Builder. But the grain of the decayed magazine paper meant that the scans just didn't look very good. We decided to try and track down Art Hupy and/or his archive, and while it turned out that Hupy had passed away, thousands of his photos had been donated to the University of Washington archive. Stuart wound up driving to Seattle to peruse the photos, and to see about having some of Hupy's Memorial Coliseum photos scanned.

Recently we received from UW the glorious result: a set of Coliseum photos that truly wowed us. Whether it's a shot of the building from the Broadway Bridge, its illuminated interior reflecting onto the Willamette River, or up-close shots of the arena surrounded by the old Fords and Chryslers of Kennedy-era Portland, we were smitten.

I could easily write a few thousand words here about the architecture of Veterans Memorial Coliseum (renamed a few years ago with the word 'Veterans' added), which was added to the National Register in 2011, and a few thousand more about our continuing effort, at six years and counting, to see the building not only saved but restored. But that's a post for another time. Right now I just want to pass on Hupy's photos, and hope that some of you enjoy them as much as I have.

Great cities don't tear down their most renowned historic architecture. To some it still sounds a bit funny to call modernism historic, but it is. Thankfully, public appreciation for mid-20th Century modernism has never been greater. And smart cities don't tear down busy venues like the Coliseum, which continues to break even with over 100 events a year despite its deferred maintenance.

Meanwhile, though, take a moment and give Hupy's work a look. Or take a moment to peruse Shulman's equally masterful shots. It's a reminder of how great architectural photography can help transform our sense of both the past and future.

 

 

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Restore Oregon's Peggy Moretti on the Most Endangered Places list

First Congregational Church, Portland (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In just over a week, on August 7, nominations will be due for the Oregon's Most Endangered Places list, published annually by Restore Oregon.

Begun in 2011, the Endangered Places list has brought attention in its five years to a variety of works of architecture, landscape and more. According to Restore Oregon's director, Peggy Moretti, the intent is not so much to provide a definitive, authoritative hierarchy of important structures around the state but to offer help where it might be useful.

"The Endangered Places list is designed to shine a spotlight on places significantly at risk, and to rally support," she said. "We provide grants and devote consulting time to help each of those places develop a plan to move forward. Whatever expertise is needed, we’ll help get them involved. And we help work with locals to learn how to collaborate to save that endangered place."

The 2015 Oregon's Most Endangered Places list was a septet with a wide variety of scales, styles and histories. 

Eastern Oregon University, LaGrande, 1934 (image courtesy Restore Oregon)

Eastern Oregon University Grand Staircase in La Grande, for instance, is not only part of a grand circa-1929 Italian renaissance revival style (listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1929), but the only remaining element of what was originally an elaborate set of landscape features as the staircase moves downward from its hillside perch over five tiers. The First Congregational Church in Portland, completed in 1895, has been a downtown landmark for over a century and for six decades its tower was the tallest structure in Portland. There were also two barns on the list, the Shipley-Cook Barn in Lake Oswego (1862) and the Smith Barn in Cave Junction (1896), each notable for their hand construction, and the rural Mildred Kanipe House in Oakland, Oregon (near Roseburg), dating to 1865. And just as the Gray Building is an important historical landmark from Portland's African American community (it was home to one of the city's first black-owned businesses and later a Black Panther Party meeting site), so too did the Wong Laundry Building (1908) play a significant role in the development of what was once the West Coast's biggest Chinatown.

Nominations for the list can be made by anyone. But the real reason I contacted Moretti was to find out who decides on the list itself. Apparently, the nominations are collected and scored by Restore Oregon’s advocacy committee, which is comprised of its board of advisors largely and a couple of staff members.

Gray Building, Portland, 1929 (image courtesy Restore Oregon)

"We evaluate based on certain criteria: the urgency of the threat, the historic significance of the place, the degree of community support—we always need support from locals—and the long-term viability of the place, so if time and money is invested it has legs, and has a viable purpose," Moretti explained. "Typically we have more nominations than we can list. The Restore Oregon board takes the list of recommendations and formally votes to approve them."

Moretti said that the board of advisors, which comprises much of the decision-makers for the list, is made up of what she called subject-matter experts and regional representatives. By way of example, she added: "We have an advisor who’s an archeologist. We have somebody who has expertise with legislative issues. And we have people from the Parks Department. It's people with a certain set of skills and have eyes and ears in a certain region."

I told her that configuration made sense, because while I always learn something interesting about Oregon and its heritage when the list is published, it usually doesn't seem like a roster that was chosen by architects.

"Definitely there’s a number of buildings on our list that would not be considered architectural gems, but they have huge value culturally or historically," Moretti said. She cited the Gray Building in Portland, which was included in this year's list, and "has tremendous significance to the African American community," but is architecturally more than a boarded-up old storefront. "It’s definitely about more than just architecture," she added. "But we had last year the Dome Building at the Oregon State Hospital, for example. In some cases we’ve done a whole district or category like the Oregon Trail Pioneer Farmsteads. In that case it’s like, 'Oh my gosh!' The not just Oregon history but American history that is there."

I couldn't help but notice that some of the threatened Portland buildings that have been most discussed locally have not been added to the Endangered Places list. No Portland Building, for example. No GasCo Building. No Memorial Coliseum or Centennial Mills. In most of those cases, Moretti says the buildings were never nominated. Maybe that's because of their scale, which is a little too large for Restore Oregon to impact (at least financially), or perhaps it's because many of these dramas go on for years, with a mix of progress and regression that can be difficult to keep track of.

Of these aforementioned buildings, only the GasCo received a nomination. The committee rejected it, Moretti explained, "because we were concerned that it was not viable. It could be revisited. Every year we take a new look. But that’s a tough one. It’s so elegant, and people talk about it so much, but there’s so much stacked against it. Our goal with the list isn’t to say, look at what we’re going to lose. It’s to say, let’s rally resources so we can revive them. If we can’t identify a path forward for a place, we’ll care a lot about it and want to see it documented. But we’re trying to take some scarce resources and put them where they’ll have impact." But don't get too mad at Restore Oregon for not putting the GasCo on the list. The organization was one of the first to take action when the building was threatened and call upon its owner, Northwest Natural, to at least leave it as a ruin.

Today lists are almost painfully ubiquitous. From BuzzFeed to Bleacher Report to The Oregonian, writers churn them out from a seemingly inexhaustible ongoing supply of half-formed ideas. Yet thoughtfully made lists from real organizations, like the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment's annual 10 Ten Green Projects List for nationally-significant sustainable architecture, or Restore Oregon's Most Endangered Places list, can turn our attention to buildings and places in a way that is helpful and constructive. And while there may be some architecture that matters more to me than some of the buildings on this year's or past lists, that's what good lists should be about: expanding what you thought you knew, and what we can all do to affect positive change. Numerous preservation success stories have happened with buildings on Restore Oregon's list, and in many cases that wouldn't have happened unless they were listed.

 

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A modest gem reborn: the Belluschi Pavilion at Marylhurst University

Belluschi Pavilion, Marylhurst University (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

When architect Pietro Belluschi was approached by newlyweds Arthur and Lucy Griffith in 1949 about design them a home in suburban Lake Oswego, his career was at a crossroads.

Two years earlier, Belluschi had seen completion of what may be his most acclaimed building, the Equitable, in downtown Portland, which was celebrated as the first curtain-wall structure in the United States - the nation's first modern office building. That same year, 1947, Life magazine had featured one of his modest home designs as prototype housing for the thousands of soldiers returning home from World War II. When the Griffiths called, Belluschi was also at work on one of his most celebrated ecclesiastical designs, for Zion Lutheran Church in Portland.

But his days here were also numbered. By 1951, Belluschi would leave Portland to become the dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's School of Architecture and Planning. President Truman would also appoint Belluschi to the National Committee of the Arts in 1950. He had bigger fish to fry.

By the time of the Griffiths commission, Belluschi thus could easily have eschewed such a small commission. But the couple had once worked in the same building as the architect, back when he was part of celebrated Central Library and Benson Hotel (and Benson Bubbler) architect AE Doyle's office. And Belluschi realized that the couple's desire for a modest starter home could bring an opportunity to make his small (one bedroom) but expandable Life design a real-world reality. The house cost just $7,000 to build (minus the cost of the lot) in 1949, which in today's dollars would only be about $70,000.

Belluschi Pavilion entry and dining areas (photos by Brian Libby)

The Griffiths wound up staying in their modest but handsome 911-square-foot, Belluschi-designed residence for some 60 years, eschewing the additions that existed in the Life design. But a few years ago after Lucy Griffin died and Arthur moved to a retirement facility, the house was sold. And the new owner wasted little time in filing for a demolition permit, in order to build something much larger and more banal.

Luckily builder Tim Mather was on the case. Recognizing the value of Lake Oswego's only Belluschi-designed building, he convinced the new owner to let him dismantle and move the house. In 2007 his company, MCM Construction, broke down the structure into some 2,000 pieces, which were stored until Mather and like-minded partners could secure a new site and funding for the house. The City of Lake Oswego expressed interest, but didn't know exactly what to do with or where to put it. Then local a savior emerged: Marylhurst University.

Today the rebuilt Griffith residence, now known as the Belluschi Pavilion, sits at the southern end of the Marylhurst campus, just across from the building that houses the popular Art Gym gallery, providing a bookend to a quad of buildings. The plan is to use the building for special events, classes and meetings. But, as Mather said on a recent visit, "It's a teaching tool. Today people covet midcentury-modern design, and the university wants this to be a cultural outpost for Lake Oswego."

Belluschi Pavilion exterior (photos by Brian Libby)

Given how small the house is, when anticipating my visit to the Pavilion I wondered if seeing it prominently placed more or less on a pedestal might seem a bit silly, as if the prestige of the Pietro Belluschi who designed the Portland Art Museum, the Equitable Building and other landmarks like New York's Pan-Am Building (with Walter Gropius) or San Francisco's Cathedral of St. Mary's was being grafted onto an otherwise forgettable little square building. But quickly the little cottage began to reveal itself as a hallmark of Belluschi's gifts, as well as a testament to the idea that exceptional architecture needn't be reserved for the wealthy or for those seeking vast amounts of square footage.

Viewed from outside, the house is a simple square, but in keeping with the regional Northwest modernism embodied by the work of Belluschi, John Yeon, Van Evera Bailey, Saul Zaik and other local architects of the time, its overhangs (extending 5'3" to the west and east, 2'6" to the north and south) emphasize horizontality and inside-out connections, with the Douglas fir ceiling of the interior continuing as an exterior underhand of the roof.

The roof is also slanted from east to west, something I haven't seen in a lot of Belluschi houses (compared to flat and pitched roofs), but longtime Belluschi scholar Libby Dawson Farr persuasively argues that the architect may have been influenced by another famous designer's plan for simple postwar housing, that of Hungarian and former Bauhaus member architect Marcel Breuer, who was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art to design a "House in the Museum Garden" that was displayed on site in 1949. It had a similarly boxy form and a slanted roof (unlike the Minimum house for Life, which had a pitched roof but was otherwise similar).

Belluschi's "Minimum House" for Life magazine, April 1947

Inside, the house feels quintessentially Northwest modern and recognizably Belluschi. One feels enveloped in a wood cocoon with Hemlock walls and a Douglas fir ceiling and beams. There are also details like a crenelated brick pattern on a portion of the fireplace, and a window wall with patterned wood and semi-transparent glass at the front of the house, similar to designs in some of Belluschi's churches, which brings light into the dining room while maintaining privacy.

There are many other Pietro Belluschi-designed houses with more impressive overall architecture. Gems like the Sutor House from 1938 and the circa-1948 Burkes House (now occupied by the architect's son, Anthony Belluschi) are bigger and more ambitious and impressive. Yet those are ultimately still private residences, which means the Belluschi Pavilion can occupy its own unique role in the community as the only house by the architect consistently open to the public.

Like the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Gordon house near Silverton, which similarly was moved from its original location along the Willamette near Wilsonville and re-assembled at the Oregon Garden several miles to the south in order to prevent demolition, the Belluschi Pavilion can be inspiring and educational despite being a modest example of the architect's work.

And besides, what's wrong with modest? We live in a time of increasingly extreme income disparity on a national level, and locally we're seeing every Portland neighborhood within five miles of the city center gentrify at a rapid clip, with all but the affluent threatened with exile outward.

With this house we have a case of an architect who has already gained international notoriety for his work (more than any Portland architect has in the 65 years since) taking the time to design something very modest. It makes one wonder what Belluschi might be designing if he were in practice today. Maybe he'd be doing some innovative tower downtown or in the Pearl District, but maybe he'd also take the time to do a tiny house.

 

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UO honors local preservation pioneer Leo Williams

Leo Williams (image courtesy University of Oregon)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It's easy to forget that Portland wasn't always Portland.

Today if we look around at a lot of the iconic places and spaces that comprise this city, from greenspaces like Waterfront Park to preserved landmarks like Central Library and the Pittock Mansion or historic districts like Old Town and Skidmore, it's easy to forget that a generation ago most of them either didn't exist or were severely threatened.

Only beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s did Portland, under leaders like Neil Goldschmidt and a new generation of progressive planners, architects and historic preservationists, become the beautiful, walkable, well-preserved and transit-oriented place it is today. Before that, we had highways lining both sides of the river and a Robert Moses-shaped plan to make Portland a spaghetti-like knot of interstates. We had people tearing down turn-of-the-century architecture to make way for parking lots.

Former Portland Planning Bureau head and longtime Historic Landmarks Commission member Leo Dean Williams, who last week received the University of Oregon's seventh annual George McMath Award for historic preservation, was one of the people who helped make Portland what it is today. "I think the city would not have evolved into what it was without you," John Tess, one of Williams's friends, said to Williams during the award presentation.

Williams is credited with spearheading a pragmatic approach at the city that led to a lot of great places being preserved. Working with local developers beginning in the late '60s, he helped create an environment that was collaborative rather than confrontational - "seeking to bring about preservation by facilitation, not just regulation," as UO architecture program dean Brook Muller put it. "He masterfully created a mutually beneficial environment when development and historic preservation could occur together. I call it 'Leo-ology,' achieving two avenues at the same time. Those of us in government acting behind the scenes can play as vital a role as those in the private and nonprofit sectors."

During the awards presentation, a slideshow of images spoke to just how much local architecture Williams impacted the preservation of: the St. John’s bridge, the New Market Theater, the White Stag sign, the Blagen block, Pioneer Courthouse Square, the Japanese Garden, the Skidmore and Keller Fountains, the Sentinel (formerly Governor) Hotel, and the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

Yamhill Historic District (photo by Brian Libby)

A graduate of the University of Kansas, Williams reportedly made a comprehensive study of where he would move to after graduation in the '60s, and decided that Portland had the best chance to become a livable city. It was a time when state and local governments gearing up to administer the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, a reaction to the ceaseless demolitions of downtowns amidst urban renewal goals. Williams and the award's namesake, George McMath, wound up writing Portland's historic 1968 preservation ordinance, only the second on the west coast after Los Angeles. Yet it was not legislation or the crafting of ordinances that made Williams special, but instead the collaborative approach he took with the private sector.

"You hear so much about Portland today. You say you’re from Portland and people are like, ‘Wow.’ I was talking with someone today about how we’re attracting so much investment. We have a great brand. But it wasn’t always like that," said Williams's former colleague John Southgate during the presentation. "People say we’re the city that took out a highway to build light rail. Leo was a big player in the city we became." 

"It’s not always easy to leave a legacy. People don’t wake up saying, 'I want to be a bureaucrat.' But you can have a lot of influence. The impact he had, by working with people like [developers] Al Solheim and Jim Winkler, laid the groundwork for the vision that others had. I remember it wasn’t always fun. We had our battles. But the long arc of your work was to create what we have now. Leo wasn’t the front man. We had Neil Goldschmidt. But he was there year after year."

"Leo said, 'Let’s not worry about how the rules work. Let’s make the rules work for what we’re trying to do,' Tess added. "He influenced a lot of things."

Today is again a challenging time for historic preservation. Old houses throughout the city are under threat from developers looking to tear them down and build something bigger. In the city center, historic works of architecture from the Portland Building to Memorial Coliseum, Centennial Mills to the Multnomah County Courthouse, are facing make-or-break moments. And the lesson of Leo Williams may be illustrative here: that we need to find a way to cast away the extremes of either side, be they people who eschew preservation outright or those who won't allow old buildings to be changed for the times, and instead find solutions. Of course not every old building should be preserved, but Williams helped show us that if one can find a way to make historic architecture work for its time then it adds up, along with investments in dense planning, greenspace and mass transit, to a city where people want to be.

The awards luncheon began and ended with two different people quoting legendary former governor Tom McCall, a Republican who often acted like a Democrat - in other words, a man who, like Williams, defied labels and was loved for it. “Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky," McCall once said. "They’re the people who say, this is my community, either by birth or by adoption, and it’s my responsibility to make it better.”

In that way, perhaps Williams was a Portland kind of hero - in that he wasn't a showy iconoclast but someone who nobly and with humility kept working like a concerned citizen, whether it was from the inside of government or out. And while the award is a nice recognition, maybe the best way to honor him is to find a way to keep Portland Portland. That happens not by freezing the city, for it will always change, as it should, but by continually taking our most beloved places along for the journey, and finding pragmatic ways to do so without divisive polemics.

 

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A midcentury modern evolution: the houses of Van Evera Bailey

Shaw Residence, Southwest Portland (photos by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

When talk turns to the regional Northwest modern style made popular in the mid-20th century, Pietro Belluschi and John Yeon are nearly always the first names that come up. But as last Saturday's Restore Oregon-sponsored tour demonstrated, architect Van Evera Bailey is a name that should not be forgotten.

Bailey's journey as an architect was both an evolution through stylistic periods and one that incorporated ideas from further afield.

Born in Portland in 1903, Bailey's early work in the 1920s was, like that of many architects of that time period who would ultimately go modern (such as Richard Sundeleaf), was heavily influenced by the English arts and crafts style, which can still be seen in neighborhoods throughout Portland and its suburbs. One house on the tour, the circa-1929 Rogers Residence in Lake Oswego, served as an example.

But in the 1930s, after following his mentor, William Gray Purcell (a protégé, like Frank Lloyd Wright, of the legendary Chicago pre-modernist Louis Sullivan), to Southern California, Bailey became influenced by Los Angeles area's transplanted European modernist architects, such as Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler.

Bruno Residence, Lake Oswego

By the time he returned to Portland in 1937, his style was transformed. One of the houses I visited on Saturday, the Bruno Residence (1939) in Lake Oswego, was evident of a version of modernism practiced at the time, called streamline moderne, which took its influence from cruse ships. After passing through a relatively modest entrance, something common to many architects of the time (including Wright), one looks out through large plate-glass windows at outdoor decks with railings that could be mistaken for the Love Boat and its kind, giving Bailey's design a touch of whimsy. The architect here also makes ample use of glass blocks, which brings in light while maintaining privacy.

Two houses on the tour from 1940 and 41, respectively, and both located in the West Hills, showed Bailey refining his simple forms and the journey from modest entrance to glass-ensconced living areas taking advantage of view. The Clifton Residence was not entirely original, as it has been built onto numerous times, and the Sinclair Residence was stripped bare for a whole-house renovation. But in both cases one could see the Bailey signature, particularly his sense of whimsy, as seen in a winding wood staircase at the Sinclair.

Clefton Residence, Southwest Portland

A pair of tour houses completed in 1957, the Lillig Residence in Lake Oswego and the Shaw Residence in Portland's West Hills, showed Bailey at his fully realized zenith, emblematic of the Northwest style with large overhangs, wood ceilings and living areas with floor-to-ceiling glass.

When I first arrived at the Lillig, I'll admit I was underwhelmed. From the street it looked like one of the thousands of midcentury ranch houses that are sprinkled throughout the region. But then I began to consider how the house sits amidst a rich landscape of mature trees and plants. It felt like a home nestled in a garden or forest.

Lillig Residence, Lake Oswego 

And then the house began to open up as I moved inside, with vaulted wood ceilings and a wraparound corner fireplace. As I moved downstairs to the lower level and came around to the front from outside, the Lillig further revealed itself as a handsome example of Northwest modernism, its overhanging roofline defining the house's form. This still wasn't a masterpiece along the lines of Belluschi's Burkes and Suitor residences or Yeon's Watzek house, but the talent was easy to see.

And then there was the Shaw Residence, my favorite house on the tour and now one of my favorite midcentury-modern houses in Portland.

It too kept a relatively low profile from the street, but as soon as I entered the home, its magnificent butterfly roof was a defining feature, pitched in the middle in a way that, like the Watzek, perfectly mimicked the slopes of Mt. Hood visible in the distance.

As the wood ceiling rose and fell, it looked like a kind of sculpture, almost like a bird of prey's wings. There was also a remodeled kitchen which gained space by taking over the attached utility room off the garage yet without compromising the integrity of the original architecture. Still, the living area and its view beneath the vaulted roof was the star of the tour.

Honestly my photos don't do it justice - it's hard to shoot directly into sunlight - but standing inside the Shaw Residence gave me a similar sense of wonder to what I've felt while experiencing the best of Belluschi and Yeon.

Shaw Residence, Southwest Portland

In his book Classic Houses of Portland: 1850-1950, William Hawkins writes of Bailey's "restless sense of invention." Bailey indeed was an architect who continuously absorbed the ideas of the talent architects with whom he came into contact, but he also was able to make the synthesis of those borrowed ideas his own.

He also was a structural innovator, helping to develop a stilt system that enabled several West Hills homes on hilly lots heretofore considered unbuildable but that now are part of the collective architectural identity of Portland.

What's more, if Northwest midcentury-modern houses are arguably the most significant and unique contribution that Portland has contributed to world architecture, then Bailey not only deserves his place alongside Belluschi and Yeon, but a larger recognition beyond Oregon's borders.

 

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Creative class in session: visiting the restored Washington High School

The renovated Washington High (photos by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It occurred to me on a recent tour of the renovated Washington High School that it belongs to a constellation of old buildings across the city that, while of disparate origins and original purposes, have now been transformed into offices for creative companies. Unless you’re a law firm or a major corporation or a government agency, to locate in a downtown office tower almost seems passé, while holding court in, say, a former automobile factory (the Ford Building) or cereal mill (Olympic Mills Commerce Center) or jazz club (Leftbank Building) is the mark of a creative company locating creatively. 

Today the restored Washington High, a public school that first opened in 1924 (after its predecessor was destroyed by fire) and saw such alumni as Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling and pioneering food writer/chef James Beard matriculate within its doors, is a very different place from the original house of learning and the abandoned structure of a decade ago—not so much in terms of changed architecture as its better condition and improved vibe.

SERA Architects, which designed the renovation, took the right approach, one that was largely hands-off in terms of the aesthetics that made the building special, while still quietly adding new amenities. The building includes new heating and cooling, for example, as well as new plumbing, new electrical service, a new freight elevator, and is fully ADA-accessible.

When I first visited Washington High before the renovation, in 2005, it was set to become a refugee center for victims of Hurricane Katrina. I’m usually terrible about volunteering, but I remember scrubbing windows and hallway lockers there while thinking about the thousands of Louisianans disposed, and wondering what, if anything, the building might someday become. In 2009 I visited the school again, this time while it served as a location for the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Art Festival. But for a time, a permanent purpose remained elusive.

Finally, after receiving a US Department of Housing and Urban Development grant for $665,000, in April 2009, an advisory committee was appointed by Portland Commissioner Nick Fish to develop the scope and program for the facility. The City of Portland spent a few years afterward exploring the use of WHS (which in 1978 merged with Monroe High and became known as Washington-Monroe High School) as a community center, which fell through.

But it was the late developer and historic preservationist Art DeMuro of Venerable Properties who made the current renovation happen after it sat vacant for decades. DeMuro passed away in 2012 before Washington High’s renovation could be fully realized, but the team at Venerable has certainly honored his legacy with the completion of this project.

Today the restored WHS is serving as the headquarters for local progressive grocery chain New Seasons (which occupies about a third of the building) as well as a host of other companies, such as Struck, Murmur Creative and Walker Tracker. Many of these smaller businesses, on the 23,000 square foot ground floor, have their own entrances. But part of the attraction to locating in this former high school is a sense of shared community and shared energy that comes to its 50,000 square feet of creative offices. A 2,600 square foot rooftop deck, for example, is an ideal party space.

There is also Revolution Hall, which was borne from the school’s former auditorium but is also gaining traction as a small venue attracting music, comedy and variety acts from the legendary Preservation Hall Jazz Band to comedian Marc Maron to National Public Radio’s “Live Wire!” show. Its wraparound seating makes it a spot for music, theater and much more. 

Entering the brick building, which was designed in the classical revival style by architecture firm Houghtaling & Dougan with detailing such as a series of glazed terra cotta lions’ heads over the entrance and roman columns in front (etched with quotes about education from philosophers and famous politicians), it initially seems surprisingly unchanged.

Walking up the staircase, for example, one is greeted by the original display case, which still houses mementos from the school such as Rose Festival princesses and winning sports teams. (Besides Pauling and Beard, WHS’s alumni roster also includes former Seattle Seahawks coach Jack Patera.) The original lockers still are affixed to the walls of the wide hallways, which teem with natural light. Even the original IBM clocks still hang on the walls.

Even as I moved into the offices and a corner of the downstairs converted to a bar as part of the Revolution Hall build-out, they felt relatively unchanged from the old classrooms. The bar lists its microbrew offerings on an old chalkboard, and the main New Seasons conference room was simply created by adjoining two classrooms.

In the years ahead, it will be interesting to see how the surrounding neighborhood transforms. To the east is the Buckman neighborhood of single-family homes, and due to its centrality, it is already gentrifying fast. To the west, however, is the Central Eastside, which is changing just as much. Lower Morrison and Belmont Streets are already home to renovation projects like the Yale Union art museum and Grand Central Bowl, as well as eateries like Bunk Sandwiches. There is also talk of large new apartment and condominium projects, which could bring added foot traffic but also bring new challenges of parking and rising rents. But it’s not Washington High School’s responsibility to enact the right balance of neighborhood progress and livability.

The good news is that while it never became the community center that the city explored, it nevertheless has become a building that attracts people. And for that it earns a high grade. The same energy that once inspired great scientists and chefs and athletes can live on—only now you don’t need a hall pass.

 

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Pressure cooker: can Portland grow the right way?

Downtown Portland (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The history of cities has always been fluid. Metropolises continuously rise and fall in population, in affordability, and in economic activity—and not just the obvious examples like Detroit’s decline or Dubai’s dizzying rise.

Portland too has continuously transformed, even before the boom and bust cycle of the past decade. A 19th century pioneer town gave way to the timber-industry capitol of the 20th century, for example. In more recent years, as timber has given way to an economic mix of high tech, athletic apparel and food & drink, the city’s industrial enclaves have become high-density neighborhoods like the Pearl District and South Waterfront, and once downtrodden neighborhoods have gentrified as middle-class home buyers have returned to the central city after a generation of suburban flight. And with our progressive land-use laws, the metro area has densified more than it has sprawled (at least compared to other cities), which makes for a better sense of place but drives up the cost of living.

Yet while both physical and economic change is inevitable, these days it feels like some kind of tipping point has been reached in the city, or at least a period of particular transformation. More than the past decade’s economic boom, this one has seemed to affect existing, close-in Portland neighborhoods.

It is happening in almost every corner of the city, or at least those within a few miles’ drive of downtown. Historic homes being replaced by bigger ones, or by duplexes and triplexes. On major arterials, thriving buildings are being demolished to make way for bigger ones. This increasing density is better than the alternative that existed five or six years ago, when foreclosures were mounting amidst the Great Recession. It’s not exactly the same problem as the housing boom that existed in the 2000s before the bust, when speculation was driving up prices. Yet high prices remain, as well as the worry that our sense of place, or the kind of sweet spot the city has enjoyed between affordability and amenities, may be in jeopardy.

One can see the tension play out in a number of ways.

On the affordable housing front, the city has fallen behind its goals. In the Pearl District, for instance, a 1997 agreement between the city and Hoyt Street Properties (the private developer contracted to build out former rail yards) to have 35 percent of all housing units be affordable has fallen short. In South Waterfront too, a 2003 pledge to make 582 out of the first 3,000 units constructed affordable has also failed to happen.

An apartment building in Southeast Portland (photo by Brian Libby)

It’s not just a question of the total number of affordable housing units but also where we’re building them. Healthy cities have a variety of different income levels living more or less in a mix, not in segregation. Despite the strictures of the 46-year-old Fair Housing Act, which is intended to sprinkle affordable housing across neighborhoods, an overwhelming majority of subsidized housing over the past decade-plus has existed in the poorest portions of the metro area. There is also very  little affordable housing in affluent communities. A 2012 Oregonian report by Brad Schmidt found that Lake Oswego and West Linn, for example, contributed just 0.1 percent of the 34,000 affordable units in the three-country metro area. Instead, poor residents have been clustered in areas like Gresham and east of 82nd in Portland.

There are small bits of good news. As Schmidt reported last week, Portland’s City Council, perhaps prompted by the failure to build enough affordable units in the Pearl and SoWa, has recently approved an alteration of its urban renewal areas led by Mayor Charlie Hales that will raise another $3.5 million for affordable housing. A resolution from Commissioner Nick Fish will commit $47 million for 270 more units in South Waterfront. The close-in Zidell Yards development is said to be earmarking acreage for an affordable-housing project, and there is new affordable housing coming to the Pearl, even if too much of it is clustered together.

Even so, affordable housing—even if we went on a huge building spree—will not solve the broader crisis of affordability in Portland proper, where even the middle class is increasingly feeling squeezed out. Portland has recently been ranked as the most quickly gentrifying city in America. When this kind of high-end development and construction reaches fever pitch, as it has done in other big, popular American cities like San Francisco, Austin and Washington, DC, there is an increasing question of how the middle class can remain in the game, as well as whether we might lose something larger along the way: a sense of what it means to be Portland.

And affordability is not the only aspect of this emerging crisis. The city may be even more up in arms over what it is doing to our fabric of historic homes. All over Portland’s neighborhoods, developers and builders are tearing down old houses to make way for duplexes and other multi-family buildings. There is so much destruction happening so fast that entire publications like the Portland Chronicle have been created to document this grim continuing story. The latest? A 100-year-old house in Elliott went bye-bye to make way for a five-story apartment complex. A 130-year-old home in Hosford-Abernethy is about to meet the wrecking ball. And the church at 801 NE Failing street that dates to 1904 is being demolished by developer Peter Kusyk, the same person who previously had planned to tear down the historic Marquam Home in Laurelhurst (which was saved at the 11th hour when neighbors agreed to buy the home).

The economics have changed compared to the last decade's boom: developers like Kusyk who back then were more likely to work in the suburbs are now turning their attention to Portland's close-in neighborhoods as they've become more popular and suburban land has become scarcer. And even if Kusyk had never been born, another developer would do the same thing he's doing: eying the church's site with only a profit motive in mind. The church has sat vacant for years and no one came along who was both willing and financially able to preserve the building, either as another house of worship or converted into some other type of facility. Yet the system could have been better equipped to make preservation an attractive option.

It isn’t just that these houses and other neighborhood buildings are being torn down. Some of this is inevitable for any city: the passage of time and changing needs necessitate continual transformation of the housing stock. But what’s particularly troubling has been the lack of reasonable brakes on the process. 

With the church on NE Failing, for example, there was supposed to have been a 120-day waiting period before the building could be razed because it was part of the city’s official Historic Resources Inventory. That would have been the case a few decades ago. But now it’s possible to remove one’s property from the list, allowing demolition to happen quickly.

This question of whether or how much owners should have the right to remove their properties from historic building lists is also about to go before the Oregon Supreme Court, in the case of Lake Oswego Preservation Society v. City of Lake Oswego. The case centers on the state’s 1995 “owner consent” law, which allows for owner removal of a house from historic designations. It began from a dispute over the circa-1855 Carman House in Lake Oswego, which a new owner wants to raze in the name of fattening the wallet. But the case will have huge precedent. 

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t welcome most new development, be it in close-in Portland or the suburbs. It’s the engine that drives much of our economy and a matter of continuously reconfiguring the collective built environment for today’s needs. And with many thousands moving here every month, we’ve got to plan for a more highly populated and high-density future. Although there is arguably a real crisis going on with respect to the loss of our stock of old single-family homes, we need high-density apartments and condos to keep being built on our major streets. Yet there seems to be little question that the city and the metro area are falling behind with respect to fine-tuning just how that balanced growth happens. 

It’s easier said than done, for not everyone agrees on what steps to take. Last month when Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who oversees the Bureau of Development Services, instructed staff there to “raise the bar” and show more willingness to reject discretionary land-use appeals of the zoning code, it seemed to some like a chance to bring a more balanced approach to the many neighborhoods where big apartment and condo projects rub up against single-family homes. Yet the first feedback I received was from a prominent award-winning local architect, who warned this created a dangerous precedent: more uncertainty for developers, and an antiquated standard for what constitutes compatibility. “The idea that she is placing ‘compatibility’ and the definition of what compatibility is in the hands of neighbors and staff will likely result in a stifled and homogenous building fabric,” the architect wrote by email.

Yet there are still some worthwhile steps that can be taken. On the Bike Portland blog as well as on his own site, developer Eli Spevak of Orange Splot offered a series of moves that could be taken to create what he called a “more affordable urban infill policy.” We should allow or expand allowance of internal conversions of older homes to two or more units in single dwelling zones, Spevak wrote, so long as their exterior is minimally altered and they retain their single dwelling appearance. We could make it easier for a second home to be built on the same lot as an older home, capping out the combined square footage as equivalent to a large new home, and waving some of the remaining restrictions on accessory dwelling units. We might try removing the “household” definition from the zoning code to open up spare rooms for occupancy in larger homes. 

And perhaps most of all, we could implement inclusionary zoning, something that is banned in only Oregon and Texas but would do a lot to ensure developers include affordable housing in new multi-family building projects.

Even if we were to do everything possible and make all these moves—the rejection of owner consent laws, the implementation of inclusionary zoning, the enforcement of Fair Housing Act strictures for distributing affordable housing across neighborhoods and suburbs of all income levels—the Portland metro area will still transform. Certain neighborhoods will still be too expensive for the overwhelming majority to live in. State laws and local codes will always be playing catch-up to contemporary realities. And we don’t even know what the next crisis will bring. We very well may be headed for another economic bust in a few years, and if so, that will bring another round of foreclosures and cash-strapped government budgets.

What’s more, we can’t ever fully separate the dangers of massive growth from the benefits. After all, perhaps never before in Portland’s history has the nation been more focused on our city as not only a destination, but a way of life: one that’s a little quirky but refreshingly less corporate; one that favors pedestrians and transit over the automobile; one where architecture is rooted in good values like collaboration and sustainability more than ego. We have a hell of a lot going for us. It’s just that now is the time to make sure that it’s more blessing than curse, and that ours is a city that everyone has a chance to embrace.

 

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First Memorial Coliseum restoration numbers released; when will City Council act?

Memorial Coliseum (photo by Julius Shulman, courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Most of the numbers from a sweeping study that Portland's City Council commissioned on Veterans Memorial Coliseum have not been released yet: not the market analysis that would estimate future bookings after a restoration, for example, or the cost of demolition. But last week the city released the one set of figures it has received from the study so far: the cost of different levels of restoration.

As reported by The Oregonian's Brad Schmidt, the study identified a basic restoration cost of $37 million, a more extensive one for $61 million, and a more comprehensive restoration at $89 million.

Schmidt's article, or at least the headline, identified this as a "big bill," and no doubt $37 to $89 million is indeed a lot of money. But while the reporting behind the headline is sound, I'd respectfully argue that some additional context ultimately needs to be added to this conversation.

First there's the yet-to-be-released study numbers, which will identify how these investments would lead to increased bookings for the building. Those numbers are due in approximately May, according to Susan Gibson-Hartnett, who is managing the project for the Office of Management & Finance. 

The $37 million figure is not far from the $31.5 million plan spearheaded by the last mayor, Sam Adams, in 2012 during the final months of his term. It never came to a City Council vote. But as part of a public-private partnership, that deal included about $10 million in funds from the Portland Winterhawks franchise. According to Schmidt's article, the city currently has budgeted $23.3 million. That means there may be about $33.3 million if the team were willing to join the public-private partnership on its home again.

A recent Winterhawks game at Memorial Coliseum (photo by Brian Libby)

Second, there's the question of how such restorations as the city is contemplating for Memorial Coliseum would compare to building a new 8,000-seat arena (which the formerly 12,000-seat Coliseum would reportedly become after a restoration). 

Restoration vs. new construction

Today Portland lacks a venue that is larger than the downtown theaters such as the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall or Keller Auditorium (which top out at just under 3,000 seats) and the approximately 20,000-seat Moda Center. Sure, there is the "Theater of the Clouds" configuration at the Moda Center, about 6,000 seats, but that's simply a curtaining off of the upper deck. And besides, the full-size Moda Center is booked often enough with Blazer games and other events that this configuration is somewhat rarely available.

In other words, the Coliseum fits a needed niche, and if we don't restore it, we'll eventually need to build a new venue in the 8,000-seat range. And it would be substantially more expensive than any of the three levels of restoration the city is studying.

In Chicago, for example, last year a new 10,000-seat arena at McCormick Place was approved for a cost of $164 million. Across town, DePaul University is planning another 10,000-seat arena in the South Loop district, this one for $251 million. Allentown, Pennsylvania recently saw completion of a 10,000-seat downtown venue as well, which cost $177 million.

Compared to $164-$251 million for a new arena, restoring the Coliseum for $37-89 million seems like a relative bargain.

Finding funds

How much can the city realistically afford to spend? Reportedly the city has $23.3 million  currently available, and perhaps that $10 million from the Winterhawks could again be committed. The team understandably wants a new scoreboard, which isn't part of the $37 million study option. I'll bet that would have to be part of the investment. But the Winterhawks continue to be the anchor tenant there, so it makes sense to be a partner on improvements.

What else can the city do to raise funds? One option that seems to have been explored is redeveloping the two above-ground parking garages that sit beside the Moda Center and the Coliseum. A few months ago, Mayor Hales reportedly toured the garages with two prominent local developers, in order to discuss that possibility. I believe the garages were originally constructed in a way that allows buildings to be built on top of them. If the city as owner were to be able to add, say, a couple hundred thousand square feet of office and retail space to those buildings, while maintaining the parking, it could conceivably generate a few million dollars in funds that could be used on a Coliseum restoration.

Many cities around the world have financed refurbishments to existing facilities this way: by better leveraging the land around them. And the land around Veterans Memorial Coliseum is rapidly becoming more valuable as the broader neighborhood adds density and residents.

The garages aren't not all that could be in play. Along the river between the Broadway and Steel bridges but part of the Rose Quarter is the former Thunderbird Motel site, as well as the vacant parcel bordered by North Broadway, Larrabee Avenue and Benton Avenue. Each could conceivably add millions to the restoration fund by being redeveloped. So too could redeveloping the Blazers' hideous One Center Court building, a hybrid of architecture and parking garage that could better and more lucratively take advantage of that land with high-density construction. Why not add a hotel or housing here? It would put feet on the ground at the Rose Quarter when it's desperately needed in addition to generating more millions for a restoration. And it would make money for the Blazers too. The Coliseum could also be considered a partnering venue with the Oregon Convention Center, which is just a few yards away; many of the largest conventions often need a venue in the thousands for certain events to couple with the smaller everyday meeting spaces at the OCC.

Public-private partnership

Then there's the question of a bring on private partner in addition to the Winterhawks in order to generate more revenue. Mayor Hales was said to have spent months trying to woo Nike to become that partner, with the 2016 IAAF World Indoor Track & Field Championships already set to come to Portland but scheduled for the Oregon Convention Center. Hales clearly saw that the Coliseum would have made a more compelling venue for the event than the windowless carpeted ballrooms frequented by conventioneers. Nike could have adopted the Coliseum as a venue for many of the sports it supports, while using part of the adjacent Rose Quarter land for a satellite office building. But the company, as it has done in the past, decided to stay within the confines of its protective berm in Beaverton.

Memorial Coliseum and Moda Center from the Broadway Bridge (photo by Brian Libby)

Another viable private partner would seem to be the Portland Trail Blazers and owner Paul Allen, the richest owner in professional sports. The Blazers have been allowed to manage the Coliseum on the city's behalf for many years, making money off the building but allowing it to fall into disrepair. Allen's team has been accused of a conflict of interest by at least one knowledgeable voice, Portland State University real estate professor William Macht. The team reportedly gets 40 percent of the Coliseum's net income, but 100 percent of Moda Center income, meaning there is a disincentive for the team to book events in the Coliseum.

If the Blazers or Allen's companies are earning income from the Coliseum, shouldn't they bear part of the financial responsibility in its restoration?

It's not just a question of responsibility, though. There is opportunity. The study numbers have not been released, but it would seem that a Coliseum restoration, at least one with a loading dock and scoreboard (as well as improved concessions and seats), would inevitably generate more revenue from increased bookings. That would create a greater revenue stream for the entity operating the building.

More than money

Everything I've written so far here has to do with money, either the cost of restoration or the anticipation of increased revenue. But this is not the only variable for the City of Portland to consider.

As we all know, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2010 and is widely considered to be a leading example of mid-20th century modernism in the United States. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the American Institute of Architects and the US Green Building Council all have written letters to Portland City Council arguing for the building's preservation. Two of its other biggest supporters have been constituents: Rose Festival supporters and veterans. Memorial Coliseum was designed to be the home and originating site for the annual Grand Floral Parade. And while the building features memorial walls in its sunken gardens honoring Portland veterans who lost their lives in World War II and the Korean War, the entire light-filled building is itself a memorial. That's why veterans spearheaded its 2010 renaming from Memorial Coliseum to Veterans Memorial Coliseum: to emphasize and cement that idea.

Memorial Coliseum is indeed an architectural marvel, exemplifying the optimism and glassy transparency of the midcentury modernism embodied by Mies van der Rohe. Despite being the equivalent of about three city blocks in size, the entire structure stands on just four columns. But best feature has tragically been hidden away: a 360-degree view from one's seats to the outside. Yet for almost all of the building's history a black fabric curtain has blocked that view. Were the Coliseum's curtain to be left open regularly and made part of its marketing, it might generate any number of new uses, be it the public skating rink that used to exist there or an increase in concerts and other entertainment-oriented bookings. Back in the 1980s, celebrated Portland mayor Bud Clark used to hold his annual Mayor's Ball for charity there. Mr. Hales, why not do the same?

Memorial Coliseum (photo by Brian Libby)

Obviously as the co-founder of the Friends of Memorial Coliseum I'm not an impartial voice in this conversation. When the building first came under threat in 2009 to make way for a planned minor-league baseball stadium, I was one of those who became active in lobbying City Council to reject the move, which they eventually did. The ensuing years, however, have been a roller coaster. Mayor Adams had the courage to reverse course on Coliseum demolition, but he then began a Stakeholder Advisory Committee process that invited everyone to generate ideas except professional designers and planners; it  brought forth an unrealistic set of options like a water park and a peace garden, even as the most obvious configuration stared us in the face: a multipurpose arena like the Coliseum has always been, only one whose owners and managers keep up with routine maintenance. Even in its state of disrepair and with a manager missing in action when it comes to promoting the venue, the building has continued to attract some 100 events a year.

After his election, Mayor Hales has said that the Coliseum ought to be restored, but rightfully argued that $31.5 million wasn't enough. That may be true, but even $31.5 million, or $37 million, would be a substantial first step. It sure would be better than the limbo the building has been in for the past six years.

Recently city leaders announced that the Portland Building, despite needing some $90 million in repairs, would be restored rather than torn down. It was a tough decision, because there are huge problems with the building's interior that can't be completely solved with a restoration but the building is an international landmark as the first major work of postmodern architecture in the world. I think the city made the right call on the Portland Building even though I'm not a big fan of the Michael Graves design. But if Portland's leaders had to make a call between the Portland Building and Memorial Coliseum, I'd advocate for the Coliseum in a heartbeat.

As I've said in past City Council testimony, the question of restoring Memorial Coliseum isn't just one of money and politics and the business of large venue management. It's a referendum on what kind of city we want to be. Portland is enjoying a renaissance today with attention from all over the globe for our quality of life. Much of that is social capital, but it starts with the fact that Portland is a well-designed city, with parks and mass transit and buildings that collectively constitute a place with energy where people want to be.

The Rose Quarter that includes the Moda Center and Memorial Coliseum lacks that energy today. It's a dead zone when there isn't a Blazer game or a big concert. But with the right restoration of the Coliseum coupled with redevelopment of the  parking garages hemming in the two arenas (which may hold cars but are poisonous for place-making) and the equal eyesore of One Center Court, that can change.

Beyond the borders of the Rose Quarter itself, there's also a new streetcar line along North Broadway, bordering the Rose Quarter's northern property line. The adjacent Lloyd District is booming with more construction than it has seen in a generation, including a lot of housing, meaning more people on the street to patronize a potential mixed-use Rose Quarter in the future. Clearly this land is poised to become part of a more vibrant, high-density future, of which a restored Coliseum could become a vital centerpiece. Ultimately it should last longer than the Moda Center next door, which is already about 20 years old but lacks any admirers of its architecture if you disassociate it from the Blazers.

Hopefully the City Council quintet of Mayor Hales and Commissioners Nick Fish, Amanda Fritz, Dan Saltzman and Steve Novick will see how the Coliseum has held on this long for good reason. Hopefully they will see the opportunity as much as the challenge, like all good leaders do, and act on the building's behalf. We shouldn't commit $37 or $60 million or $89 million lightly. But in a lot of ways, be it economically or culturally, this is an investment to take pride in.

 

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Wood and glass gem: discussing Saul Zaik's renovated Feldman House

Feldman/Milford house (all photos by Grant Harder for Dwell)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In a recent issue of Dwell magazine, I had the chance to write about and share the work of one of my favorite Portland architects, Saul Zaik, upon the renovation of one of his greatest designs, the circa-1956 Feldman House in southwest Portland's Garden Home neighborhood.

One of the last remaining architects of his generation, which came of age in the years immediately after World War II, Zaik may not have been as well known as some of his immediate predecessors like Pietro Belluschi and John Yeon. But like those architects, his work was an exceptional fusion of building and landscape, of natural light and materials.

The Feldman House renovation was overseen by local interior designer Jessica Helgerson and her eponymous firm, who helped clients Ty and Kelly Milford and their family update and reconfigure much of the house without ever losing its spirit. I'd like to share here some of the interview text that didn't make it into the story.

"The house had some really really lovely things about it and some really problematic things," Helgerson explained in our interview for the article. "The living room in particular was great. It’s got a glass window with an outside corner of glass and beautiful existing wood beams. And the detailing, especially on the earlier part of the house, was really nice: the way the panels worked over the doors. There was a sort of a set of rules about how the house fit together."

 

The new design brought significant change in some part of the house and used a light touch in others. "The dining and especially the living room were really nice and definitely worth preserving," Helgerson added. "The kitchen had been sort of oddly remodeled and had a sort of raised platform that sort of disconnected it from the rest of the house. There were two front doors, both to the same place. Then the master bedroom was also funny. And the family room was really long, this great big room with a post in the middle of it. It was hard to use. It’s a really really significant remodel. It’s a lot different than it was. But our goal was for it to look as if we hadn’t done a thing, to be authentic to the era of the house. What would Saul do? I felt like we were really respectful of the era of the house. I feel he would approve. We were so careful in the material selection and historic preservation and continuing existing details."

I also enjoyed talking with Zaik about the origins of his Feldman House.

"Phil [Feldman] was a friend of mine going back," he recalled. "He had this property, and a budget of around $35,000 to do a house. I think they were just married. Mary Ann and Phil were German Jews who somehow escaped in the 30s. They were very bright and successful and moved ahead." The house was a chance for the Feldmans to enjoy a real new beginning, in a landscape that was not unlike Germany but a west-coast American culture that offered opportunity and safety, as well as new ideas about light-filled architecture.

"I’ve always been very site oriented with anything I’ve ever done," Zaik explained. "Living here all my life, I value sunlight. I think that house had a lot of glass in it. It was about the second or third house that I worked on. There was a crew of us in Eugene, like Jim Martin, DeNorval Unthank and his partner. We were all just starting to do what we called contemporary houses. We were all World War II veterans and we were out to change the idea of architecture."

"We were experimenting with how you integrated indoor and outdoor spaces," Zaik added. "That was a big part of that original design. That whole living room was a mitered glass corner. That was oriented to that private outdoor space. Wood was a very reasonable, inexpensive product for us to use. The availability of clear hemlock and fir and cedar were readily available. And those early houses like the Feldman were hand built. The same crew formed the concrete and poured it, and framed and built the house, built everything. That ceiling system was special. It was P&G clear tongue in groove fir. In those years, we did all the structural work. That was part of our education. We didn’t feel the need for structural engineers."

After the Feldman House's completion, Zaik would go on to design a host of residential and commercial architecture, be it the unique Zidell House, suspended in the air from a massive ship's mast, or an expansion of Timberline Lodge.

But just as talented contemporaries like Yeon would become known for many architectural and landscape works but still always remembered most for the Watzek House, so too will projects like the Feldman remain a prideful emblem of what Zaik could do.

That is, what Zaik can do. Even in his 80s, Zaik still comes to work every day. We can all appreciate that kind of commitment and work ethic, but hopefully Zaik knows that his place in history is already quite secure.

 

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Visiting PNCA's transformational new home as it fills with life

An atrium inside PNCA (photos by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

A few nights ago, I happened to attend a talk with architect Thomas Hacker (founder of THA Architecture), in which he talked about how unlike Eugene, where he had taught at the University of Oregon, Portland, where he eventually made his name as an architect, has “an amazing civic sensibility, and a sensibility about making places and a city that is alive and vibrant and public.”

Hacker also talked that evening about having studied under and worked for the legendary midcentury-modernist architect Louis Kahn, which also connected him to a sort of lineage of teachers and mentors going back to French architects of the Beaux-Arts tradition like Paul Cret and Pierre-François-Henri Labrouste.

“Labrouste was the first architect who really understood the importance of civic architecture, and Paul Cret was the first to understand that needed to be reimagined in relationship to the programmatic needs of the people that you were working with,” Hacker explained. “Cret was able to erase some of the froufrou of Beaux-Art classicism and give it more functional purpose. And that went on down to Kahn. That fascinates me, you know? I like being a part of that.”

For Hacker’s first big project in Portland, the BICC (Biomedical Information Communications Center) library at Oregon Health & Science University in the 1980s (the first digital library in the nation), one of his first major hires was his former student, Brad Cloepfil.

As I walked Thursday through the new home of the Pacific Northwest College of Art's  Schnitzer Center for Art & Design, the early 20th century Italian Renaissance-style former federal building which Cloepfil’s firm (Allied Works) designed the renovation of, I thought of these ideas from Hacker’s talk (with Randy Gragg) about civic architecture and the lineage that connects Cloepfil to both modernist and traditional masters of design. And I thought about how this project, as a Beaux-Arts building, brings the whole thing full circle.

Ground floor entry hall (top) and library

The $34 million building PNCA will now call home had been shuttered and under-utilized for decades. In some kind of generational lapse of reason, during the midcentury all the huge skylights and most of the windows had been blocked off, and the tall ceilings dropped to a height suitable for Gary Coleman or Warwick Davis. Department of Immigration and later Homeland Security offices completed the sense that beyond the grand exterior and the ground floor's gilded gold ceiling laid an oppressive Kafka-esque interior.

Now, though, pretty much the first thing anyone notices walking into and through the 145,000-square-foot, six-story building, as several of us did on Thursday’s media tour, is how it’s teeming with light. It comes in through tall arched windows. It comes in through massive sawtooth skylights. Granted the sun was shining brightly that morning, but the whole building just sort of glowed. While Cloepfil achieved much acclaim over a decade ago, and deservedly so, for carving into the warehouse that became the Wieden + Kennedy building an atrium full of light, most of what he did to let in the illumination at PNCA was simply to uncover the glass that was already there, covered up.

Yet Cloepfil and his Allied Works team did more than that. One is inevitably drawn into three multistory spaces they carved into the interior: a big one in the middle and one on each side of the building to the east and west. The smaller ones are devoted to a library and a multifunctional lab space, respectively, but the big atrium in the middle, beneath a huge glass roof, is suddenly one of the most dramatic interior spaces in a public building in Portland.

Two views of the central atrium

The main atrium feels like it’s not just a commons for students and faculty, but a place for people from all over the city to come together at times, whether it’s for a PNCA event or otherwise. Like the Wieden + Kennedy building or Memorial Coliseum (particularly with the arena’s curtain open), you feel a sense of volume but also a nearly overwhelming wash of natural light. In an often-gray climate like ours, natural light in buildings matters immensely. And I think light is all the more important as well in civic and public buildings like this: our universities and city halls, our arenas and marketplaces. Done right, being there makes you feel part of something larger than yourself, but still connected to the world outside.

A few weeks ago I visited this building as construction was nearly completed but students and faculty were yet to move in. I liked the architecture then too, and marveled similarly at the bounty of light and the carving into the interior of the building to create the atriums. But seeing it a second time, now with devoted library and gallery and studio spaces, and the small details completed, the building really sings.

Some of the details and aesthetics have become more refined, with the pristine white walls of the gallery spaces and the lavish look of the gold ceiling on the ground floor contrasted by the industrial feel of the exposed concrete and the thick steel cables holding up the mezzanine. Upstairs I swooned at the marble walls—marble walls!—but also at the patina that seems to remain everywhere. I think there will be more opportunities to really customize this building: to add color and whimsy. But to the design and construction team's credit, the renovation didn't make everything bright and shiny.

Cloepfil and the building viewed from the west

One can view the new PNCA buildings in a lot of different ways: a comparison between the school's old converted-warehouse headquarters versus this re-imagined historic building; a comparison between Cloepfil and Allied Works' W+K building to this one, each a transformative renovation; as a consideration of a changing North Park Blocks and Old Town; as an under-utilized and diminished old Beaux-Arts building becoming a work of modern architecture; or as an addition to Portland's already substantial array of civic spaces, both buildings and park.

It is all these things at once, and yet it is also a space that makes you want to stop contemplating and just stay in the moment, as the light pours in and the occupants pursue creativity as means of artistry or expression or cultural currency. There's lots to talk about with the new PNCA, but the best compliment may be that standing inside makes me want to stop and marvel wordlessly.

It will be interesting to see in the years ahead what this building does for the Pacific Northwest College of Art. How might this re-imagined century-old building shape the artists and creators who come of age inside its walls, and beneath the bathing light of its atrium?

 

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Catching up with Kansas: Oregon Legislature considers Revitalize Main Street Act

The A.E. Doyle-designed Oregon Mutual building, McMinnville (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It is officially known as Senate Bill 565, and while it's not as high-profile an issue as the recent resignation of Governor John Kitzhaber, rarely has Salem had such a big chance to impact Oregon's built environment, its architectural heritage, and small-town economies.

The Revitalize Main Street Act, as SB 565 is more commonly known, would not put Oregon amongst the most protective and supportive states for historic buildings. Rather, it would bring us out of the bottom, for 35 other states already have similar incentives in place, including some of the most notoriously ultra-conservative like Alabama, Kansas, Texas, and Louisiana. Even Arizona has legislation pending on this. I mean, at this point it's getting embarrassing. Oregon is a national leader in land-use policy. Why are we so far behind on supporting and incentivizing historic preservation?

If passed, SB 565 would create a historic rehabilitation fund, providing a 25% rebate for certified rehabilitation of historic buildings (those over $10,000), be they retail outlets, hotels, theaters, apartments, fraternal lodges, factories, and other income-producing properties that nevertheless have become local landmarks. The credit would be applied to the most important properties – those listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

When paired with the federal Historic Tax Credit, a 20% deduction, the Revitalize Main Street can help level the playing field for restoring old buildings, for which the high cost of restoration, code upgrades, and seismic reinforcement often leaves a funding gap. And there's no time like the present, for approximately 2,600 buildings in 77 towns would be eligible to use the credit, two thirds of which are outside of Portland.

The credit wouldn't just foster job creation in the building industry. According to a Rutgers University study, rehabilitation of old buildings creates more jobs dollar-for-dollar than new construction, manufacturing, the service industry, and most others. More importantly, economic activity would result from these streets becoming active again, with new residents moved into upper-floor spaces and new businesses moving in, which in turn would increase property values and, by extension, increase tax revenue. It's also the sustainable thing to do, for re-using buildings is a greener choice than even the most highly rated new construction.

And you needn't just take my word for it. An economic impact study by EcoNorthwest found a state investment of just $10.6 million would see over 1,300 jobs created, generating in come of $25.5 million. It would increase yearly property tax revenue by $2.3 million, and bring $13.3 million in new federal tax credits used in Oregon annually. And the bill would help increase the state's yearly gross domestic product (GDP) by $33.7 million. I wonder what reactionaries will invent as their argument against this open-and-shut case.

Dallas, Oregon, early 20th century (image via Wikimedia Commons)

Recently I exchanged emails with Peggy Moretti, executive director of Restore Oregon (formerly the Historic Preservation League of Oregon), about the Revitalize Main Street Act and its potential impact. Restore Oregon has also summarized on their website the arguments for the bill.

Portland Architecture: Can you talk about the resource we have in some of Oregon's small-town main streets? What are some towns with great main streets that immediately come to mind?

Moretti: Oregon’s historic downtowns are an economic, cultural, and environmental resource (the triple-bottom line you know so well as a foundation of the preservation movement.) We like to refer to them as both the economic heart and cultural soul of their community. They tell the story of how the town developed and reflect its character.  Some towns like McMinnville are well along in their restoration of their main street. Others like Astoria and Albany have made great strides, but have more work to do. And others like Enterprise or Klamath Falls or Coos Bay have taken meaningful steps, but aren’t far along. But they are ALL great downtowns. Oregon is FULL of great downtowns!

Well, you're using all caps so you must really mean it. Is there a particular period that a lot of the buildings in Oregon small towns were built in? Is it more often late 19th century, early 20th? Do you notice any particular styles?

You’re right, late 19th/early 20th century. Although I might suggest that a district such as Portland’s Hillsdale neighborhood has some great mid-20th century buildings that could benefit from investment in rehabilitation.

I might note that a building doesn’t have to literally be located in the downtown or on a true Main Street to qualify. (Somebody asked me that). Though the majority are, any historic commercial building can be eligible: stores, hotels, factories, warehouses, apartments…even barns. We estimate there are around 2,600 buildings in over 70 communities that would be eligible.

Why do you think Oregon, which usually prides itself on being a pioneer with a lot of legislation, is behind at least 35 other states when it comes to these rebates or incentives?

Hard to say. But the good news is that similar incentives have been tested many times, so we can have confidence that they really do create jobs and stimulate economic development.  We aren’t inventing the wheel on this one, but we ARE bringing a significant bit of Oregon innovation to it. Most states structure their incentives as tax credits that have to be syndicated or transferred to turn them into up-front money for construction costs. That can be very challenging for smaller businesses and property owners to do, and those states lose some of the value of their tax credits because they get discounted in that process. By structuring our program as a simple rebate, you don’t need a team of lawyers or accountants to use the incentive.

What is the timetable for the Senate committee to vote on the bill, or when it might be reasonable to see it come to a full Senate vote?

Things are a little bit in flux, given the upheaval last week, but the Senate finance committee hearing is slated for the first week of March. Safe to say we’d hope for a committee vote in early March. I’m told by our lobbying firm that our bill is not likely to come up for a standalone vote, but will probably be part of a larger spending package coming from a joint Ways and Means Committee, and that may not get voted on until the end of session the first week of July. (I’m learning that this legislative stuff is very fluid!) Key to our success will be a sustained, clear demonstration of support from constituents backed up by our (hopefully) compelling supporting data on the effectiveness of similar incentives in other states and our solid economic impact projections for Oregon. 

Our next milestone is the committee hearing. Dates may be in flux while the dust settles after Kitzhaber’s resignation, but it should be early March.

It would be wonderful to let people know that they can have an impact on the passage of the bill.  While we’re encouraged by the reception its received so far, we’re in steep competition for funding. encourage people to endorse the legislation and also contact their state legislators asking them to vote YES on SB 565.

 

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A first glimpse inside PNCA's Schnitzer Center for Art & Design

Atrium of Schnitzer Center for Art & Design (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The students and professors have not yet moved in. No art projects line the walls, and hard hats are still required. But the opening of the Pacific Northwest College of Art's new Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design is just a couple of weeks away, which prompted a recent media tour.

It's too early to pass judgment before any of the final details have come together, but as soon as one enters the circa-1918 Italian Renaissance-style building, originally constructed as a post office, it's easy to see how the architecture has changed, becoming something much more open and full of light yet without compromising the wonderful bones of the historic original structure. While much of this is done by carving out new spaces to spread illumination, a lot of it happened by uncovering the skylights that were already there and removing the drop ceilings added in previous ill-advised renovations. Besides the carving out, there's also a simple unveiling and enabling of the orignial.

In any case, the Schnitzer Center has the chance to become a great architectural space in Portland, and a compelling return to form locally for Allied Works after spending much of the past decade-plus doing its most ambitious work in other cities.

Entering the building from the east or west, a show-stopping moment even before renovation has always come as one walks down the central spine, along a series of travertine columns with an intricately detailed ceiling in gold trim above. But whereas that central hallway and elevator lobby was dark before, now it is bathed in natural illumination.

Top: exterior arch detail; bottom: interior safe door (photos by Brian Libby)

Just off the hallway is a three-story atrium, revealing a kind of core sample of the architecture. Large metal cables, swooping in a curvilinear fashion and resembling nautical ropes, hold the mezzanine and third floor in place. At the top is a glass ceiling and, just to the north, the third floor ceiling is comprised of several huge sawtooth skylights. Despite all the heaviness of the original architecture, there is so much light that it almost feels like a quasi-outdoor setting, or perhaps a greenhouse or winter garden.

This primary atrium in the middle of the building is flanked on the east and west entrances by a pair of smaller two-story openings, revealing and drawing from large arched windows that had previously been blocked inside by drop ceilings. Everywhere you go on this ground level in particular, it's tall, wide-open interior spaces, something almost completely opposite from before the new renovation. The arched windows too are now an unmistakable part of the architectural experience again. However much midcentury plans for drop ceilings and fluourescent light compromised this building, clearly the original architects, San Francisco's Lewis P. Hobart and Washington, DC's James A. Wetmore, wanted to take advantage of natural light as much as possible.

This building was completed the same year that World War I ended, and like Memorial Coliseum across the river, it's not insignificant or merely a physical gesture for a public building to be transparent and full of light. It's not just about being able to do without artificial light. In the right public buildings, natural illumination can also have a symbolic effect, becoming an almost spiritual expression of openness.

Top: a secondary atrium; bottom: third-floor sawtooth skylights (photos by Brian Libby)

The Schnitzer Center's architect, Allied Works (led by founding partner Brad Cloepfil), first gained national and international prominence 14 years ago with completion of the Wieden + Kennedy headquarters in the Pearl District. In many ways, that project and the new Schnitzer Center posed a similar intervention, in that a historic building was enlivened in its renovation by what was taken away. In each case, an atrium cut into the middle of the building provides a striking gathering spot while permeating the surrounding interior with natural light.

But the projects are as different as they are similar. W+K was an old cold-storage warehouse, with little inside that was precious and in need of preservation. That project also seemed to juxtapose of heaviness and lightness: big concrete forms and wood beams paired with a series of catwalks and perimeter rails that uses very thin wire and felt light as a feather. For the Schnitzer Center, there were historical flourishes inside and out to restore such as the travertine walls and terra-cotta tile floors.

But another difference may be that the Schnitzer Center's interstitial materials feel a little heavier, specifically the cables helping to hold up the mezzanine and support the atrium. They look great, adding a sense of curve and maybe even a touch of whimsy. One could almost look at them as drapes, unveiling the theater of students and faculty moving about on three floors. But the cables, at least to my eyes or at least in this late-construction phase before completion, look thick and industrial, almost like they came from a bridge.

Top: central atrium; bottom: ground-floor central walkway (photos by Brian Libby)

Honestly I'm not enough of a structural engineering expert to tell you if lighter cables were possible and the heavy cables are merely an aesthetic choice, or whether these are the thinnest cables possible for this job. And it's not a given that thinner cables would have looked better. As constructed, the supports have a striking presence, not simply disappearing like thin wire might have but instead expressing clearly the union of these floors of activity and their occupants through an engineering intervention with the cables.

Besides the interior architecture, it's also worth pausing to consider how the renovation of 511 Broadway into PNCA's Schnitzer Center will impact the surrounding blocks as well as the Old Town and Pearl District to either side (Broadway serves as the border between them).

Across Hoyt Street, the newer but still outmoded post office building may soon be going away, freeing up hundreds of thousands of square footage for redevelopment. The Schnitzer Center also sits on the edge of the North Park Blocks. With the ArtHouse residence hall at the other end, PNCA is now bookending this greenspace, making it a natural part of the campus, just as the South Park Blocks do for Portland State University. One can't help but wonder if the city-owned vacant lot across Broadway from the Schnitzer Center might now be targeted for redevelopment. And in a broader sense, perhaps the PNCA project can help enliven Broadway, which is a kind of Main Street for downtown Portland but on this north side of Burnside doesn't feel that way. It's too bad that there's such a dichotomy between Old Town/Chinatown to the east of Broadway and the Pearl District to the west. The fabric of historic buildings is a huge resource, but too much of Old Town seems to be social services and bars, while the Pearl seems to have lots of galleries, restaurants and shops but few resources for those in need.

It would be asking too much of the Schnitzer Center to stitch these neighborhoods together and mingle their functions, yet given its place on Broadway as a newly relevant public building, somehow one can't help but have civic hopes for the impact of the architecture.

I'm still looking forward to getting a sense of the completed building in a few weeks, but a lot of the pieces are already in place, and enough of the Schnitzer Center is complete to see how it will be a gathering place, not just for students and faculty but the entire community — and a powerful fusion of old and new Portland. 

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Schnitzer and PDC on redeveloping Centennial Mills

Centennial Mills (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Recently I wrote a CityLab article called "Can an Art Collector Save a Portland Ruin?" about the efforts of Portland developer Jordan Schnitzer and his company, Harsh, to renovate the historic but badly decayed Centennial Mills along the west edge of the Willamette River north of downtown into a vibrant mixed-use destination.

"Walking through Centennial Mills...t's easy to see both deterioration and potential," I wrote. "With a golden patina to their aged brick, these former flour and seed mills provide a striking contrast to the shiny new condo towers of the adjacent Pearl District, and their proximity to this burgeoning area could also make for an ideal riverside destination. But since operations ceased in 2000, the combined 11 buildings have decayed swiftly. On a recent visit, swaths of water-damaged upstairs floors were marked with spray paint to warn of potential cave-ins. Raccoon tracks were among the subtler examples of animal intrusion, and visitors had to wear face masks."

In researching the story, I had long conversations with Jordan Schnitzer and representatives of the Portland Development Commission, including executive director Patrick Quinton and project director Bruce Wood. But only a relatively small portion of those exchanges made it into the story. I'd like to share some of those extended conversations here.

Schnitzer, whose company manages some 130 buildings in Portland and beyond, is also one of the nation's foremost art collectors. His family is the most prominent group of philanthropists in the city. For him, tackling Centennial Mills is a community investment and a personal one.

"When I was a little boy, my father would always drive us down Yeon Avenue, because that’s where his father had a scrap yard, and my father worked as a young boy and, after World War II, as a young man," Schnitzer told me. "I guess I’m wearing my civic hat first on this. Certainly if we wanted more real estate projects there would be easier ways to do it."

When PDC first tried to jump-start Centennial Mills almost a decade ago, Schnitzer and his co-developer, the late Art DeMuro (perhaps the city's greatest developer-champion of historic preservation), sought the contract but lost out to a California developer. But the project fizzled during the Great Recession, and ultimately Harsch, after DeMuro's passing, took over on its own.

"Originally we felt we would be able to preserve a lot of the buildings," Schitzer said. "As time went on, in the second round [of proposals] about two and a half years ago, there was so much more deterioration. We tragically discovered that in hindsight the city probably should have spent some money doing some level of preservation to at least preserve the option of preserving the building. Because left to their own for 12 years now, with roofs that were left open, the deterioration was huge. Imagine for your readers if they took the roof off their house and left it for 12 years what it would be like. If they had just put up some tarps and maybe spent a few hundred thousand bucks, we’d have more to work with today."

PDC, however, cautions that the original plan created in 2000 was to level all the buildings and build a park. So preserving the Centennial Mills buildings was not seemingly necessary. Only after public outcry about demolition did an alternative preservation plan materialize.

"We had a plan that, prior to the recession, was a viable plan," PDC's Quinton said. "Once the recession hit, nothing got done during that time period. There was always the question about what made sense for us to invest in the building without a project moving forward. And the dollars it would have taken to invest in the building to maintain it would have been of a scale that it took away from our dollars to re-invest in the project."

"I think you can go to cities that have preserved mill structures like this, and there have been success stories," Quinton added. "And there are cities that have demolished mill structures and re-used the land to make a success story. I don’t think there is one formula for dealing with this. Pittsburgh basically reclaimed their entire riverfront, cleared out all these mills, and there are industrial and high-tech parks pointed to as the ground zero for the transformation of their economy. So there’s definitely successful tracts either direction you go."

Currently PDC is offering to contribute $16 million toward the project. But Schnitzer believes the subsidy should be larger given the financial circumstances. "This site would probably cost about $20 million if you level everything. Not even making it into a nice park—just leveling it," he said. "Why? Because you have such complex demolition, environmental costs. Plus you’ve got a big hole there you’ve got to fill. And then you’ve got the greenway issues. So the city’s got a real issue. To do nothing, in essence, costs you 20 million bucks." Why would the city spend more to demolish Centennial Mills than in contributions to its restoration?

Although Harsch's business activities are separate from the Schitzers' philanthropic efforts, Jordan Schnitzer also knows and seems to embrace the notion that, at times, his and his family's resources can help Portland do the right thing, as happened in the past with projects like Director Park and the restoration of the Astoria Column.

"Everyone throws the word legacy around. What’s that mean? For me what this means is just as we today in this community, just as others in other communities, get the benefit of others who proceeded us, who did things for and on behalf of the community, we have an obligation to fulfill their legacy so that others will look back and have the respect for what we’ve done, taking care of this village, this community, just as others did for us," Schnitzer said.

But he also believes it's not simply a question of money so much as intent. "So many people are just driven by squeezing every last nickel out of it, realizing that you’re impacting things aesthetically, operationally, you’re affecting people’s lives," he added. "Stand back a second and realize: good design doesn’t cost more money."

Jordan Schnitzer (image courtesy Schnitzer Family Foundation)

And while Schnitzer acknowledges that not every great old building or site can be saved, Centennial Mills has added historical significance in addition to being a beautiful series of buildings and an ideal waterfront locale. He says Centennial Mills is "one of the few sites left on the waterfront that tell and talk of a time and place in the past, that was a critical building block of this community. The milling business, just like the forest products business and so forth, those were two of the major industries that helped build this state," he added. "And yet we don’t have many examples of that left. That’s why I think there was a human cry when the city bought this site and was going to tear it all down. Citizens rose up and said, ‘Hey, let’s be more thoughtful about what we’re doing.’ You could say, ‘Who is the arbiter of good design?’ But there’s an awful lot of stuff built where if they just pushed the envelope a little bit further in terms of pushing themselves and letting their heart balance with their mind."

So what will happen there? What should? "We don’t have many great spots to hang out by the river," Quinton told me. "This holds the opportunity to be both a natural place to be along the river but also adjacent to it a kind of plaza—a Director Park on the river kind of thing. I think that makes it pretty unique. Riverplace is kind of the 30-years-ago version of that, but I think it never really achieved that kind of vision. I think this is an opportunity to do that in an updated way where you have different ways of being by the river, so it’s not simply walking along the greenway."

Continuing the comparison of Centennial Mills to Riverplace, Quinton added: "I think this location is so much closer to a high concentration of city residents that I think it has advantages over Riverplace in terms of having people access it and the obstacle of crossing Front is different from what they have to do to get to Riverplace. Riverplace you have to go seek it out unless you’re coming from Waterfront Park. This one, even without a pedestrian bridge, you’re crossing at a streetlight from another really attractive park, and then one of the densest residential communities in the city. There is a built-in population there. I’m actually less concerned about whether or not people from the adjacent neighborhood can access it and more how we can get people from Gateway. From an access standpoint, if we do it right, that’s how it will be viewed. Of course people from the Pearl will walk over. But I think we have to make it feel more accessible for a wider audience."

Quinton also believes the improving economy helps. "There’s a ton of housing being built, and we’re also beginning to see new office being built. So in some respects it gives us the luxury of not having to solve any type of need for office space and housing with this site," he added. "This is really a place-making opportunity for us. What type of mix of activity will make this a great place? As opposed to some quota for 200 housing units. We can think of different mixes and profiles that makes this a more interesting place. This project benefits from the fact that this is becoming such a dense area. This project gets to tackle this thing of how we make this a great place, a continuation of Jamison and Tanner Springs and The Fields. It’s more along that legacy."

"It was originally purchased as part of a plan to create a park. During the process of demolition, a lot of citizens said, ‘Don’t tear it down.’ I do think it says a lot about the values of Portland," PDC's Bruce Wood added. "Mayor Potter at the time heard that. They put together a large task force of citizens and said, ‘Let’s take a look at that.’ It was a huge effort. Here we are with a plan that actually addresses that framework plan set in motion in 2006."

The plan now is to save two of the largest and most iconic flour and seed mill buildings and to fill the rest with new construction, including an events center that Schnitzer says he has reached out to Frank Gehry about designing. The hope is also to create a place where citizens can get up close to the water, including a boat dock.

"I think most cities would wrestle with this project and say, ‘What’s the tradeoff?’ The other odd thing in Portland is in other cities, property values and rents are such that the private development community will naturally preserve these developments because they’re cooler, basically," Quinton said. "Here, because of the economics and the seismic issues, the public has to intervene. Otherwise they don’t happen. We have more public conversations because the market isn’t at a level to act on its own. Places like Boston and New York, they know they can fetch top dollar. I think it’s about capital and deep pockts. Harsch is one of the few entities in town that has the capital to take a big-picture view of the project. There just aren’t as many large real estate companies that are well capitalized and can hold them and be patient and curate them."

And that's where Schnitzer and Harsch come in: not simply as a developer, but not strictly as a philanthopist. "Jordan is very charismatic," said Wood, who previously worked for Harsch before coming to PDC. "He’s very passionate about the things that he loves. He’s at his very best when he’s involved in civic item because he loves that stuff, whether it’s art or the High Desert Museum or Astoria Column. I think he enjoys those things even more than running his company. He has an amazing ability to get things done in that public realm, like the Astoria Column. He raised a ton of money to get that done. Same with the High Desert Museum. I think that’s the gift that he has. He’s got a very good, strong team. In some of those areas where he’s not as technically proficient, he’s got really good people around him."

When I visited Harsch's offices, it was impossible not to notice the incredible array of contemporary art placed throughout: on cubicle walls, in the lobby, by the bathroom: everywhere. I didn't see a single photo of a Harsch project there. Wood remembers when the office was reconfigured in the 1990s, to add more art.  

"The desks, the furniture and everything were placed not just for their function but because of the art placed on the walls. I always thought that was a great lesson," Wood told me. "I remember the maintenance guys having a hard time with these heavy desks as Arlene and Jordan figured out the best places to place the desks in a way that would compliment the art. But that building is like a home. It’s run like a family enterprise, and they have a different metric. It’s about art and legacy. And this project needs something like that. Because if you look at the numbers on this project, it would never happen. This project is that complicated. It needs somebody who’s going to put a little more effort into it."

Which Schnitzer seems to understand. "Being in Portland, we’re a pretty new city," he explained. "The cities on the East Coast aren’t even that old. You go to Europe and you see things a thousand, two thousand years old. So therefore I think we have an obligation here to preserve those things we have because we have so few of them. We don’t have a lot of old churches. We don’t have a lot of old stuff.’ He says, ‘That’s exactly right. Jordan, in a hundred years, it will be 175 years old. In 500 years, it will be 575 years old. So don’t start comparing this to the Sphinx. You’re doing this for the right reasons.’ And that’s why some of this should be restored. That’s the perspective that I think isn’t coming across too well to a lot of people here. Therefore it’s the job of people like me and people like you to say, ‘Hey, we’re not going crazy. We’re not trying to save everything. But we have an obligation and a responsibility to save those things that others in the future will be glad we saved. Therefore you have to put that into a different context."

 

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Gasco Building preservationists optimistic despite uphill financial climb

Portland Gasco Building (photo by Sheri Mason-Cruise)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

When the Portland Gas & Coke Building celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, the circa-1913 structure along the west bank of the Willamette River near the St. Johns Bridge also was deemed to be not long for this world, as its current owner, NW Natural, announced plans for demolition.

Since then, there has been an outpouring of community support, culminating in a grassroots effort to save the Gasco Building (as it's commonly known). Given the deteriorated nature of the architecture, which as been largely unused and abandoned for the past half-century, organizers of the Save the Portland Gasco Building group have asked not that NW Natural renovate the structure but leave it as is, as a ruin allowed to decay in place and as a reminder of the city's turn-of-the-20th Century industrial heritage.

"So many people love this building," says Scott Ray Becker, a local documentary filmmaker who has assumed the reins of the preservation effort.

Becker has a longer history with the Gasco than most. In 1891 his great grandfather, CF Adams, became one of the co-owners of the Portland Gas Light Company, which had been founded in 1859 (the year of Oregon's becoming a US state) as the first gas company in the Pacific Northwest. Adams and his partner, AE Mills, changed its name to Portland Gas and Coke, which later became known as NW Natural Gas and today simply NW Natural.

Earlier this year, Becker and his fellow Gasco Building preservationists met with leaders of NW Natural and were given an opportunity to see their vision realized, but with a catch. As reported by Allan Classen in the NW Examiner, NW Natural company would need to weatherproof and seal the building for long-term preservation. "This would not include electrical, plumbing or other improvements needed to occupy the building, nor would the public be able to enter," Classen explains.

Historic photos of the Gasco site (courtesy Save the Portland Gasco)

NW Natural shared with the preservationists a third-party estimate of $1.9-2.4 million. "The [Gasco preservation] committee members then suggested some ways to reduce the cost of the estimate, which our third-party contractor reviewed and so we communicated to them in a letter dated August 18 the reduced estimate of $1.55-2.05 million," explained NW Natural spokesperson Melissa Moore in an email.

"To put this in context, there are legitimate reasons for the company's original decision to demolish the building," Moore continues. "These reasons continue today. The building currently poses both health and safety hazards; is seismically unstable; contaminated by lead, animal feces and asbestos; sits on contaminated property that we are required by law to clean up; and is adjacent to a Superfund site."

After hearing how much NW Natural was aking for, "The wind was pulled out of our sails," Becker says, acknowledging that their grassroots group's being able to raise that amount of money would be "a miracle." A number of people left the preservation effort thinking the task was impossible.

Nevertheless, Becker and his comrades have started a fundraising campaign on the website Changefunder called "Gasco: As Is!" Though $2 million is the long-term goal, they have set an initial amount of $50,000 to raise by November 2. So far, $1,575 has been pledged.

"Right now it’s more about getting the word out," Becker says. "The longer we do this, the more they respect us and want to put their name on it. Most people don’t think we can raise the money. I may be one of the only people who thinks we can get close. But we have some kick-ass people. " The preservation group is planning a December 6 fundraising concert, which may include renowned Portland band The Decemberists. Lead singer Colin Meloy's 2012 young-adult novel Under Wildwood, with illustrations by wife Carson Ellis, uses the Gasco Building as inspiration; a likeness of the building graces the cover, and in the book the villains establish their headquarters there.

Becker says there are limits to what could be done with the Gasco, but that an appropriate long-term goal may be to have the building anchor a public riverfront park after another decade or so.

Colin Meloy's Under Wildwood (image courtesy Balzer + Bray)

"People say, ‘When can McMenamins move in?’ I tell them it’s adjacent to a Superfund site, and it’s explosive," Becker explains. "But in 2025, they may be closer. They have about 10 more years of cleanup. They’ve been working since 1993 and have spent $26 million. They’re serious about cleaning up the site. And then all bets are off. Maybe it can be like Gasworks Park in Seattle, or like Cathedral Park. It depends on what people want to do. It could be a park, or a museum to industry. But if they tear it down now, we’ll never have that chance."

To NW Natural's credit, the company seems to have listened to the preservationists and not demolished the Gasco building as quickly as originally intended.  Moore says NW Natural "committed to an 18-month extension of our demolition permit -- which will now expire in July 2015 -- to give the committee time to further its efforts."

It's understandable if a publicly-traded company with shareholders to appease can't automatically commit millions of dollars to preserving an abandoned building on its site. And the company has some very legitimate reasons for viewing non-demolition skeptically. Conventional wisdom may indeed say the building has to come down. But I still wonder if some creative thinking could find a better solution or offer an opportunity to do something special down the road.

And if NW Natural really is spending some three decades repairing the environmental damage that the company and its forebears wreaked along the banks of the Willamette over the past century, wouldn't it be nice to reserve that land for public use some day, even if it's many years down the road? In the long-term after the cleanup, the ruins of the Gasco building could be a big draw. That stretch of highway is one long industrial enclave, but just as the east side of the river's industry gives way to Cathedral Park right across the river, so too could the Gasco building one day anchor a public greenspace along the water.

Speaking of cathedrals, the notion of the Gasco ruins anchoring a future park makes me think of visiting a park in London years ago that was made from the ruins of a Christopher Wren church, St. Dunstan's, bombed in World War II. A wall or two of the old church remained, but most of the area was benches and flowers amidst the ruin. The Gasco Building is no St. Dunstan's by any stretch, but it's a good example of how architectural ruins can become very compelling public outdoor space.

What's more, all over America and the world, this generation has been reclaiming formerly industrial waterfront space for public use. It's already been happening locally in places like South Waterfront and the Pearl District, and now in Oregon City there is an effort to reclaim the majestic Willamette Falls for public access. Even if it happens 10 to 20 years or more down the road, it would make sense to establish a goal of someday, after the remediation is completed, giving this stretch of the Willamette back to the public. And as Becker noted, regional examples like Gasworks Park in Seattle provide a great example of how maintaining industrial ruins in a greenspace can enliven the experience of being there, creating public space rooted in history.

 

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Michael Powe and the economic value of old buildings

Michael Powe (image courtesy Preservation Green Lab)

BY FRED LEESON

Jane Jacobs had no professional training in urban planning when she set the profession on its ear in 1961. Her earth-shaking book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, attacked the contemporary trend of urban renewal as wrong-headed, counter-productive and just plain dumb.

From simply looking around, Jacobs believed that low-rise streets with mixtures of older buildings provided the most vibrant urban communities, the best places for small business innovation and safer public places. She railed against skyscrapers and the scrape-and-rebuild philosophy of urban renewal aimed at eliminating urban “blight.”

Many planners struck back with venom. Old buildings, they said, stood in the way of progress.  Cities that did not renew themselves were doomed to eventual failure.

Now there is impressive new evidence based on massive compilations of data that were not available in Jacobs’ day. Bottom line?  “Jane Jacobs was right,” said Michael Powe, senior research manager for the Preservation Green Lab, a Seattle-based research arm of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Powe, who holds a doctorate in planning and policy and design, laid out the results of the trust’s “Older, Smaller, Better” research report in a talk in Portland on October 7 at the Architectural Heritage Center. Based on intensive statistical analyses performed with data from Seattle, San Francisco and Washington, DC, the report says commercial streets with a  mix of building ages and sizes provide the most economic, social and cultural benefits.

Powe did not describe himself as a preservationist. And he expressed no intellectual virulence against new buildings or the need for infill buildings on vacant land. “Where you have the old and new rubbing together, there is greater friction and greater street life,” Powe said.

The Green Lab’s statistical analysis broke the three target cities into cells of 200 square meters each, and then plotted a dizzying range of statistics including building size, building age, building ownership business ownership, employee numbers and demographic data, among others. It then used the data to create a “character score” for each of the grid cells. Score categories were broken into an assortment of colors, giving the final maps a visual breakdown of streets with the various scores.

Streets with the highest scores were those with the highest variety of building ages and sizes and with multiple ownerships. In general, these same streets had the best walkability scores, the most independently-owned businesses, the most minority and women-owned businesses and the most successful independent bars and restaurants.

“The foundation of small business is where you find these (older) buildings,” Powe said. He noted that Boeing, Microsoft and Starbucks all started in small, old buildings before they grew larger.

“A lot of these things we already knew,” Powe said of the Green Lab conclusions. “The data are important to policy-makers. It is good to have the numbers to back it up.”

As for Jacobs, he added, “I don’t think Jane Jacobs needed big data to tell her she was right. Big data was impossible in her day. You just couldn’t get it before.” Today, however, wonks can probe all sorts of computerized data bases to learn about buildings and business and people and activity. One unusual form of data Powe illustrated was an animated visual image of cell-phone use during a 24-hour period in Seattle. It helped confirm which streets had the most human activity at which times.

Portland was not one of the cities examined in the Green Lab report. However, Powe showed the “character scores” of the 200-meter-square cells covering the Rose City.  Many of the city’s vibrant commercial streets, such as Hawthorne and Alberta, glowed the brightest red with the highest scores.

Portland character-score map (courtesy Preservation Green Lab)

Powe hopes the Green Lab report will help direct future planning policies. He said the six-person Green Lab staff is trying to meet with many city planning agencies. No meetings have been held yet with Portland officials, he added.

The bottom line of Powe’s message: “Character and scale of buildings matter. Think about preservation. Think about why it works. Don’t be afraid to mix old and new. Don’t tear down all old buildings. Be smart about design. Encourage the interplay between old and new.”

Were she still alive, Jacobs likely would agree with much of that.

Fred Leeson is president of the non-profit Bosco-Milligan Foundation and its Architectural Heritage Center.

 

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Michael Graves returns to Portland

Graves being interviewed before Thursday's public talk (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

As Portland leadership has grappled this year with the upcoming challenge of renovating the Portland Building, and some have even floated the idea of demolishing this internationally renowned landmark of American architecture (probably the only Portland building in every history-of-architecture textbook), there was no better time for its architect, Michael Graves, to return to the city for the first time in a decade.

In a talk with Randy Gragg at the Portland Art Museum on Thursday evening put on in partnership with the University of Oregon's John Yeon Center (which Gragg leads), Graves was at times funny and self-deprecating in discussing the building and his career, while at other times he revealed the true pain and disappointment of having a career-launching and moment-christening building be so polarizing, and by some so disliked. "I don't know where the hostility comes from," Graves said of the Portland Building. "It's tear-making."

Beginning his talk, Graves jokingly made note of a produce vendor outside the museum selling tomatoes, as if it would be handy for people to purchase and throw at him onstage. But the architect also received a standing ovation from the sold-out crowd, and the question-and-answer session that he seemed to dread was a bit of a love fest of admiration. The first questioner, developer Randy Rapaport, didn't even have a question: he simply told Graves that the building should be restored with Graves redesigning the restoration.

Of course those who say the Portland Building is a major landmark of capital-A architecture and those who say the building is deeply flawed are both right.

As bold as the colorful and classical-riffing design was, with its faux garlands and its salmon hues, and for all the attention it got, in national publications like Time magazine, it was the  small $24 million budget imposed by the city and its own design restrictions that terribly compromised the architect's vision. Take the small windows: Graves reminded the audience Thursday night that the energy crisis of the late '70s had prompted the client to insist on them; it wasn't his design choice. Same goes for the triangular glass wall covering portions of the face being tinted enough to not allow much light inside. Or the underground parking garage that has often been criticized for leaving a gaping hole in the street-level facade as it faces the park. Graves fought that inclusion but city government insisted on it. Or the low ceilings that he fought against. The list of failures is perhaps larger on the city side than on the architect's side.

"Before you get your hatchets out, just remember: $24 million," he said.

Portland Building (photo by Brian Libby)

Even so, it was the "brazen gesture" of a design, as Time critic Wolf Von Eckardt called it in a 1982 review — the symbolism and color of his postmodern creation — that first engendered the building controversy. Von Eckardt wrote that Graves was of attempting to "supplant modern architecture's heroic industrialism with postmodern architecture's heroic . . . what?" He also called the design a "dangerous Pop surrealism."

Indeed, the Portland Building was bold then and remains so today, precisely for what a pendulum swing from the modernist glass box it was. And given how glass boxes persist in ubiquity today, the bold look of Graves's design remains unlike much else in the architecture world.

Graves went to great lengths in his talk with Gragg to explain that his design did not come out of a vacuum. He cited the classical architectural tradition of buildings having a base, middle and top, showing pictures of buildings not only from Italian renaissance tradition but also 19th-century buildings in Portland. He showed how garlands have for centuries been a symbol on building facades expressing welcome. And he talked about how the idea of introducing color to architecture could be traced back to ancient Greece and Rome, even if literally every building around his in downtown Portland seemed to come only in shades of black, white or gray.

During a dinner I attended for Graves the night before his lecture at the Watzek House, one member of a committee looking at the building and its needs on behalf of the city told the architect he thought it was  likely that the building would be renovated. And whether in Thursday night's lectures or in interviews or in informal conversations, Graves indicated that he's very open to changes that might improve the building and introduce more natural light. While structural limits would prevent the small square-shaped windows from being enlarged, the larger glass portions on the facade could be changed from tinted to clear glass. And the covered ground-level loggias, into which retailers seem to die, could be glassed off and made into new retail space fronting the sidewalk. Graves also advocated removing the small underground parking garage. Yet he also expressed dismay and frustration that his firm hadn't been contacted by the City of Portland at all. He didn't even know there was a commission looking at renovation.

"Buildings all need care," he said, "and so does the Portland Building."

Portland Building (photo by Brian Libby)

Aged 48 when the building opened in 1982, with projects like the projects Like the San Juan Capistrano Library and Louisville's Humana Building completing that same year, "I thought I couldn't do wrong," he remembered. Along with that, Graves added, "The Portland Building is a wonderful memory for me." At Thursday night's talk, he recalled standing outside the Portland Building and feeling at peace with the design and how it looked today. "It's so glorious," he said. "It's so full of ideas. This is a major building in America, whether Portland knows it or not."

"I've done 350 building designs," he added, "and I don't have this controversy anywhere else."

Yet this was not a man simply acting steadfast in a storm of criticism. Graves, paralyzed for years now and wheelchair bound, turned 80 this year, and he made it clear that his buildings are his children, and that it had been painful to see his work attacked. "It gets old after a while," he told Gragg. "It hurt when people said tear down the building and keep the statue."

Although I personally am a lover of the modernist glass boxes that Graves has spent his career creating alternatives to, and while I have never been a great lover of postmodernism because of the sometimes cartoonish way it drew from historic forms and motifs, there is simply no question that Portland needs to renovate this building. In fact, this isn't just something we should grudgingly do, but rather, the Portland Building renovation is a great opportunity.

Not many legendary architects have been able to see their work reach a historic age and oversee renovation. It happened here in town before, with Pietro Belluschi's Equitable Building, the one other local work of architecture that one will find, along with Graves's work, in every American architecture textbook. Three decades ago Portland's leaders were right to hold a design competition to seek out the freshest ideas in architecture, but Mayor Ivancie's administration gave the building a near fatal series of flaws by doing the building, as our city too often does, on the cheap. Renovating the Portland Building and re-imagining some of its spaces with Graves in charge of it isn't just a matter of fixing leaks or letting in more light. It's a chance to make a landmark work of architecture better than it has ever been.

The Portland Building loggias that could be altered (photo by Brian Libby)

And it's also a chance for Portland to re-affirm that just as we don't sprawl endlessly at our edges like so many other West Coast cities do, so too do we have the courage to stay the course with our most prominent public buildings, in a way that does not cater to the temporary whims of taste or act with only an eye for line-item budgeting, but with vision and ambition.

As the talk ended, there was a little too much uncomfortable silence in the air. Graves had made it clear he put his heart and soul into the building, and while the international accolades and keys to cities were nice, he wanted to make peace with Portland and the building that put him on the map. "I think there's a lot of warmth for you in this room," Gragg said, "and I hope you're feeling that." With that, Graves got his end-of-night standing ovation, and it wasn't beyond the aging architect to show that it meant something to him.

 

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City Council's Memorial Coliseum study includes demolition option

Veterans Memorial Coliseum (photo by Jeremy Bitterman)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Five years ago Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Portland's National Register-listed landmark arena, was threatened with demolition to make way for a minor-league baseball stadium. When a coalition of citizens opposed the plan, then-mayor Sam Adams reversed course and the baseball blueprints were set aside. But in the ensuing years, Adams and his mayoral successor, Charlie Hales, have been unable to take the next step: restoring the building.

Now, although the Coliseum has already been looked at numerous times, Mayor Hales has commissioned a new study that includes four options to be evaluated: renovation, doing nothing, mothballing the building, or tearing it down.

Although commissioning a study could perhaps be construed as a delay tactic, there is actually good reason for it in this case. As I learned from meeting with City of Portland officials over the past year on behalf of the Friends of Memorial Coliseum, local leaders don't even exactly know if the building operates at a profit or loss. That's because the Coliseum's parking proceeds are part of a large pool that also includes the adjacent Moda Center as well as Providence Park downtown.

Since Hales took office, there have been whispers that the mayor was seeking a private partner to make possible not just a Coliseum restoration, but a substantially bigger one than the just-over $30 million restoration that Adams nearly brought to a vote before his term expired. With Nike involved in bringing track and field's 2016 World Indoor Championships to Portland, rumors began circulating earlier this year that the event might be moved from the Oregon Convention Center to a new temporary track at the Coliseum as part of a larger public-private partnership. But those discussions, as best I can tell, don't seem to be hapening any longer, if they really did happen at all.

It makes one wonder if there are other potential private partners to be had, such as Paul Allen and Vulcan. After all, Allen's Blazers manage Veteran's Memorial Coliseum and previously had been involved in discussions during the Adams administration to re-design and build on the area. Thouth their plan set off alarms with its suburban feel, the broader Rose Quarter still, for all the cricket-chirping silence of its badly planned public areas today, has the potential to become a vibrant urban space if its parking garages were to be buried underground and new buildings added. The Rose Quarter's northern border, Northeast Broadway, just put in a new streetcar line, which Hales first championed some 15 years ago as a development tool while a City Council member.

But even if no deep-pocketed private partner can be found, a more modest restoration like the one that nearly came to a vote last year would be a step in the right direction - especially since it would include a $10 million investment from the Portland Winterhawks. So actually it already is a public-private partnership.

Although the Coliseum's parking-revenue question should indeed be answered, we know that the arena remains relatively busy desoute its deferred maintenance, with about 100 events a year. Chances are the study will show that the building operates at a modest loss. If that's the case, a restoration would seem to push the building into profit or at least breaking even. Imagine if someone ran the Coliseum in a way that was supported by a state-of-the-art renovation that embraced the uniqueness of its open-curtain configuration. It's a cultural and economic resources begging to be taken advantage of, but it needs someone with vision and a reverence for good design (be it past or present) to get involved.

Veterans Memorial Coliseum (photo by Julius Shulman)

As the co-founder of the Friends of Memorial Coliseum, obviously I'm not an objective voice in this conversation. I believe that this building, along with the Pietro Belluschi-designed Equitable Building downtown (which is the world's first aluminum-glass curtain walled building), represents one of the best examples of mid-20th Century modern architecture that Portland has. 

Memorial Coliseum is virtually the only major arena in the world with a 360-degree view to the outside. Standing inside the arena when its curtain is open, one can look out at the Willamette River and the entire downtown Portland skyline. The building is equivalent to about four city blocks in size, but the whole thing stands on just four columns. The concrete seating bowl also sits completely detached from the glass box surrounding it. Quite simply, it's the most pristine work of modern architecture the city has.

But forget the architecture for a moment and consider the economics.

Organizations like the Portland Business Alliance and the Oregon Sports Authority have already gone on record supporting a Coliseum restoration. "It can bring us economic impact multiple times the renovation," the OSA's Drew Mahalic told City Council in December 2012. The Oregon School Activities Association also uses Memorial Coliseum for many of its more than 100 state high school sports championships each year, but the organization doesn't have the budget to hold all of them at the privately-owned Moda Center.

When City Council neared a vote two years ago on a Coliseum restoration, the Portland Business Alliance's Carly Riter testified: "This project is exactly the kind of investment that urban renewal was designed to provide, and produces the short and long term benefits that epitomize the role of urban renewal. Second, this development will catalyze this area and spur economic investment in the broader Rose Quarter area. This project will provide certainty for other investors that the city is a dedicated partner in revitalizing this neighborhood. Third, it creates a local and regional benefit by offering a viable entertainment facility for the Portland Winterhawks and other events. This attracts new energy to the area, enlivening it with civic and economic activity. Having the city and the PDC involved in this project and poised to assist with future development opportunities in this area will support additional strategic investment."

Then there's the symbolic value of a Coliseum restoration or demolition. Great cities don't destroy their most treasured, National Register-listed architecture. Even if you don't love the look of the Coliseum, or modernist architecture, it would still be a stain on Portland's reputation, be it as an aspiring sustainability leader or as a design capitol -- both of which represent leading city aspirations and core strengths -- to tear down a building that national experts have deemed a landmark.

When City Council votes on the study,  a "yes" vote may be warranted in order to gain hard numbers we should have had already on data like parking revenue, but we should urge Council to take demolition off the table. $30 million or $70 million (the range discussed for a renovation) isn't a small sum, but it would come largely from urban renewal dollars already being spent to make the combined Convention Center area and Lloyd District a vibrant, high-density corner of the city. As Portland considers investments like a subsidized headquarters hotel, tearing down Veterans Memorial Coliseum would be a step in the wrong direction, and would ignore the change that is already coming here.

The Coliseum has been beloved by Portlanders for generations. It's ground zero for Rose Festival's Grand Floral Parade, which originates there. It is the state's most important veterans memorial, honoring Oregon's fallen soldiers from World War II and the Korean War with not only its memorial plaques in a sunken garden outside the building but in the light-filled arena itself. And while nostalgia isn't a reason alone to save a building, this is a repository of our most treasured cultural history: a place where the Trail Blazers won an NBA championship and where everyone from The Beatles to the Dalai Lama have taken the stage.

Surely the five members of City Council are well aware of the Coliseum's heritage and its combination of cultural, historical and architectural value. When the study was originally commissioned, demolition reportedly wasn't even going to be included. So while recent media reports such as those by The Oregonian and KOIN have focused on the demolition threat, we may instead be working our way towards a restoration. While I'm as biased as anyone in this conversation, I'm far from the only one who loves this building. It never would have been saved from demolition five years ago had there not been a broad coalition of citizens rallying to its cause.

Is it time to lobby Council again to come to its senses, or are they already working towards a solution we can be proud of? Only time will tell, but the debate will be closely watched as a harbinger not only of the building's fate, but as a referendum on what kind of city Portland wants to be: a design capitol that treasures its heritage, or just another sprawling metropolis where the dollar and the lobbyist hold the biggest sway.

 

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Historic homes and density: crafting the right plan

Markham House (image courtesy Portland Preservation)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It is 54 miles from the Oregon state capitol building to the Markham House at SE 32nd and Burnside in Portland. It is 2.7 miles from City Hall downtown.

As preservation activists and neighborhood leaders work to save the circa-1906 home bookending one side of the Laurelhurst Gate from demolition, both of these local and state seats of government and their moves in the weeks and months ahead will impact the house's fate, or at least houses like it. Yet these preservation efforts must also be balanced with the state and region's more than 40-year effort to curb sprawl and promote density. It's these competing goals, in part, that have set in motion this uptick in demolitions, but a less-discussed factor is state law.

For now, all we can do to save individual historic houses subject to demolition in the name of two lots, is convince developers to sell. In the Markham's case, that may actually happen. In today's Oregonian, Elliot Njus reports that developer Peter Kusyk, who purchased the Spanish colonial style home with the intent of tearing it down to build and sell two homes, has signed an agreement to sell the house to a non-demolishing buyer if his $700,000 asking price can be met. Kusyk purchased the Markham House for $467,148 and told the paper he has spent about $100,000 so far, leaving just under $33,000 in profit.

But by no means is the house saved. The new potential buyer who is working with preservationists, builder John McCulloch, has agreed to purchase the house from Kusyk, but there is a significant gap between what buyer is offering and seller will take. A fundraising campaign is seeking $50,000 to help close the gap. They say they have raised about $12,800 in pledges and are thus about $37,200 from meeting their goal. You can donate to the campaign or watch its progress here.

Meanwhile, there is the larger question of how we stop the so-called epidemic of historic home demolitions, with the Oregonian editorial board the latest to weigh in, also in today's paper. The board is recommending what the Architectural Heritage Center and other preservationists have already called for: waiting periods. City code currently calls for a 35-day waiting period before a property buyer can demolish the home on his or her new holding, but that can be waived if the new owner plans only to replace the existing single-family structure with another single-family structure. There is also a longer 120-day waiting period that can be requested, but the paper actually argues that this should be applied more sparingly, with only members of the neighborhood able to apply. Other than that, the board cites a coalition of groups collaborating with the city's Bureau of Development Services to revise city codes.

But the Bureau of Development only oversees demolitions. It's really the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability that has the power to change the zoning codes that underscore and enable demolitions.

Indeed, the Bureau of Planning is making a number of proposed changes to the Comprehensive Plan, including what's known as down-zoning in certain neighborhoods. But these changes, as bureau leadership has noted in an Oregonian story by Andrew Theen from earlier this summer, will largely be limited to cases of environmental concern, such as erosion control.

And besides, the city is behind other West Coast cities on adding density to its housing stock. While we should be concerned about the loss of historic homes, we also just plain prefer single-family homes here. A recent study commissioned by Metro found that 80 percent of Portland-area residents want to live in single-family detached house. Though Portland is less sprawled out than some of the other cities in our time zone, we still seem to have a smaller percentage of people living in apartments and condos. That might have to change. And even if the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability did significantly down-zone in certain contested areas, the changes wouldn't be approved by City Council until next spring.

For many preservationists, that kind of wait would be too long. As the Portland Tribune's Jim Redden reports, last year the Bureau of Development Services issued over 270 residential demolition permits. "This year the number is expected to easily top 300, and that doesn’t include remodeling projects, in which most of a house is torn down and replaced without a demolition permit, as allowed by city policies," Redden writes.

Markham House (image courtesy Portland Preservation)

If we can't stop demolitions on the local side, what about at the state level? After all, it may be where the problem lies. A less-discussed aspect of this ongoing conversation about preventing historic-house demolitions is the State of Oregon's owner-consent law for designation as historic property, ORS 197.722, which states that "a local government shall allow a property owner to refuse to consent to any form of historic property designation at any point during the designation process."

Although Oregon's fractured political landscape (Democrats dominating Portland and Eugene districts, mostly Republicans everywhere else) would likely make repeal of the law difficult to pull off, it might be possible to amend the law to allow local decision-making about its implementation. We could either allow local decision-making across the board, or create a special amendment to the state law that allows just Portland to go its own way. And such a move would not be without precedent. State law was amended a few years ago to allow Portland's Design Review process within the Central City to also be applied in Gateway.

Even if state owner-consent laws aren't amended, there still must be a way to craft the right balance between preservation and density. The city needs more multifamily housing, but all along the strategy has been to focus (via zoning codes) that development along major streets and intersections. The overwhelming majority of single-family houses aren't in these settings. Why do we need to automatically allow lots in existing neighborhoods to be split? And even if we did, an up-to-date city inventory of historic homes could guide out elected officials to pinpoint not just neighborhoods or corridors on which to tighten demolition laws, but across the city. By no means must protecting historic single-family houses and promoting density be mutually exclusive. In Portland or Salem or both, it's simply a matter of articulation.

 

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Belluschi in Philadelphia: the Rohm and Haas building at 50

Rohm & Haas building (photo by Ezra Stoller, courtesy Anthony Belluschi)

BY BRADLEY MAULE

The clearing of three blocks north of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in the 1950s not only meant a new, open vista of Independence Hall but also created park-side real estate for private investment. The Rohm and Haas Company became the first company to buy in to the newly christened Independence Mall, securing the southwest corner of Sixth and Market Streets. The resulting Rohm and Haas corporate headquarters, a hulking nine-story concrete structure delicately wrapped in the company’s signature Plexiglas from a design by EwingCole with Pietro Belluschi, is now 50 years old: a testament to collaborative design and robust modernism. The building recently received a Special Recognition Award at the Preservation Alliance for Great Philadelphia.

Philadelphia's EwingCole collaborated with Rohm and Haas' in-house architect, Stan Cole, to produce a serviceable initial design. But Rohm and Haas leadership insisted that a design consultant with an international reputation be added to the project. In 1962, Pietro Belluschi, fresh off a controversial design with Emery Roth and Walter Gropius for New York’s Pan Am Building, and at the time dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became that consultant.

Rohm & Haas (photos by Bradley Maule)

Alec Ewing, now 93, recalls the ensuing collaboration vividly. In a statement prepared for the Preservation Alliance award ceremony, Ewing wrote: “Stan [Cole] and I would go to Cambridge, Massachusetts [where Belluschi was the dean of MIT’s school of architecture] for critiques from Pietro or he would come to Philadelphia and work with us. The process began by my associate Sandy Toland and me developing pre-schematic alternates and Pietro producing his suggested design. Together, we designed an excellent structure.”

One requisite of that excellent structure came from Rohm and Haas directly: the incorporation of the company’s most successful product, Plexiglas. Taking cues from Eero Saarinen’s John Deere World Headquarters, the Ewing-Cole-Belluschi team crafted a series of louvered sun screens made of corrugated Plexiglas to wrap the otherwise concrete structure. While Otto Haas, Jr. and his brother John lobbied for a sky blue color, Belluschi suggested that a blue would overpower neighboring Independence Hall, and convinced them instead to use an earth tone. The resulting bronze panels appear dark, almost black from Independence Mall, but indeed emit a translucent bronze hue when viewed through the screens in natural sunlight.

Inside the building, Plexiglas proves its versatility on the diaphanous walls of the boardroom, the undulating ceiling of the elevators, and most memorably, in the first floor light fixtures by Hungarian artist György Kepes. Kepes, a contemporary of Belluschi’s at MIT, designed several cruciform-shaped light fixtures featuring hundreds of Plexiglas rods each, a striking design element in the airy lobbies. The lobbies, fashioned of prismoidal concrete forms supporting teak walls with aluminum sconces, are intentionally tall to provide views of Independence Hall.

R & H boardroom, 1964 (photo by Ezra Stoller, courtesy Anthony Belluschi)

In addition to diffusing morning sunlight, the exterior’s Plexiglas panels softened the otherwise bulky concrete structure, contrasting with its colonial neighbors in a decidedly subdued fashion. The Haas brothers demanded an excellent, but not flashy building, with a grand entrance via stairways to a plaza atop a plinth. And while the plinth has largely fallen out of favor since the urban renewal era, this one is enjoying a second life as the brand new Independence Beer Garden populates the newly landscaped plaza just above the Sixth Street sidewalk.

The potential for this activity stems directly from one of Belluschi’s early recommendations: to turn the building 90 degrees to maximize the street life of the Mall. Flaring concrete columns frame the large windows of the ground floor, as well as a portal leading to a courtyard connecting to the parking garage next door—a garage designed to withstand the addition of a tower. Had that happened, a footbridge several stories above would have connected the tower with Rohm and Haas.

Today EwingCole keeps its offices in the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia—another product of Ewing-Cole-Belluschi teamwork. Following an encore collaborative project, West Philadelphia’s University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation (which recalls a number of Belluschi’s religious structures, particularly St. Philip Neri Catholic Church in his hometown Portland), the Fed needed new facilities for its Philadelphia Region, which serves eastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, and Delaware. Belluschi, then a consultant for the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington, recommended EwingCole for the commission.

Opened in 1976, the Philadelphia Fed represented a government-civilian collaboration, with corporate offices reserved above the government’s floors. EwingCole moved in in 1979 from 400 Market Street—where the firm had grown since Belluschi joined Alec Ewing and Stan Cole there for late night sessions refining the Rohm and Haas Building.

Rohm & Haas interior (photo by Bradley Maule)

“Representing the first private investment on the Mall, the Rohm and Haas Building was highly regarded by Philadelphia’s city planners, who hoped it would serve as a stimulus to other private investors and set a standard for subsequent redevelopment buildings,” Meredith Clausen writes in her 1999 book, Pietro Belluschi: Modern American Architect. “Applauding its sensitivity to the site and the way it related not only to the fine texture and small scale of Independence Hall but also to the expansive landscaped Mall, architectural critic Wolf Von Eckhardt of the Washington Post, who had only recently decried the Pan Am Building, acclaimed the Rohm and Haas structure as ‘probably the most handsome building in Philadelphia.’”

Indeed, it has aged well. Bucking tradition of waiting at least 50 years for a building’s nomination, Rohm and Haas was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.

Reflecting on the Rohm and Haas Building’s role in his firm’s foundation, Alec Ewing reminisces over Belluschi’s guidance. “There are very few Pietros in any generation… He fully understood that it takes dozens of well trained and fully experienced architects and engineers to develop the design of a building like this one.”

Editor's note: the original version of this post (which has been amended for Portland Architecture) was published by Hidden City Philadelphia.

 

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Opportunity rising at the renovated Bakery Building

Bakery Building entrance at SE 22nd & Irving (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

There is a new entry in Portland’s ongoing collection of warehouses converted to creative-class office space, joining projects from the past decade like the Olympic Mills Commerce Center in the Central Eastside, the Leftbank Building near the Rose Quarter, and the Ford Building in Southeast.

The  Bakery Building is massive, occupying an entire block at NE 22^nd and Riving, just north of Sandy Boulevard. The oldest portion of the 78,400 square foot structure dates to 1918, but it was built out in a succession of expansions over the decades, so much so that some of the building is wood-framed and some is steel-framed.

Davidson’s Baking Company, which built the building, was founded in 1914 and produced Davidson’s Ideal Bread, and later Sunbeam Bread). According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, when the company celebrated its golden anniversary in 1964, it employed 360 people and “was baking 12.5 million loaves of bread a year for retail grocery stores, restaurants, and schools—about six or seven loaves per Oregonian.” But since 1967, when company was sold (folding six years later), it has sat largely empty. It’s been waiting for a renovation since the Lyndon Johnson administration.

Inside the Bakery Building (photos by Brian Libby)

The restored Bakery Blocks, as the building is now known, was developed by Jeff Mincheff, who previously developed the Eastbank Lofts, and Don Vallaster, a partner at Vallaster & Corl Architects. (The pair are also restoring an industrial building across the street, hence the "Blocks" moniker.) It includes a variety of spaces but is intended as creative office space with retail storefronts on the ground floor, the latter of which businesses like Jasmine Pearl Tea and Old Portland Hardware & Architectural already occupy.

Visiting the building recently as workers completed renovations, I encountered a variety of spaces. As one enters through the oldest portion of the building, its stairway and half-circle windows give off a slightly Georgian feel in keeping with this portion’s construction just before World War I. Moving further into the former factory, the spaces get bigger and more wide open. One second-floor space is thousands of square feet, all column free like a ballroom, with its exposed roof trusses above and a restored maple floor at one’s feet. Nearby was a two-story loft space, with light pouring in from its upper clerestory windows. In another second-floor space, exposed brick revealed a small advertising mural reading, ASK FOR IT BY NAME.

Top: historic image of Davidson's Bakery; Bottom: Inside today (photo by Brian Libby)

The surrounding area is a mixture of industrial, residential and commercial. Across 22nd sits a warehouse fronted by two massive Pepsi trucks, and then across Irving a surface parking lot. Sandy Boulevard is just two blocks south, and while part of the intersection there is dominated by the oppressively window-less KATU television studios, there are a number of food/drink and cultural outlets nearby, such as the 23 Sandy Gallery and the cluster of small eateries comprising The Ocean. It’s a centrally located area that’s within biking distance of seemingly anywhere, but an I-84 onramp just down Irving for getting out of town. Sandy Boulevard is also a leading candidate for a future streetcar line, making this area all the riper for gentrification.

And in a time when local historic buildings of every scale are being threatened with demolition, it’s nice to see this building be restored rather than demolished, especially given how long it sat empty. One day this area may be of a substantially higher density and vibrant energy, and if it does, the Bakery Building may in many ways be its anchor.

 

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Weekend at Belluschi's

Jennings Sutor house (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

"We never could design a building as beautiful as the trees."

That quote from architect Pietro Belluschi is engraved on a commemorative bench in Forest Park dedicated to his memory. Perhaps it's something not many legendary architects would say, yet as this weekend's tour of six Belluschi-designed houses made evident, this was an architect who always saw his designs in the context of landscape.

The Belluschi weekend began Friday night with a talk at the Portland Art Museum given by Belluschi's son, Anthony, an accomplished architect in his own right who spent most of his career in Chicago but also worked with his father on 17 different projects.

Returned to Portland, Anthony now lives in the Pietro Belluschi-designed Burkes house, in which his parents also lived before their passing. The younger architect has restored and expanded the Burkes, which was part of Saturday's tour, but he's also become an active caretaker of his father's legacy. On the heels of last year's Pietro Belluschi exhibit at the Oregon Historical Society (which is now moving on to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene), Anthony also organized this year's tour in partnership with Restore Oregon.

Papworth house (photo by Paula Watts)

On Friday night, Anthony Belluschi took the packed Whitsell Auditorium on a personal journey through his father's life and portfolio, beginning with his early days in Ancona, Italy and his service in World War I. As a picture of Pietro in his Italian army uniform showed, he was always a sartorial fellow. Anthony also showed photos of Bologna, where Pietro studied before the war. "It's important to see where he came from," the son said of the father, pointing out the urban fabric of granite, marble and stone, all materials that would be utilized in his designs.

Pietro Belluschi was part of an enormous diaspora of Europeans who came to America during and after the two world wars. From movie directors to engineers, scientists to novelists, the United States received an incredible infusion of talent resulting from the violent upheavals of the early 20th century. After the war, Pietro studied at Cornell University, which remains perhaps America's most acclaimed architecture school.

Deciding to remain in the US due to the rise of fascism in Italy, he had a choice between Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, but chose our city because of a connection to A.E. Doyle, who was the city's most important and prominent architect (even today only Belluschi himself surpasses Doyle in importance), a stroke of luck not only for Pietro himself, but for our city, in that it created a continuous line of mentorship and mastery that has continued over the decades.

As Belluschi aficionados know, one of the biggest turning points of his career was the Portland Art Museum commission and the fraternal boost from Frank Lloyd Wright that helped make it possible. Museum trustees wanted a neo-Georgian style like that of Doyle's Central Library, rejecting the modern design Pietro created. But after Belluschi wrote Wright asking for help, Wright wrote the trustees and scolded them. The modern design not only won out, but still stands today. "Obviously he went back to the board and said, 'I told you so,'" Anthony said in his talk.

Equitable building (photo by Brian Libby)

If the Portland Art Museum put Belluschi on the map locally and regionally, the Equitable Building launched him into the national consciousness. The first American skyscraper with an aluminum-clad curtain wall and air conditioning, the Equitable was "right up there with any of the Europeans, the New Yorkers, Mies Van Der Rohe, all of them," said the legendary architect and critic Philip Johnson.

Pietro Belluschi would go on to lead the MIT school of architecture for some 20 years, during which time he designed or co-designed some major American landmarks of modern architecture such as the Pan-Am Building in New York, the Julliard School at Lincoln Center (since altered in a renovation that Anthony said he thinks Pietro would dislike), and the Cathedral of St. Mary in San Francisco. Of these, it is St. Mary that seems to have the most unique and timeless quality, thanks to elements like its saddle roof, comprised of eight segments of hyperbolic paraboloids, forming a cross.

Although Belluschi had a hand in later Portland buildings such as the US Bancorp Tower, better known as "Big Pink," it was churches and houses that he was known for after returning to the city in 1973 following his MIT retirement. Churches such as St. Thomas Moore in Portland and 1st Presbyterian in Cottage Grove display not just the clean lines of modernism, but an almost arts and crafts-like reverence for materials such as wood.

"I can still see the church of my youth in Bologna, as every church I've been to," Belluschi once told biographer Meredith Clausen. "The church is not the building; it's the coming together of people -- how they face each other, how they feel each other."

Top: Platt residence (photo by Brian Libby), bottom: Ressler house (photo by Drew Nasto) 

Talking about Pietro's house designs, of which 34 remain standing, Anthony cited his father's love of barns in the Oregon landscape. "That's something that stuck with him all his life," Anthony said. "They were simple and indigenous."

When I heard Belluschi's masterful circa-1948 Burkes house was being expanded, it made me nervous. Few would ever dream, for instance, of adding on to a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Or if someone tried to expand, say, the John Yeon-designed Watzek House, preservationists would line up to stop it. Why mess with an immaculate piece of local history? I was especially nervous about the fact that a second story was part of the expansion for this one-story home hugging a Northwest Portland hillside.

But having seen it in person, I was relieved that Anthony Belluschi clearly understands his father's architecture well, and the award-winning expansion is such that Burkes house does indeed feel like a congruent whole today, its language of wood and glass not only enlarged but nicely updated for the future with moves such as an expanded kitchen that don't feel out of place in relation to the original design. And for architecture, it's not enough to simply preserve: however artful a design may be, it has to remain relevant and useful.

What's more, as Janet Eastman wrote in The Oregonian, "It is incredibly poignant that Pietro spent his last years here, before passing away at 94 in 1994, and that his son and daughter-in-law refinished wood, replaced worn floors and made modifications that the family, modernists and architecture experts agree would have been approved by the exacting Pietro Belluschi."

Anthony Belluschi expanded what had been a trellis at the edge of the house to create a new multipurpose media room and a loft space in order to accommodate grandchildren. That's where the aforementioned second story comes in, but its sloping roof hugs the original house's form. Between this space and the edge of the original house is a long, thin white-walled and skylight-bathed gallery space between the old and new spaces to display their extensive art collection. Little art can be hung on the walls in the original portion of the house because of its wood ceilings, a kind of artwork of artisanship. The gallery makes a nice visual counterpoint.

Burkes house (photo by Brian Libby)

There were six Pietro-designed houses on Saturday's tour, including the Jennings Sutor (1938), the Joss (1941), the Ressler (1949), the Papworth (1980), and the Platt (1941) in addition to the Burkes (which has been renamed the Belluschi House). Although they represented a 42-year span of his career, it was noteworthy how much of a connecting thread existed between them. Hallmarks of Belluschi houses noted by Anthony in the talk included sloped roofs with large overhangs or trellises, ample use of wood inside and out, woven wood ceilings, uninterrupted glass walls, louvered vents on exterior walls, cork or wood or tile floors, fireplaces of stone or brick (often with copper hoods), connections to the site and landscaping, functional intimate courtyards, and simple open layouts with easy circulation.

And these features were there to see in each house, whether it was the woven wood ceilings at the Burkes and the Platt, for example, or the sloping roof and overhang of the Sutor and Papworth. What impresses me about these houses is how modest most of them are. These are not mansions for strictly affluent clients. Pietro Belluschi, like Wright before him, sought to bring great design to the masses, as evidenced by his designs for Life magazine, for example, or his work for acclaimed California builder Joseph Eichler.

Woven-wood ceiling at the Sutor house (photo by Brian Libby)

The weekend Belluschi-house tour also served as a reminder of how much landscape played a role in the designs. Many of the properties, such as the Platt and the Papworth, are situated amidst extensively landscaped gardens and acreage. Pietro Belluschi houses aren't monoliths perched in high places for us to look up at. Instead, they seem to become immersed in the land. And while international-style modernism inspired Pietro, so too did Japanese and Scandinavian architecture as well as simple indigenous buildings such as the aforementioned barns. And the amount of wood inside and out further fosters a sense of appropriateness and timelessness.

When Anthony Belluschi finished his talk and opened the discussion to audience questions, one person asked him to talk in greater depth about Pietro as his teacher. After all, Pietro had initially discouraged Anthony from becoming an architect, encouraging him to take up painting. And it couldn't have been easy for a young aspiring architect to match his father's accomplishments. Anthony also eschewed the chance to study at MIT, where his father was dean, and instead studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. Anthony also made his career in Chicago, away from the influence his father had in Portland, Boston or even San Francisco. Yet he also would go on to work on 17 different projects with his father.

Belluschi (formerly Burkes) House (photo by Sally Painter)

Anthony described Pietro as "very subtle, very quiet" as a teacher, but a good one. And in a brief slideshow of his own projects, which have been collected in the book Urban Places, Public Spaces: The Architecture of Anthony Belluschi by Edward Gomez, it was clear that father influenced son immensely.

The younger architect designed public spaces such as the soaring American Airlines terminal at Chicago's O'Hare airport, and numerous shopping centers in the US and Asia. Both types of buildings can feel oppressive and claustrophobic in the wrong designers' hands.

Yet as Gomez's book shows, in Anthony Belluschi's hands these spaces are teeming with natural light and materials, transcending the corporate settings they're built to be. It's one thing to design a beautiful art museum, church or house, but it takes a special talent to make a mall uplifting. Belluschi should be proud, both of his own architecture and the role he has taken as caretaker of his father's legacy.

 

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Requiem for PNCA's Goodman Building and a Pearl District tipping point

Goldman Building (image courtesy PNCA)

BRIAN LIBBY

When it was completed in 1998, the renovated Goodman Building didn't just provide an expanded home and presence for the Pacific Northwest College of Art. It also epitomized the Pearl District's DNA: creative conversions of warehouses. Holst Architecture's design provided a mix of art-exhibit space and classrooms surrounding a wide-open multistory central space that acted as a crossroads for teachers, students and visitors. Whether lectures, art shows or the occasional music performances, the Goodman felt like the creative heart of the Pearl even as the boxy old building with its concrete floors kept the neighborhood's past partially alive.

And that's to say nothing of the building's incredible exterior paint job, created by Randy Higgins (and which I wrote about in 2005 for Metropolis magazine), which translates a Rimbaud poem into an invented visual language of multi-colored squares and rectangles.

This week brought confirmation that the Goodman is slated for demolition. As reported by the Daily Journal of Commerce's Lee Fehrenbacher, Seattle-based developer Security Properties, which purchased the block last fall for $11.75 million, has submitted conceptual plans to the Bureau of Development Services for mixed-use development that would replace the Goodman with two buildings at 15 and 5 stories, totaling 220 units of housing above ground-floor retail. The $72 million project is to be designed by Seattle firm Mithun, which is known for its exemplary sustainable design credentials. "The net equity PNCA will realize from the $11.75 million sale," the school says on its website, "is part of the financing structure for the $32 million new campus construction project." 

There's no doubt that PNCA's move to the historic 511 Broadway building is an exciting game changer for the school, particularly that the renovation was designed by Portland's most acclaimed firm, Allied Works. The Brad Cloepfil-led design will both help make PNCA a more serious and ambitious art and design school as it coalesces around the North Park Blocks while allowing Allied something it has done far too little of over the past decade: design a major building in its home city. It's easy to see in renderings of the 511 some of the beauty and kinetics of Allied's signature Portland design, which was also a Pearl District renovation: the Wieden + Kennedy headquarters.

PNCA's plans for 511 Broadway (images courtesy Allied Works)

Even so, it's a shame that PNCA, which has grown substantially since branching out from its origins as the Portland Art Museum's in-house school, has had to stretch its resources to the degree where keeping a presence in the 511 and the Goodman is not possible.

Even if retaining the Goodman did not make financial or programmatic sense for PNCA, one could easily have imagined it taking on a role like that of warehouses and other historic buildings across the river converted into creative-industry office space, such as the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, the Leftbank Building, the Eastbank Commerce Center and the new Eastside Exchange. Or better yet, it would have been nice to see the Goodman become some kind of arts venue. How many performance spaces, for example, are there in the Pearl? Not far from here in Slabtown, the dance company Bodyvox turned an old building into a Boora-designed headquarters and performance venue. But there aren't a lot of other examples.

Instead of attracting a redevelopment-minded owner or developer, someone with more ambitious, tower-sized ambitions stepped in. And thus the Goodman had to go. It says something about how the real estate economy has emerged from its years of recession and started booming again. It also reminds us how popular the Portland area has become as a place of migration, and given how the Pearl is zoned to allow such highrises, it's perhaps not surprising that Seattle's Security Properties would swoop in. If they hadn't, some other developer probably would have. Yet unlike the example of projects like the Brewery Blocks, which retained portions of the site's former Weinhard beer brewery in building offices and condos, I'm guessing Security is not going to retain any semblance of the Goodman.

The Goldman wasn't an irreplaceable work of architecture per se. But the existing fabric of old buildings in Old Town/Chinatown and the Pearl, or what's left of them, together have a less easily quantifiable yet nevertheless substantial economic value of their own. They're what give these areas north of downtown and west of the Willamette their character, both aesthetically in their patina'd look and in their relatively small two to three-story scale. Thankfully there are individual success stories, like the one that seems to be happening with Centennial Mills; as The Oregonian's Elliot Njus reports, it may be on track for Jordan Schnitzer-led renovation.

Goldman Building (photo by Brian Libby)

"On the one hand I hate to see those neat old buildings disappear because they do bring a lot of character to the city," the DJC's Fehrenbacher told me by email. "But on the other hand, I feel like it’s a necessary evil if we want to prevent urban sprawl. I grew up in Sacramento, which outside of the downtown core is kind of like the land of never-ending suburbia. It’s disgusting. I wish that city would get on board with half the strategies Portland adopted long ago."

Indeed, the intent here is not to question density and the zoning that allows tall buildings in the Pearl. It's precisely what has made this area so vibrant, whether it's the collection of restaurants and shops or the blend of architecture and greenspace. At the same time, cities like San Francisco and New York have shown a potential downside to unbridled development in coveted neighborhoods. When real estate prices rise enough, there's an irresistible financial incentive to tear down buildings of even modest density in order to maximize the allowable density and achieve more profit. The architecture may be attractive or admirably sustainable, or both. The density may provide a positive contribution to the cultural vibrancy of the neighborhood. Yet if we lose the variation, in scale and in the mix of new and old structures, suddenly we risk becoming a forest of nearly identical tall buildings like we see pictures of in the latest pop-up metropolises of China.

Perhaps, in other words, life will go on if Portland loses the Goldman building after PNCA moves out in 2015. The school will be better off than ever and the new buildings will put more people in the neighborhood on the street, enabling a broader tax base and supporting local businesses. Yet if all the Goldman buildings go, we'll increase the likelihood that the priceless sense of place that defines us.

 

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Parking, problems and possibilities in Old Town/Chinatown

Blagen Block, SW First (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

That line, delivered at the end of Roman Polanski's classic film, Chinatown, brings a simple message: however noble one's intent (in this case the protagonist played by Jack Nicholson), the calcified circumstances of place can't be easily reversed.

Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne weren't talking about Portland or its Chinatown. But that famous movie line occurred to me while reading Brad Schmidt's report in today's Oregonian about the latest effort to jump-start our Old Town/Chinatown district.

To jump-start this downtrodden district wedged between downtown and the Pearl, one of the city's most respected and venerable developers and civic leaders, John Russell, has proposed a new tax on surface parking lots. The tax would be not to raise revenue so much as to prompt change in Old Town/Chinatown and the broader Skidmore historic.

Surface parking lots are one of the neighborhood's biggest current problems and a sad part of its history.

In the mid-20th Century, many beautiful cast-iron-era buildings here and along the waterfront were torn down simply for parking lots. And all these decades later, many of them remain. They’re cash cows for landowners who needn’t bother with building buildings. Nevermind that the city is trying to foster high-density development, especially these sort of close-in, central-city districts. Nevermind they are soul-sucking forces in otherwise vibrant urban places (unless of course they're lined with food carts instead of cars, like on 10th Avenue downtown).

"Parking lots are the worst neighbor that you can have,” Russell told Schmidt. “I’ve joked that I’d rather have a brothel, because there’s at least something going on.”

Russell has been involved with numerous large-scale projects over more than 30 years. He developed the Pac West Center in 1984, for example, and in 2006 his 200 Market building renovation became the first office renovation in the United States to earn a LEED rating from the US Green Building Council. One of Russell's other projects, a renovation of Portland's oldest building, the Hallock-McMillan building on SW Naito Parkway at Oak Street, has languished in part because it's surrounded by surface parking lots. But he’s not making the parking lot proposal solely out of self-interest. Russell also has a long track record serving in a volunteer capacity for city bodies like the Historic Landmarks Commission, the Planning Commission, and as chair of the Portland Development Commission.

The real estate economy is ramping up both nationally and locally, with construction cranes and building sites scattered throughout the central city and beyond. Yet there has been relatively little development in Old Town/Chinatown. Though the district has taken positive steps over the years, such as attracting the University of Oregon's Portland satellite campus to the White Stag Block on NW Couch and Naito Parkway, and the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine across the street, this ideally situated neighborhood between downtown, the river, and the Pearl has not seen much private development.

White Stag Block, SW Naito (photo by Brian Libby)

Of course parking lots are not the only problem. It feels like a majority of the city's shelters and social service agencies are located here, as well as many of its dive bars. Old Town is an official Entertainment District, where late-night drinking leads to many a noise complaint and stained sidewalk. There has also been the presence of the Right 2 Dream Too homeless camp, right along Burnside, which has given the homeless another option should they eschew shelters but has driven away neighborhood investment.

Are the surface parking lots sticking around because of the district’s social and economic problems, or are the social and economic problems persistent because it’s a neighborhood with lots of ugly surface lots? Neither Russell nor his detractors can answer that chicken-egg question definitively.

In Schmidt's story about the proposed parking-lot tax, Russell's foil is the Goodman family, which owns a majority of the land that holds parking lots downtown and in Old Town/Chinatown. "Frankly, for somebody who’s done close to nothing in 20 years to say it’s the problem, I find agitating," Schmidt quotes Greg Goodman saying of Russell.

Goodman's family has actually made progress in recent years finally starting to turn these central-city surface lots into building projects, most notably the 12 West building in the West End at 12th and Washington (designed by ZGF and developed in partnership with Gerding Edlen). But the defensiveness of Goodman's remark may stem from the fact that there's more than a kernel of truth to Russell's argument: that parking lots and good urban place-making don't go well together. If Portland really is going to avoid sprawling as much as other western American cities, the city has to grow up and in, by taking advantage of and transforming low-density areas such as polluted brownfields and surface parking lots. Of course people still need places to park their cars, but in the center of a major city, that should be underground or at least in a multi-story garage.

The crux of the Russell-Goodman argument in Schmidt's article is not just chicken-and-egg but carrot versus stick. Whereas Russell is arguing for the stick, via a tax on surface lots, Goodman unsurprisingly recommends the carrot. Rather than taxing parking lots, he told Schmidt, "the city should be subsidizing development in an area where projects currently don’t pencil out."

This may already be happening anyway. Old Town/Chinatown is already one of the Portland Development Commission's official Urban Renewal Areas, and as Schmidt reported in The Oregonian last month, Mayor Hales and PDC are looking to offer subsidies of $7 to $20 million over the next five years to build hundreds of new apartments that could be reserved for low and middle-wage earners. But the plan has also met with skepticism. Schmidt notes the city’s own statistics indicate a surplus of such workforce housing, as it's called, "and a deficit of options for the city’s poorest residents." Yet to build low-income housing in this neighborhood would increase the crowding of the lower classes into one place, which is just as bad for place-making as surface parking lots.

Make no mistake: it's more important to care properly for the poor and the homeless than it is to develop a popular neighborhood that makes the likes of John Russell, Greg Goodman or other developers an extra buck. Social problems aren’t something to be swept under the rug. But part of the way a city best handles its neediest populations is with a mix of income levels and zoning in each neighborhood. Old Town/Chinatown will only thrive when we build a vibrant, high-density, well-rounded there. Let the shelters and the bars stay, but make them part of a growing high-density neighborhood with increased housing and office space added to the mix, and renovations of its wonderful historic architectural fabric.

Even the right incentives and subsidies don't always work out, and city government must do its part by making the process seamless and without surprises. Take last year's collapsed effort to redevelop the Grove Hotel, a crumbling halfway house at Fourth and Burnside.

The Grove project was set to become an intriguing and potentially catalytic project for the neighborhood: an Asian-themed youth hostel co-developed by Wieden + Kennedy executive John C. Jay in tandem with the late Ace Hotel founder Alex Calderwood. Those are people who know a lot about attracting people and creating a sense of place. The deal, originally struck in 2010, was being heavily subsidized by PDC, but according to reporting by Willamette Week's Aaron Mesh (and others) it fell through after the commission asked for an additional $900,000 in collateral. By that time, the deal was already threatened because of the presence of the Right 2 Dream Too homeless camp across the street. It’s an example of the continuing cycle of possibility and disappointment in Old Town/Chinatown.

Jay has long been active behind the scenes in the neighborhood, with projects such as the Ping restaurant, an ambitious pop-up gallery exhibition during the Portland Art Museum's "China Design Now" show, and an earlier effort to bring Asian grocer Uwajimaya to a surface parking lot at Fifth and Couch. When I interviewed him recently for a design-magazine article about his second-floor space in Chinatown, Studio J, for much of the conversation Jay would return to the wonder that so many of his visiting friends and colleagues express for Old Town/Chinatown. It could be millionaire Chinese investors, Paris fashion designers or Brooklyn graffiti artists but Jay says he hears about Old Town/Chinatown's beauty and potential more from people outside of Portland than people here do. "I don’t think locally we quite get it, the goldmine that’s sitting right here," Jay told me.

Every large city has a mix of neighborhoods: some rich and some poor, some trendy and others with boarded-up storefronts, some with beautiful historic buildings and others with banal strip malls. Yet the economic and social components of these neighborhoods are always changing. Look at how New York's SoHo went from Lou Reed to Luis Vuitton. It's not to say that Old Town/Chinatown needs to gentrify with condo towers and espresso bars. In many urban neighborhoods, development itself becomes the problem, pressuring owners to demolish lower-density buildings and driving up the cost of living. Yet the neighborhood needn't be caught on the other end of the spectrum either.

The Portland Business Alliance has joined Goodman in opposing the parking lot tax. Its leadership argued that taxing parking-lot owners wouldn't do anything to make developing the lots financially viable when the rents they could charge potential building tenants would not cover the cost of construction. And indeed, that's why city leaders have offered incentives, be it for the Grove Hotel project, the new workforce-housing proposal, or others. Leaders in the public and private sector know that the right project, if it attracts enough people, can be successful not only for its investors or occupants but in changing an entire neighborhood, which benefits when property values increase and new businesses cluster around the success story that got there first. The Grove might have been that project, or it might be something else. But the larger point is that Old Town/Chinatown is still searching for that catalyst.

Perhaps it's not fair, then, to single out the surface parking lots for a tax, because it places unfair expectations on their owners to build multi-million-dollar buildings at a loss. But Russell reminds us that sometimes it’s not enough to wait for perceptions or property values to slowly change over time, because sometimes that process can become bogged down for decades, as it has done in Old Town/Chinatown.

The good news is that this neighborhood, for all its persistent problems, has something great to offer, not only in its ideal location but the wonderful collection of old buildings there. The bad news in this neighborhood is that for every step forward there seems to be a step back, or a lack of steps at all, and there’s enough blame to pass around to private and public sector alike, as well as our collective citywide perceptions about Old Town/Chinatown.

In the movie Chinatown, which takes place in the mid-1930s, the Los Angeles district of the same name was known for its signs of corruption. Not long after the time in which the film takes place, the neighborhood was razed to make room for LA's Union Station. With Portland's Chinatown and Old Town, we need a more nuanced approach, one that favors density over parking lots, but with a balance of economic progress and social equity, and of the carrot and the stick. Whether one agrees with Russell's tax plan or not, we're better off at least having the conversation.

 

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Demolition planned for (at least) two more historic 19th century homes

John Bridges House (photo by Elliot Njus for The Oregonian)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

With the national economy gaining steam after years of recession and an imperitave in the Portland metro area to densify rather than sprawl, historic houses seem to be getting demolished at an alarming rate.

One of the latest is the historic John Bridges house in Goose Hollow, dating to 1884. Designed in the Queen Anne style (with a touch of the Eastlake movement) with its ornaments, spindles and relief carvings, it is a single-story gem that also represents Portland's boom of the late 19th century, when the city was on its way from isolated muddy frontier town to burgeoning west coast metropolis.

The Bridges house's architect, Justus Krumbein, is also a particularly significant name. A native of Hamburg, Germany who emigrated to the United States in 1869 (first to San Francisco, then two years later relocating here), Krumbein's firm designed the Oregon State Capitol after it was destroyed by fire in 1855. This building too, completed in 1876, would be destroyed by fire, resulting in the building we have today, which was completed in 1935. But the 1876 version was a Renaissance style marvel that was modeled on the US Capitol, with a grand dome sitting atop an entrance of Corinthian columns.

Before his death in 1907, Krumbein designed numerous other significant local buildings, including one of the key structures at the 1905 Lewis & Clark Exposition, interiors for the New Market Theater (1874), St. Vincent Hospital (1893), and Pioneer Hall at Linfield College in McMinnville, as well as numerous residences such as the John Bridges house, whose namesake owner was the general contractor for Union Station.

According to a February 3 Oregonian article by Elliot Njus, the developer who owns the house, Mark Madden, has offered to put demolition on hold until this summer if someone is willing to move it. "I'm trying to be the good developer," Madden told Njus.

While it's true that delaying demolition so the house can be moved offers some small glimpse of hope, I'm not sure being a "good developer" is singling out a historic house to purchase for the express purpose of getting rid of it and then allowing someone to save you the demo costs by having it moved off-site. It feels a little like saying you're the good robber because you let the hostages go before you took the money. Well, maybe that example is unfair. Madden is just a business person, and if he didn't come along someone else likely would have. Still, you can't create the crisis and then cast yourself as the good guy.

Meanwhile, there's also the case of the Carman House in Lake Oswego, which is the oldest home in that suburb and, dating to 1855, is one of only a handful of houses in the Willamette Valley that predate Oregon's statehood in 1859.

Carman House, Lake Oswego, about 1900 (photo courtesy Restore Oregon)

Last year, the Carman House owner submitted an application to remove the home's local landmark status. The 1.25-acre parcel the house sits on, after all, would make a profitable little subdivision.The Lake Oswego Historic Resources Advisory Board unanimously decided not to remove the historic designation. The owner then appealed the Advisory Board’s decision to the Lake Oswego City Council. In January, the Council overturned the Advisory Board’s decision, removing the local landmark designation and clearing the way for demolition of the house to make way for redevelopment. Now, with the help of Restore Oregon (formerly the Historic Preservation League of Oregon), an attorney has volunteered to appeal the City Council’s decision to Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals. The case could take several months to be heard by LUBA, and that decision could in turn be appealed to the Oregon Court of Appeals. But whatever decision comes forth, it may be precedent-setting.

These two houses are particularly significant examples of historic residential architecture under threat, but they're also part of a rather grim trend. According to an Oregonian report by Melissa Binder in early December, city regulators at that point  had alrady approved more than 230 demolitions in 2013, up 40 percent from all of 2011. Earlier this week, for example, a historic Craftsman-style home at Southeast 28th and Belmont was demolished.

Beyond the demolitions themselves, many neighbors and neighborhood organizations feel blindsided. Although city-issued demolition permits require neighbors to be notified and a 35-day waiting period betwen application and demoition, if a property owner applies and pays for a new building permit at the same time as the demolition permit, the neighbor-notification requirement can be waived.

According to Binder's report, back in 2006 and 2007 approximately 70 percent of demlitions came with neighbor notification. Today it's only about one quarter.

There are no easy answers here. The city needs small multi-tenant housing, and the metro area's constellation of small developers are meeting that need. What's more, every home that sells to a developer is done so because the original homeowner is interested in making a profit. No developers are taking these homes from their occupants without consent. And it would be an unfair burdent to compell sellers to only sell to buyers who will keep these homes.

Even so, the time period between demolition request and act of demolition may be particularly key. Not every old home needs to be saved, but when a developer is planning to destroy a house of extra historic and/or architectural significance, the extra time between permit request and demolition gives preservationists the chance to take action. Many developers such as Madden would rather have the historic houses they buy moved rather than earn the ire of surrounding communities, but each time the process has to start from scratch: sounding the demolition alarm and then finding a new owner with a vacant lot and the financial wherewithall to move the house. In cases such as last year's Rayworth House move, though, a minor tragedy can become a win-win for everyone.

In January, Restore Oregon also made a proposal that could be a game-changer for commercial and public buildings as well as for houses: create a state income tax credit based on the cost of rehabilitating a building, which is typically 20 to 25 percent of the project cost in other states with such a credit, Elliot Njus of The Oregonian reports. Whether for the Bridges house or Memorial Coliseum, the Carman house or the Portland Building, the credit could make a difference.

Portland will continue down the path of density, and some individual historic buildings will inevitably be lost along the way. But we need to fine-tune the system so the most important ones have a chance to be rescued. Our city's greatest cultural assets are also our greatest economic ones, for a palpable sense of place - one imbued with layers of history - is always an asset.

 

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City Council considers demolishing the Portland Building, nation's first work of postmodern architecture

The Portland Building (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

There is no building in Portland or perhaps even the United States that is at once so important and so poorly done, so eye-catchingly unique and so ridiculous, so historic and so in need of substantial alteration. What to do with the Portland Building?

As reported by The Oregonian's Brad Schmidt a few days ago, Portland City Council members, faced with $95 million in repairs necessary to fix water damage and structural damage to the Portland Building, have openly considered razing it.

Even besides the huge cost to repair the Portland Building, there are other problems inherent to the Michael Graves-designed city administrative center. In a cloudy climate, its windows are extra small. Employees working there have higher rates of sick days than those working in other city buildings.

“My reaction is we should basically tear it down and build something new,” Council member Dan Saltzman told Schmidt, calling the Portland Building “a nightmare for people who work there.”

“There’s got to be a better option than putting another $100 million into a white elephant,” added Council member Nick Fish. Saltzman and Fish's fellow councilor, Steve Novick, proposed that a new home be built that could house both Multnomah County's courts (the nearby courthouse, while historic, is aging) and city of Portland administrative offices now housed in the Portland Building.

In many ways, their arguments make sense. Any other city administrative building that, at just 32 years of age, needed $95 million in repairs but even then would be a cheaply constructed place with dreary lightless interiors and a terrible street presence would likely be demolished.

But the Portland building is also very historically significant, not just in a local or national but even in an international context. It's the first major work of postmodern architecture in the United States. Any time a city tears down such historically significant architecture, it's a draconian act.

Michael Graves' rendering of the proposed building (image courtesy THA Architecture)

At the time of its completion in 1982, public buildings and corporate offices alike were almost always modern, and modernism by the early 1980s had become an ugly version of itself: all concrete brutalism and reflective glass facades. The Portland Building, along with Philip Johnson's AT&T Building in New York (completed just afterward), ushered in an entirely new era in world architecture: one that eschewed modernism's deliberate ignorance of the past and embraced historical forms. The Portland Building also stood out markedly for its color and whimsy, its peach-toned facade festooned with red garlands. 

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places last year, an honor usually reserved for buildings 50 years or older. That it was accepted at 32 is an indication of its significance, not just to Portland but to the world.

"Younger architects may not grasp how radical Graves’ design for the Portland Building appeared when it was first unveiled during the course of the competition," writes Eugene architect Randy Nishimura on his blog. "His highly personal design vocabulary fundamentally strayed from the principles and orthodoxy of modernism, which since WWII had established itself as the architectural doctrine of choice for large institutional and commercial projects. Graves employed color and grossly over-scaled classical elements (keystones, pilasters, garlands, etc.) in an unabashedly symbolic way. The Portland Building’s design overtly acknowledged the power of architecture to communicate meaning."

Indeed, I often describe the Portland Building as the architectural equivalent of Andy Warhol's Brillo-box sculptures or prints of Campbell's soup cans: a whimsical deconstruction. But such irony may work better in the visual arts than it does on an administrative building that needs to stand the test of time.

I also often describe the Portland Building as a kind of noble failure. When it was completed, then-mayor Frank Ivancie was quoted as saying that this would be Portland's Eiffel Tower: a world-renowned landmark that would emblemize the city. It didn't quite turn out that way, but while our city has an exceptionally talented roster of architects and firms, I think of the Portland buiding as a design that aspired to a home run but struck out in a city of buildings that go for singles and usually get on base.

In other words, while there's no doubt the Portland Building is flawed, one can see Graves aspire to greatness. You can feel not only the whimsy but the audaciousness. Portland buildings, even the best ones, are normally never audacious. In a certain way, it's precisely the ridiculousness of this building that becomes its best quality.

"What appeared beguiling and nuanced in the competition renderings would be realized as a grossly unrefined, miserable, squat box of a building. Regardless, its significance as a piece of architecture cannot be understated," Nishimura adds. "For this reason alone, I believe the Portland Building and its salient features are worthy of preservation. This is easy for me to say: I don’t have to come up with the money to properly repair and refurbish it."

I'm not going to argue that the city should simply spend the $95 million and restore the building as is. But I'm certainly not going to join those calling for it to be torn down. I'd rather see a compromise, although it might cost more: transform the building but keep its historic facade. What if, for example, a new design cut a hole in the roof to allow a massive atrium?

One way or another, the city is going to have to spend money, either on the Portland Building or on its replacement. Does it have to be an either/or proposition? Do we have only the options to destroy an internationally renowned building in a way that would taint Portland's reputation as a steward of history or to sink $95 million into the building without addressing its shortcomings? Perhaps there is a third way.

Even among architects the building lacks consensus on whether it should live or die. Architects Becca Cavell (of THA Architecture) and Peter Meijer (who wrote the building's National Register listing), both of whom have long track records in historic preservation, have publicly debated the Portland Building's fate.

While Meijer argues that it's too soon for history to determine whether the building was a failure (postmodernism is now a thing of the past that few miss), Cavell, in a THA blog post, argues that the building "as constructed is not a representation of the design. The budget couldn’t support the details that gave richness to the building – materials were cheapened and details flattened to the point that the building is a caricature of the original intent – alarming, since the design sketches themselves are very gestural."

If gutting the interior and keeping the facade is not a good option (the small exterior windows are part of the problem - although the atrium could alleviate that), a reader of this blog suggested another option: that the city could tear down the Portland building and more or less rebuild it to something that more closely resembles Graves' quirky original design, only more soundly contructed this time. You could even get Graves to lead the redesign.

Indeed, while Graves is a famous name in architecture (as well as product design following his work for Target), he really was reportedly responsible for little beyond the building's exterior form. And as Cavell points out, that form was significantly altered from his original sketches.

But Cavell isn't arguing for demolition either.  "I can trot out my cheap shots – the building’s only redeeming feature is the enormous sculpture 'Portlandia' that adorns its West elevation, that it faces the wrong way, that the blue tile reminds me of a public restroom. I can argue that it is an 'object' building that has complete disregard for the wellbeing of its occupants. But I understand that Graves’ Portland Building is a significant design from a particular moment in our architectural history," she writes.

"Maybe the solution – the win-win – is to retain its shell and to completely reimagine everything that happens within its four walls," Cavell concludes. "Now, that would make a great design studio project."

 

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Gas & Coke building: Superfund site to park and ruins?

Portland Gas & Coke (photo by Jody Miller)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Imagine a few years from now you're driving on Highway 30 north of downtown Portland. You've passed miles of industrial facilities and train tracks, but as the city's most beloved bridge (the St. Johns) comes into view, so does the city's newest park: a former Superfund site converted into grassy fields, surrounding the ruins of the old Portland Gas & Coke building. It wasn't easy to convert from industrially contaminated site to public area, but it was part of an emerging trend of cities reclaiming their waterfronts for public use. And the ruins are as gorgeous as any working building in the city. Maybe while you're walking the dog here, your kid might get curious about the old building. Its Romanesque style could inspire her or him to become an architect, or its sense of mystery could prompt a storytelling novelist.

That future is still a long way off, and might not ever happen. Yet after decades of sitting forlorn but beloved from afar, the Portland Gas & Coke building has seen heightened activity in recent weeks since owner NW Natural announced its intent to demolish. Could this become a transformative momement for the city, or a lost opportunity to honor our history?

As Willamette Week's Ravleen Kaur reports, the Gas & Coke building was until last year included in the City of Portland's Historic Resource Inventory. But NW Natural asked the city to remove the building, and the city complied. Unfortunately, the inventory requires owner consent.

“I’m not sure how a contaminated building would go on a historic list in the first place,”  NW Natural’s Melissa Moore tolk Kaur. “The building has been decaying.”

That people love the Gas & Coke building and would like to see it survive, even if it's just a ruin, the company seems to think of as a curious nuisance. And, honestly, mabye what the ragtag group of Portlanders interested in its preservation despite the enormous challenges are. But innovative ideas are nearly always laughed at when they first emerge.

Besides, it needn't be an entirely either/or proposition between demolition and renovation. Restore Oregon (formerly known as the Historic Preservation League of Oregon) has a compelling proposal: let the Gas & Coke building continue to decay as a ruin.

"Saving the Gas & Coke Building will require a positive community dialogue with Northwest Natural about the options available for studying and preserving the building. A formal Historic Structure Report that delineated the building’s physical condition and outlined recommendations for treatment would provide a better understanding of the building’s reuse potential," writes Brandon Spencer-Hartle of Restore Oregon. "Furthermore, a conceptual reuse study that outlined options for adapting the building for new uses (and associated expense/revenue) could help answer questions about viability that today are unanswered."

As it happens, preserved ruins have a long tradition. Think of some of the most important architectural works of Western civilization like the Acropolis in Athens (no, not the Portland strip bar of the same name) or the Roman Forum in Rome. Think even, on a humbler scale, of the Lovejoy Columns that have been preserved here in Portland.

"Demolishing the building will be costly—probably in the tens of thousands of dollars range. Because the building has served as a photogenic relic for over 50 years, local advocates might consider advocating for options to seal the building to alleviate Northwest Natural’s understandable concerns about liability," Spencer-Hartle adds. "Because the entire site is contaminated and vulnerable to a seismic event, securely mothballing the Gas & Coke Building is one preservation strategy that would keep opportunities open for redevelopment in the future."

In America, the notion of reverence for ruins has taken longer to resonate with the public than it has in Europe, where an affection for ancient Greek and Roman ruins is itself hundreds of years old. In Oregon, we don't have thousands of years of built history to look back upon (Native American tribes here, while just as culturally relevant as European civilizations, built hardly any permanent buildings), and as a result we tend to act like Hollywood set designers, constantly erecting and dismantling. We shouldn't expect NW Natural to behave any differently.

Like politicians, most corporations may want to do the right thing but they don't like being surprised. Once they announce a position, it has been researched and internally debated enough that they're ready to move on, even if the conversation has just been introduced in public. No one is asking NW Natural to spend millions of dollars that they otherwise wouldn't. No one is expecting the company to restore a building if it's too deteriorated or if the ground underneath is contaminated.

Perhaps it's caught the company a little off-guard to have to start thinking about a public conversation about its building, or to have to brainstorm how their Superfund cleanup could be done without sacrificing this architecture. Honestly, the degree of affection out there caught me off-guard.

But this is an opportunity for NW Natural as much as it's an annoyance. The company possesses a building that, however decayed it may be, means something to the community. They've provided households with hundreds of millions of dollars of fuel over the decades, and that will always be the company's focus. Yet now the company has the opportunity to go beyond our expectations of a tone-deaf corporation beholden only to its shareholders. It may not be their role, but NW Natural has the opportunity to be a cultural savior. 

There is certainly precedent for turning contaminated industrial areas into greenspace. Look at Seattle's Gas Works Park. "This 20 acre point on Lake Union was cleared in 1906 to construct a plant to manufacture gas from coal - later converted to crude oil. Import of natural gas in the 1950's made the plant obsolete," the Seattle Parks website explains. "The city acquired the site for a park in 1962. The park was opened to the public in 1975. The boiler house has been converted to a picnic shelter with tables, fire grills and an open area. The former exhauster-compressor building, now a children's play barn, features a maze of brightly painted machinery."

Taking advantage of this Superfund-to-swingsets opportunity won't be easy, financially or politically. But there's already a lot of money being spent here to clean up a riverfront Superfund site. Why clean it up at all if the ultimate goal is something other than public use of and access to the land?

And if there's anything recent weeks have shown, it's that a lot more people love the Gas & Coke building than we realized. And as I said in Kaur's Willamette Week article, the Gas & Coke sits across the Willamette River from Cathedral Park. It's a kind of industrial cathedral in its own right. You don't have to be an architecture blogger or a pie-in-the-sky community activist to see the potential and the value.

“Every city looks the same,” says Gas & Coke preservationist Kathy Evans in Kaur's story. “The things that make us different are the things we should protect.” 

 
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Century-old Portland Gas & Coke building set to be demolished

Portland Gas & Coke building (image via gascobuilding.blogspot.com)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It's a building that pretty much no one in Portland has even entered for more than a half century, yet as soon as I mentioned its planned demolition on social media today there was a flurry of responses, laments and expressions of affection. People quietly love this building.

First constructed in 1913, the Portland Gas & Coke building looks, even in its decayed current form, too stately to have been a gas production and oil-tar distillation plant. After all, with its clock tower, sashes and gables it looks more like a Victorian train station (a bit like King's Cross in London) or an old city hall.

Which is why the news that owner NW Natural plans to demolish the building, possibly as early as next year, makes for sad news. A spokesperson confirmed the plans yesterday to me by phone.

Indeed, despite its grandness this building was purpose-built as a gasification plant, turning coal and oil into gasoline. (Offices also occupied part of the buiding.) As an extensive blog post from last year explains, for its first 12 years all the building's waste was dumped directly into the Willamette River. After 1925, the plant added tar refining operations; tars were removed from wastewater and placed in a series of ponds surrounding the buiding. By the time Portland GasCo (now NW Natural) shut down the plant in 1957, an estimated 30,000 cubic yards of coal tar had accumulated in the ponds, which were buried 10 feet underground in 1973. And even after that the site was additionally contaminated by another company that leased eight acres adjacent to the building. 

Portland GasCo building (top image by Robert Piacentini, bottom courtesy NW Natural)

The land that this building sits on is a textbook definition of a Superfund site. In fact, a 2001 report called this the second-most contaminated site in Portland. The building itself is not contaminated, and being made of concrete you'd think it would be fairly robust structurally, but NW Natural's representative told me the building is "structurally unsafe" and "not stable." If NW Natural or another entity had the impetus to clean up the site itself (which admittedly would be no easy or cheap task), I'd guess the structure could be repaired. But that seems exceptionally unlikely in this case.

Often a building's 100th birthday gives it an unofficial seal of approval as something historic, and therefore worth keeping. NW Natural has for decades allowed the building to keep standing as a kind of half-ruin.  As Portland Mercury reporter Sarah Mirk's 2011 story and photos indicate, the inside is in pretty deteriorated shape. Nothing within 100 yards of the structure shows any sign of life. And it's not as if it stands amidst a neighborhood that might be attractive to, say, the McMenamin's franchise that has renovated numerous old buildings around town into satellites in their chain of brewpubs and hotels. Yet be it McMenamin's or someone else, one could imagine the Portland Gas & Coke building, given its location along the river and in the shadow of Portland's most beautiful bridge (the St. Johns), renovated into some kind of hotel with extended grounds.

Superfund sites aren't easy to turn around, but there are countless examples all over the country of these toxic places being transformed. Why can't NW Natural summon some sense of community responsibility here? Certainly it's not the responsibility of a utility company to act as stewards of a city or region's most historic architecture. Yet the fact remains that a rich local company, one with a partial monopoly, is set to willfully demolish one of the most historic and beautiful works of architeture in the city. Maybe demolishing this building seems like the only plausible scenario given the contaminated nature of the site, yet I can't help but suspect that NW Natural hasn't really tried very hard to come up with a solution that would save the building. And if that's the case, it means the company is not a very good corporate citizen. What they're planning to destroy may be a contaminated building that's sat empty for a half-century, but behind the dust is an irreplaceable part of Portland's history and culture. In others' hands, it might have become a renovated destination.

Elevation renderings of the Portland Gas & Coke building (courtesy Gnarly Architecture)

At the same time, if this building does get demolished, we Portlanders should also blame ourselves. Once a building owner has committed to demolition, it means the time for deliberation has probably all but passed. There were literally decades that we preservationists could have been lobbying NW Natural or the city to clean up the site and the building, yet neither I nor anyone else took the time to do so. Shame on NW Natural, but shame on all of us as well. After all, how many of us have driven past the building and then continued on our way? It's unfortunate that the right developer or dreamer didn't come along and find the will to wrest the building from its disinterested owner years ago.

What makes the building's demise sadder is that if could have survived a few years longer the building's fortunes might have been changed. Portland, like cities around the world, is in a multi-generational process of reclaiming for public use riverfront land that used to be the fenced-off realm of heavy industry. Just upriver in nearby Linnton, for example, there have been efforts to create high-density housing and mixed-use neighborhood living. Given the natural beauty of the Portland Gas & Coke site, one could easily envision some future generation reclaiming this land as part of the working, open city. I can practically hear Portlanders two generations down the road trying to call back in time to us. But they're not current customers of NW Natural, or charged with Superfund cleanup, so their vote doesn't count.

Portland Gas & Coke (photo by Jody Miller)

That said, if any of you do want to contact NW Natural and express your displeasure, the email contact form is here. Chances are you'll get a boilerplate response and have little opportunity to affect the company's decision making, but perhaps if enough people in the community weigh in then NW Natural might have second thoughts.

If nothing else, though, the next time you're driving on St. Helens Road, pull over and have a look through the chain-link fence at this lovely old building. And if you feel angst about the demolition of this century-old gem, consider directing that energy toward saving one of the other historic and irreplaceable Portland structures that are similarly under threat, such as Memorial Coliseum and Centennial Mills. Preservationists know you can't save every building, or even a fraction of them. But if Portland is turning its back on one of its most compelling works of historic architecture, we can at least pledge that other great local buildings won't suffer from the same tone-deaf, bottom-line thinking.

 

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Randy Gragg on leading UO's John Yeon Center

Randy Gragg (image courtesy University of Oregon)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For more than 20 years, Randy Gragg has been one of Portland's foremost voices for design and the visual arts. As a longtime art and then architecture critic for The Oregonian, he helped shape the debate about countless projects, people and processes. The former Loeb Fellow at Harvard's Graduate School of Design has also founded publications like Reflex and Portland Spaces, while most recently acting as editor in chief of Portland Monthly - giving the magazine intellectual weight without losing its breezy sense of fun. Besides his journalistic talents, Gragg has also distinguished himself as a curator and preservationist.

It's the latter role that is now defining a bigger part of Gragg's career. Earlier this week the University of Oregon announced that Gragg would assume leadership of the John Yeon Center, connecting the legendary Portland modernist's built legacy with one of its leading advocates.

Recently I conversed with Gragg over a series of emails to talk about the Yeon Center and his other continuing pursuits.

Portland Architecture: You've long been active in supporting John Yeon's legacy. How did assuming leadership of the Yeon Center appeal as an opportunity and challenge to you, and how did you see it fitting into the broader context of your career with Portland Monthly, the O before that, etc.?

Randy Gragg: I suspect a lot people probably don’t know what the John Yeon Center is, so let’s start there: it’s comprised of the 1937 Watzek House, a modernist masterpiece, and the only National Historic Landmark house in Portland; the Cottrell House, a more modest but very strong design; and The Shire, a 70-acre landscape in the Columbia River Gorge sculpted as a series of walks and vistas overlooking Multnomah Falls.

I’ll be overseeing the management and programming of these properties. But, really, my task is to build a broad constituency for them. John and his partner Richard Brown gave them to UO over a decade ago. They’ve been used primarily as study tools with occasional public events, a worthy beginning. My charge is to shape the next phase, making them into a kind of “front door but also for the wider community of cultural leaders, researchers, policy makers, and electeds. Or maybe a better way to put it is to turn the Watzek House into the “living room” and The Shire into the “garden”  for those who, like John Yeon, aspire to shape the future and beauty of the region.

Multnomah Falls from The Shire (photo by Brian Libby)

Now to actually answer your question! I’ve really had two paths in my career. Most of my time has been spent as a journalist. (Though I quit in 2007, people still seem to identify me for the arts and architecture criticism I wrote at the Big O). But I’ve always had side projects: curating exhibitions like Core Sample back in 2003; developing architect-in-residence projects for Bullseye Glass; co-developing a huge 2009 dance/music project and, ultimately, a conservation effort for the quartet of Portland fountain plazas designed by Lawrence Halprin and Associates.

In a way, promoting John Yeon’s legacy has been an ongoing side project, too, for nearly 20 years. His work and his thinking has been so inspirational to me. So I’m thrilled that UO is giving me the opportunity to really focus on developing the Yeon Center and the properties into inspirational experiences for the wider community.

You recently had completed a new home, designed by Rick Potestio. What was it like getting to participate in the design and construction process after having been a critic for many years? What are some of your favorite things about Rick's design and how the place turned out?

Well, I now know what developers do! And I have a lot more respect for just how hard it is to build anything—much less something that’s outside the usual. We made a triplex in the form of a pretty simple box, roughly 40-by-40-by-40 feet: two floors cinder block, one floor wood frame. Rick—once described by a mutual friend as a “professional Italian”—basically made it a palazzo. I get to live on the “piano nobile.” The process left me a pound or two of flesh lighter, and “retirement” is a few years further out. But my tenants love being here (one keeps asking me to sell him the unit).

The first few mornings I woke up here and watched the light move through the space, I felt like I was in an early James Turrell installation. Don’t get me wrong: this is a simple, fairly cheap building, but Rick really understands light. I own quite a bit of art, but I’ve not hung a single thing because it’s been so lovely to just enjoy the space and light. Moreover, Rick and I and the contractor, Greg Capen—all pretty combustible personalities—are still friends. Rick was one of the first people I met in Portland. He and some others came to the Oregonian within weeks of my arrival in 1990 and pitched me on the need for architecture writing in Portland. So the building feels like another level of a 24-year dialog. 

What might be some aspirations or goals for the Yeon Center going forward? Could the Watzek House or the Shire perhaps be accessed by the public a little more often, for example?

Give me a little time, but it’s a promise: much more accessible. The new head of the architecture department of UO’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts, Judith Sheine, cofounded the Friends of the Schindler House in West Hollywood. The Watzek House was no less inspirational to NW regional modernists, and we’re co-conspiring to make the Watzek House similarly central to the architectural soul of the region.

Watzek House (photo by Brian Libby)

I once took [Pritzker Prize winning Australian architect] Glen Murcutt to the Watzek House and, after an hour of watching him parse every detail, he shook his head and said, “You know, everything I’ve ever tried to do is here.” The Shire is where the Friends of the Columbia River Gorge was born. John Yeon wrote—in the 1930s, mind you—what was, effectively, the first environmental impact statement for the Gorge—and probably the first ever done in the NW—as the Bonneville Dam’s electricity was about to transform the region. He saved two of the most prominent vistas on the Oregon Coast. John understood change. He didn’t fight it. Instead, he believed great design and planning could shape new, sustainable kinds of beauty within the change. People need to know about this legacy because, as the weather grows hotter elsewhere and more people move here, we need to similarly step up and figure out how the region can be resilient. I can’t think of any better places to ponder the potential than the Watzek House and The Shire.

In addition to your work with the Yeon Center, it sounds like like you've found a new role at Portland Monthly that might let you actually write more. Is that right? Do you ever miss being at a daily paper, or do you just feel relief that you got off the sinking ship when you did?

My proudest boast right now is that I now work for my one-time intern! I’m continuing as editor at large for Portland Monthly. Zach Dundas and Rachel Ritchie (the latter said former intern who I’ve worked with since the start of Portland Spaces, for those who remember our very good, but badly timed, design magazine) now have the reigns. I will be writing and editing, working on things like the Robert Adams profile I did a couple months ago.

As for the daily paper, I miss being published most every day, moreover the sense of being READ every day. When I started at the O, I wrote 4-5 times a week. Then, gradually, I started writing more and more emails and fewer and fewer articles. Had I stayed, it would have been more and more posts. I’m somebody who likes to think about things, then write. I wish I could think fast enough for today’s journalism. But I also wish that more journalists today wrote and investigated like yesterday’s.  I have tremendous respect for my former colleagues still working the paper (and web) and for the younger journalists who’ve joined them. The ship isn’t so much sinking as it is just breaking apart. The transition is painful, but some parts will still float. However, I got out precisely—and luckily—at the right moment for me.

I feel like I’ve been given the best of both worlds: I still get to write, mulling over each word, for a local audience who I will often run into and get talk to on the streets AND I get to work on a longer-term project—the Yeon Center--that, if I do well, will build a stronger constituency for the thing I’ve spent a lot of my career advocating for: great city and regional planning and great design.

 

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The Witherspoon: redemption through preservation

Witherspoon Building (photo by John Chilson)

BY JOHN CHILSON

In downtown Portland on SW Fourth Avenue between Washington and Stark sits the Witherspoon building. Built in 1890, it's almost camouflaged these days with what looks like a two dollar paintjob done with black spray paint. But changes, as they say, are afoot. 

The building, which has a colorful past as a saloon, a dancehall and a brothel, is in the midst of a major retrofit by local creative agency Parliament. Once completed, the agency will occupy the top floor, and the two other floors will be open to, as Parliament's website explains, "a creative collective, a sidewalk-facing creative flex space and a below-ground workshop. We are actively seeking designers, writers, programmers, technologists, small start-ups, and other modern makers to help us build something great."

It's an ambitious project and isn't some quick remodel job. The agency's founder and creative director, Chris Erickson, has a clear vision of what he wants the building to be. He purchased the 15,000-square-foot space almost four years ago and is working closely with architect and friend Casey Wyckoff of LSW Architects. There were false starts and things stalled: they went through the complete design cycle, all the way through permitting, two Decembers ago. But the project came back 50 percent over budget. After starting from scratch, the project is now running at full steam, with noticeable construction in the front exterior and intensive structural work on the interior to get it functional. 

"A lot of the challenges have come from the building's structure," said Erickson. "It's suffered from 123 years of bad remodels and bad decisions. We're trying to do it right." 

Since the building is so old and has seen lots of bad remodels in its 123-year life, each move the team makes can trigger more expense. Many of the support beams are fastened to flooring, for example. At some point, someone added a faux mezzanine and in the process compromised the structural integrity. 

In other spots, flooring doesn't actually tie into anything for support. Beams terminate into other beams with nothing to hold them. And in the back on the first floor, what was once an alley and the building's envelope, was bricked it into the neighboring building for support by previous owners. There are many seismic upgrades and the team has been working with the city for ADA compliance, which has been challenging. 

The biggest part of the retrofit, so far, has been in the basement. Seventy-five percent of the work has occurred there as the space gets completely redone. Contractors have been counterbalancing years of neglect, digging holes and filling them in with concrete and steel to make the building structurally sound.  

Structural and seismic retrofits aside, the building's interiors won't be recognizable when finished. 

123-year-old studs will intersect with new glass and white walls, balancing modern thin lines with original artifacts like the wonderful, red velvet wallpaper uncovered during demolition. "The interiors will be modernist from the sense of heavy geometry and clean lines. A lot of the interior bones we won't touch," said Erickson.

Original wallpaper (photo by John Chilson)

Historically, the Witherspoon's past will live on and its personality will survive. On the third floor, original materials will be incorporated into the current design, mixing with glass and wood.

The brothel on the third floor, evidenced by different wallpapers where separate rooms once filled up with “customers,” is where part of Parliament's office will sit. A mixture of exposed brick, modern plaster and original stucco will respect the past. 

The new design will be LEED-rated, have a completely new energy-efficient HVAC system, and will take advantage of natural light. 

"We want the natural light from existing windows to leak out into the rest of the office. The goal is that someone arriving on the third floor will be able to see straight out to existing windows and get a view of the layout of the space. Not an open space, just a glimpse of it," said Erickson. 

Near the front of the building, contractors have collected items found during construction, including old bricks, skeletal remains of various rodents, original parts from the 1890 boiler, and a 1902 pure gold coin in perfect condition that was tucked under a brick. A gaping hole (to be filled) in the brick wall on the street-level floor was once where coal was delivered by horse and carriage to the basement boiler. One can imagine the workers unloading coal on a cold, drizzly Portland day and stopping in for a snort of whiskey in the saloon. And there's an intriguing, mystery tunnel that goes under the street - now filled in. 

Though the building has an interesting past, it's not one of Portland's well-known structures. That could change. Erickson is no stranger to cool office spaces. Parliament's previous digs in the Olympic Mills Commerce Center were featured as one of Inc. magazine's World's Coolest Offices. Erickson, an industrial designer by education, has also gutted three homes and rebuilt them. 

The space is due to open in January 2014 and could potentially have an impact on the immediate neighborhood. It’s far enough from the Pearl to be unique, but close to downtown’s hub of public transport, bikes, and food cart pods. The space will fit right in with some of the older, well-kept buildings in the area.  

"I'm a conflicted modernist, but at the same time I have a lot of respect for the structure itself. The facade in the front is hopefully going to look similar to how it should look. Passers-by will think it's a nice, kept-up building from the 1890s," said Erikson. 

Get a sneak peak of the Witherspoon during Design Week Portland on October 10. 

John Chilson writes about Oregon (but mostly Portland) history on his blog, lostoregon.org. 

 

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Rypkema champions the "remarkable economics of preservation"

Donovan Rypkema (image courtesy Architectural Heritage Center)

BY ERIC WHEELER

Nationally known historic preservation advocate Donovan Rypkema, returned to Portland for a presentation on “The Remarkable Economics of Preservation” on Wednesday, September 18 in the historic St. James Lutheran Church located in the South Park Blocks. Rypkema's talk was the first of the fall season of programs sponsored by the Architectural Heritage Center. This is the most recent of a series of Rypkema's visits to Portland; he last appeared here in May of 2008. 

An unabashed partisan for historic preservation, Rypkema has been preaching his gospel of “protect, preserve and reuse” historic buildings for over thirty years. A trained economist and real estate consultant, Rypkema framed his argument for historic preservation on a variety of economic analyses. His fast paced and data laden power point presentation hammered home four main points that link preservation with economic vitality:

1)  Jobs – more jobs and higher paychecks when old buildings are rehabbed as opposed to tearing down and building new.

2) Property Values – neighborhoods with historic designation, especially at the local and most restrictive level, show higher rates of appreciation than comparable historic neighborhoods that are not designated.

3) Heritage Tourism – a rather new economic driver for many cities, this initiative brings in money from out of state, encourages new businesses and adds to state and local tax bases.

4) Environmental – the “greenest” buildings are ones that already exist; it takes 10 to 80 years for energy efficient new construction to offset the “embedded energy loss” of razing an old building.

These core themes are familiar to those who have previously known of Rypkema's decades-long crusade for historic preservation. Without a doubt, Donovan was preaching to the choir at St. James Lutheran Church the other night. Perhaps that is why he felt emboldened to admit that the most important reasons for historic preservation are “cultural, community and spiritual values” and that “economics is the least important”.  He knew that he was speaking to a mostly graying crowd of preservation partisans and not realtors, builders and developers. Needless to say, his candor was well received.

In addition, Rypkema waded into the topic of LEED certification, an issue that has gotten him a mixed response from architects and others in the sustainable growth community. He has strongly criticized the concept of replacing existing pre-World War II buildings with LEED certified new construction as an excuse for the destruction of historic properties. He gored another sacred cow of the New Urbanism, high density, by stating that the vigorous pursuit of high density residential construction by city governments often ignores historic preservation and may not make for a truly livable neighborhood. Rypkema declared that “density at a human scale is the REAL sustainable policy.” He also bemoaned the fact that too often historic preservation is given short shrift by urban planners, declaring that “Smart Growth without historic preservation is stupid growth.”

Rypkema noted with approval that real estate listings in many cities now identify a “walkability rating” indicating a cultural shift away from sprawl and back to higher density urban living. Noting another economic paradigm shift in employment opportunities, he stated that often “jobs follow people” to a less automobile-dependent and more culturally dynamic city, implying the attraction of a mostly intact historic architectural fabric. Another memorable quote of Rypkema’s was that one “cannot build new and rent cheap,” suggesting economic as well as community considerations for preservation. Too often, he stated, new construction drives out existing businesses and residents from historic and newly “gentrified” areas. He also emphasized the importance of designation of National Register districts and not just individual properties, thereby creating some level of recognition/protection for the entire neighborhood and not just isolated buildings.

Perhaps one of the most telling moments of the evening came with a question raised by a beleaguered city landmark commissioner from a neighboring city who wondered why all of the powerful economic arguments developed by Rypkema were not more persuasive in the debate over historic preservation. To frame Rypkema’s response, I am going to reference a comment he made last November in Spokane at the National Historic Preservation Conference and was recognized for his career-long efforts for historic preservation. He noted that the award was for his lifetime “contribution,” not his lifetime “achievement!” An important distinction, indeed, in which Rypkema recognizes the continuing challenges to the historic preservation movement. He declared that historic preservation is a long, tough fight and there are victories and defeats.

In my opinion, there are strong, imbedded and continuing economic forces, summed up in real estate economic terms as “highest and best use,” that work in opposition to historic preservation. Many times, private property rights are given more weight than community rights in conflicts over the preservation of historic buildings. Also, short-term financial considerations often trump the intrinsic “cultural, community and spiritual values” that Rypkema mentioned at the beginning of his talk, when he declared that “truthfully, economics is the least important” value in historic preservation. Recognizing that many government and private interests do not agree with that assertion, I applaud Donovan Rypkema for his candor and his many years in the trenches, fighting the good fight for our historic built environment. I only wished that Rypkema would have offered more examples of preservation successes in Portland during his talk, but his message was well received by the attentive and supportive audience.

 

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Learning from the (nearly city-botched) Rayworth House move

Rayworth House leaves its foundation (photo by Caroline Dao)

BY FRED LEESON

A small miracle unfolded in Portland’s preservation circles the other day that will have ramifications  perhaps for  years to come. 

It was small, indeed, comprising a mere 1,600 square feet in a house measuring a story and a half tall. But it was a  miracle that it happened, given the amount of work, grief, struggle, money  and hard feelings it took to move the 1890s Edwin Rayworth house a mere two  miles in North Portland. 

For the most part, the story involved  a lot of people who wanted to do the right thing, but managed to trip over miscommunications, misunderstandings and likely some bureaucratic egotism. In the end, the house was saved, will be restored and will likely live on for another century or more – far outliving the temporary grief of the past few weeks.

The episode began early in 2013 when a Lake Oswego developer, Andre Koshuba, bought the old, vacant house in a foreclosure sale. He planned to demolish it and build two units on the small lot that sits fewer than 50 feet from trendy North Mississippi Avenue. 

The proposed demise of the charming but run-down architectural gem hit the Internet. Koshuba, not wanting to be framed as the prototypical evil developer, offered to sell the house for $1 to anyone interested in moving it.  Members of the Boise Neighborhood Association hoped to raise enough money to move the house to a nearby lot and keep it in the original neighborhood.

The little house that could (photo by Ashley Korslien, KGW)

Alas, the neighborhood couldn’t muster the money.  Koshuba set a deadline of midsummer, hoping to get started on his new building before bad weather hit. Roy and Kim Fox, two Humboldt neighborhood residents who had done a masterful job of restoring a larger Victorian, stepped forth as potential rescuers. They found a lot two miles away, and started negotiating the many city regulations about preparing the site through the city’s Bureau of Development Services and making the move, which required a permit from the Portland Bureau of Transportation.  

Koshuba, meanwhile, had shown admirable patience. He set a Sept. 8 deadline. With lengthy assistance from Cathy Galbraith, head of the non-profit Architectural Heritage Center, the Foxes lined up a moving company, negotiated with the various utilities that would have to move lines, paid all the city fees for the various permits and actually received a permit from PBOT to make the move on the deadline.

Alas, somewhere along the way PBOT had not consulted with the urban forester about impacts on trees. PBOT retracted the permit it had approved.  City Forester Jenn Cairo evidently believed the move would damage or destroy up to 20 trees. Oddly, other city staffers who travelled the proposed route placed the number much lower. 

Commissioner Amanda Fritz, the new commissioner of parks – which includes urban forestry – declined to overrule the forester. She said in an email that she didn’t want to face the wrath of property owners whose trees had been destroyed. Mayor Charlie Hales responded that trees were a renewable resource and historic old houses were not. 

Fritz intervened with Koshuba and he graciously extended the deadline once again. In a meeting with the Foxes and others, Cairo reportedly said she was a “one-issue” person when it comes to urban tree canopy. Her intransigence could be mitigated, however, for a $50,000 tree mitigation fee, according to news reports.  The Foxes countered with $3,000, and ultimately agreed to $10,000. After modifying the route,  the deal was struck.

Arriving at its new site (photo by Ashley Korslien, KGW)

With masterful choreography of both men and machinery, Emmert International performed the move. Though the transport of the house progressed smoothly – if slowly – difficulties arose with utilities. Some electricity and Internet service were lost for as long as five hours along the route.  “We lost a lot of goodwill over that, and we are very sorry about it,” Roy Fox said. If fault is to be laid, it is not with Roy or Kim Fox on that one. They had given the notices required under all of the rules.

The house now sits at its new location, awaiting a foundation that will be poured in the weeks ahead.  Then the restoration can finally begin. Meetings are being scheduled at City Hall to figure out how the missteps happened and how they can be corrected, although few such building moves occur.  

For single-issue bureaucrats who may never face the same situation again, the message should be this: Buildings like the Rayworth house represent a time in the history of our city, and in the history of craftsmanship, materials and architecture that cannot be replaced. They provide a sense of place – and places for people to live and work. We are not better off if they go to the landfill. 

“Portland will be all the richer, thanks to the extraordinary commitment of the Foxes”, said Cathy Galbraith of the Architectural Heritage Center. “Like all of the 5,000 properties on the city’s Historic Resources Inventory (1983), the Rayworth house had no formal Landmarks designation and that means no protection. What people see in the house is an 1890 picture-perfect Victorian-era cottage that has survived, unlike thousands of vintage houses that were bulldozed during the clearance of Portland’s older neighborhoods during the 20th century. Now, we lose them one at a time - - and Rayworth would have been one more loss.”

Fred Leeson is president of the non-profit Bosco-Milligan Foundation, which owns and operates the Architectural Heritage Center. 

 

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PICA's latest artful renovations

PICA headquarters on SW 10th (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

For the past few years, each September the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art has made the otherwise vacant former Washington High School on SE 12th Avenue a lively landmark for its annual Time-Based Art Festival (better known as TBA). This year marks a departure, as PICA returns to its nomadic roots occupying a different warehouse or industrial building with each new fest. The organization, with the help of GBD Architects and other volunteer partners, is creating its temporary Works nighttime performance and attendant food/drink space in the former Con-Way warehouse at NW 22nd and Raleigh, its soaring girded ceilings providing space for multiple stages, bars, and art.

The Con-Way retrofit is a return to PICA's method before their three-year stay at Washington High, in which each year a new warehouse or industrial building would be transformed. A past Works design by BOORA Architects, for example, was included in mega-publisher Taschen's 2006 Philip Jodidio book Architecture in the United States, alongside works by starchitects like Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Richard Meier, and Stephen Holl.

"Washington High School very quickly felt like home," says PICA's Patrick Leonard. "We always joked that it was the only space we ever occupied that was actually designed for people—but that comfort came part and parcel with a really inescapable aesthetic presence. This year's space in NW is a big, blank canvas—a soaring-ceiling box ready for anything. There's no ready-made auditorium, but that means we can build out our stages to spec. We're working with GBD to play up that sense of space inside the building, so I think people are going to be really struck by the experience. And, in many ways, it feels like a true homecoming to get back to our warehouse roots and introduce a new generation of audience members to that energy."

Former Con-Way warehouse, setting for TBA's The Works (images coutesy PICA)

But the temporary Works space inside the Con-Way warehouse is not PICA's only architetural sojourn. Last year the institute moved into offices inside the long-vacant building downtown at 415 SW 10th, which is known for its distinctive checkerboard-like facade of multicolored panels. PICA occupies the top floor of this three-story building, owned by developer Richard Singer.

"Moving into the West End and the iconic 415 building has been a transformative experience for PICA," Leonard says. "When we heard that the building was available, we jumped at the opportunity to move in—all of us had our eyes on it for years and we loved the burgeoning neighborhood around it. Some of our closest friends and partners had recently opened within these few blocks, including the Ace, the Mark Spencer, Frances May, and Radish Underground to name a few. Even our old 'roommates,' Literary Arts [formerly located, like PICA, in the Wieden + Kennedy building], found a new home around the corner on SW Washington. The West End felt like a natural fit for the organization and our values—I think it really embodies a lot of what people imagine when they think of "Portland," from the independent retailers and creative restaurateurs to the innovative business models of developments like the Ace and Union Way."

"Since our opening, we've been bolstered by how many new visitors we get: everyday it seems we have international travelers who wander in from the street or long-lost supporters who have just rediscovered our programs," he adds. "It's been wonderful to have an expanded space for artists and exhibitions, as well as just having the capacity to welcome and host audiences, whether in our library with a book and a cup of coffee, or out on our deck with lunch from the food carts. Already, we've transformed this space to fit every need we could imagine, from gallery installations to dinners to lectures to parties to a full dance performance with rolled-out marley and stage lighting. And we've only been here for one year!"

Rooftop at 415 SW 10th (photo by Brian Libby)

The building is far from renovated. Though its facade is colorful and distinct, it's a relatively cheap old building and is not yet suitable for, say, a highly finished class-A office space. Don't expect a law firm to move here. Yet whether it's because of the building's colorful look, its increasingly coveted location in the West End near a variety of attractions, or how the building offers frontage on two streets (10th and 11th Avenues) as well as a roof deck, for an organization like PICA it seems ideal.

This year's TBA Fest runs from September 12-22 at various venues throughout the city. But unlike in past years, when PICA lacked its own year-round exhibition space, the organization now has the ability, via the 415 building, to continue programming year-round. What's more, having a dedicated gallery space helps its visual art program, under the excellent curator Kristan Kennedy, to remain a core component of PICA along with its many performance and theater-oriented events during TBA.

Anna Craycroft's exhibit at PICA (photos by Brian Libby)

Through September 29, for example, PICA's exhibit space is hosting a show by artist Anna Craycroft called C'mon Language!  The exhibit looks like a kindergarten classroom, and indeed it's modled after Reggio Emilia-designed schools, which emphasize learning by self-documentation. Visitors are invited to draw on the drawing boards placed there or attend a long series of workshops, discussions and lectures there throughout its duration.

I've long been a fan of 415 SW 10th, and when I've written about it in the past the building has elicited rather strong feelings on both sides. Some write to me to express a shared effection for its facade: not just the colorfulness itself, but the hue of its red and green panels as they have aged over time. Unfortunately, some of those panels have been replaced with panels of new colors, but the effect is still simple and strong. For me, whatever architectural pedigree or detail it may lack, it's that rare building that makes me smile when I see it. Still, many when I've written about 415 have registered their near astonishment, reminding me that it's not only a building long vacant and in considerable disrepair, but even its facade panel system could not have been more ubiquitous in its time.

In the first decades after World War II, the United States saw thousands of buildings constructed, many not only done on the cheap but without any architectural detail, and often using materials that weren't meant to last as long as, say, traditional ones like stone or brick. Indeed, there used to be countless buildings even in Portland that looked a bit like 415 only without the color. But nearly all of them are gone. But I wouldn't necessarily argue for keeping this building out of a duty to history. The affection is more purely aesthetic. Sure, it's not going to be confused with something by Mies or even, say Holst, which once desined a completely re-imagined facade for this building. Yet particularly given the zeitgeist of Portland and Portlandia, it's not hard to imagine the building, with PICA's help and validation, earning a new generation of admirers.

Broadway Bridge for PDX Bridge Festival (image courtesy KOIN)

After all, this is a city that recently, as part of the PDX Bridge Festival festooned the Broadway Bridge with a gigantic knitted quilt for its upcoming 100th birtday. If you think about it, that multicolored bridge blanket looks an awful lot like the facade of 415 SW 10th. As PICA seems to acknowledge, perhaps no other work of architecture in the city captures that kind of quirky sense of affection.

 

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A campaign to save the Academy Theater (and all the independents)

Academy Theater (image courtesy of the theater)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

A few years ago, the restoration of the historic Academy Theater helped revitalize the entire Southeast Portland neighborhood of Montavilla. A community anchor in the 1940s and ‘50s, it had closed in the 70s, then served as the Nickel Ads headquarters for a decade-plus only to sat vacant into the new millennium. When the restoration led by interior designer Stephanie Brown finally came, the Academy earned a Preservation in Action Award, it not only brought back moviegoers to this stretch of Stark Street, but restaurants and shops too.

But now the Academy Theater, despite its restored beauty and continuous crowds and its 65th birthday this year, is threatened with closure. The major Hollywood film studios have decided to go 100 percent digital by year's end. Independent theaters such as the Academy must upgrade to digital projectors or go out of business. This phenomenon has even earned a catchphrase: "Go Digital or Go Dark." But digital projectors can cost as much as $60,000, an expense the Academy can’t afford.

The Academy isn’t alone. The National Association of Theater Owners estimates that up to 20 percent of all movie theaters in North America (roughly 10,000 screens) may close as a result of digital conversion. About 750 of those theaters are small historic theaters just like the Academy.

As a result, the Academy has launched a fundraising campaign through the online crowd-sourcing website Indiegogo. Their hope is to raise enough money to go digital (and avoid going dark).

The Academy shortly after its opening (image courtesy of the theater)

Recently I talked with Stephanie Brown about the Academy and its place in the community.

Portland Architecture: What are some of your favorite design details at the theater?

Brown: Some of the things I loved about the Academy during my very first visit are things I still love today. 

For example, I love how truly Streamline Moderne the building is -- from the little porthole "window" details above the marquee, to the beautifully curved wall that dominates the lobby. That wall's fluid curviness imbues the entire space with such elegance. I don't think the lobby would be nearly as pretty or feel nearly as inviting if it was all straight walls and hard angles. I also love the cylindrical "dome." It's not something people expect to see when they first walk through the doors, and it provides a sense of drama I find really appealing.

Given the high cost of seismic and ADA upgrades, I didn't have much of a budget for interior finishes. I really had to get creative with paint and lighting to achieve the look and feel I wanted for the space. So, I would say that the interior color scheme is one of the things I am most proud of. Those colors - the watery blue I used on the walls, the pale gold on the ceilings and the dark red velvet of the curtains (a movie theater isn't a movie theater without red velvet curtains, right?) really made the space come alive.

Speaking of color, from what I understand, when the Academy first opened back in the '40s, it was pink! The current owners weren't interested in being quite THAT historically accurate and asked me to come up with a new color scheme. I poured through images of Moderne buildings from the 1930s and 40s and fell in love Greyhound's many deep blue Moderne bus terminals. The owners loved the idea of deep dark blue, so we went for it, and I'm so glad we did! I think it provides the perfect backdrop for the marquee, especially at night.

The Academy's restored interior (image courtesy Stephanie Brown)

We were fortunate to have a collection of historic photos to work from when restoring the building's exterior. We discussed rebuilding the ticket booth but decided against it when we realized it would not meet ADA standards. Knowing it would be unusable made it hard to justify the expense. But one thing we were determined to recreate was the marquee.We got as close as budget and technology would allow, right down to the Tivoli bulbs. I think the marquee really transformed the theater into neighborhood landmark. Before it was installed, even with fresh paint, the theater was just another building on the street. Now, the theater really stands out.

What kind of role do you think the Academy plays in its neighborhood? Would you characterize it as a community anchor?

I'm not sure it's possible for me to stress how important I think the theater is to the Montavilla neighborhood. 

I remember my first meeting with the theater's owners. The building was an absolute mess and Southeast Stark wasn't exactly bustling. Many of the storefronts were empty or papered over. I knew the theater itself had potential, but wondered how anyone would ever even know it was there.

I kicked off the restoration with a "Call for Memories" -- basically a request for recollections of the theater in its heyday. The Oregonian, Portland Tribune and a few other media outlets helped spread the word and that triggered a deluge of responses. Not only did former patrons and employees share memories, but the family of the theater’s original owners came forward with historic photos, floor plans and memorabilia. The photos were helpful in figuring out how to proceed with the lobby restoration, but what was even more notable was the emotional connection people maintained to a theater which had been closed for three decades.

The Academy's grand opening in 1948 (images courtesy of the theater)

We heard from long married couples who'd gone on first dates at the Academy, from (now elderly) women who had worked the ticket booth and candy counter, from people whose childhood memories involved many long afternoons at the theater. Stories kept pouring in, and without fail, people kept commenting that they'd been hoping for years that the theater would reopen.

I think the Call for Memories really helped build anticipation for the reopening. And it inspired such hope and goodwill.Once people knew the renovation was underway, they couldn't wait for the doors to open. This was especially obvious when tickets sold out on opening night. Folks in the neighborhood clearly wanted the theater to succeed.

When the Academy reopened in 2006, Stark Street was home to some great businesses already - Ya Hala, Bipartisan Cafe and Flying Pie come to mind - but the reopening was a catalyst for change. And boy did things change! Drastically and quickly! I think the theater's success made people willing to take a chance on Stark Street again. Soon there was a flood of new businesses - and a new farmers' market - and lots of people willing to support both. 

Folks who weren't familiar with Montavilla eight years ago might not appreciate how important the theater has been. One of its biggest contributions was an increase in evening foot traffic.People often don't just go to a movie - they head out for a bite to eat first. And then maybe after the movie they go out for a drink, or possibly for dessert. So really, that's what the theater did for Montavilla -- it gave people a reason to visit a neighborhood they might have forgotten about or maybe didn't even know existed before. And once there, it gave them an opportunity to support other businesses in the district. 

People who live within walking distance of the theater would probably visit Stark Street no matter what. But the theater draws lots of people from outside of the neighborhood too. I don't know that Stark Street would be as appealing to them without a theater. And that must be a scary proposition for other businesses on the street. So, yes - I'd say the Academy is definitely an anchor and I think losing that anchor could be devastating to the neighborhood.

 

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Two handsome old downtown buildings, but only one may survive

Culver Building (photo by Josh Partee)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

The Culver building at SW 12th and Alder has long kept a discrete profile, its ground-floor dry cleaning business one of the only visible retailers and an adjacent surface parking lot sucking away most any pedestrian vitality. But as the West End has grown in recent years as a kind of extension of the Pearl District just across Burnside, gaining restaurants, offices and condos, the case improved for remaking and expanding the Culver. Which is what the team of GBD Architects and contractor/client Lease Crutcher Lewis has done, adding a new third floor for LCL's offices and giving the overall historic structure fresh life.

Built in 1920, the Culver and the land underneath it are owned by the Goodman family, which also owns a host of properties around the central city, mostly surface parking lots, but has slowly been going about developing them into buildings such as 12 West, the massive office and apartment tower just across 12th Avenue from the Culver. This project had Lease Crutcher Lewis agreeing to a long-term lease to make the Culver its headquarters, and GBD overseeing a renovation that blended historic preservation and sustainability goals. Designed to meet LEED Silver specifications, its interior was reconstructed using a host of reclaimed materials as well as modern windows and insulation to make it as efficient as possible.

Although in its new incarnation the Culver is a kind of hybrid, its glassy penthouse paired with the historic two-story structure, the Culver exemplifies what architects commonly call a "fabric" building, a square in the overall quilt of buildings comprising the downtown core. When we lose one of these fabric buildings, maybe it isn't as big a tragedy as losing a major landmark, but the overall downtown fabric is important to the character, history and aesthetics of the city. Without them, Portland becomes a place without much of a discernable past, like Dresden or Las Vegas.

Penthouse deck at Culver Building (photo by Josh Partee)

"The intersection of SW 12th and SW Alder, for me, is now a really interesting architectural intersection of Portland," explains Agustin Enriquez of GBD. "We talked a lot during the design phase about approaches to repurposing old buildings. That intersection has three very different--and equally valid--solutions.  The First Presbyterian Church is a beautiful old building.  It is maintained well and is a great example of a very traditional approach to historic preservation.  The building directly across the street to the west is of a similar vintage as the Culver Building, but was radically transformed by Skylab in 2007.  It's an old building that a completely fresh breath was infused into.  Since those two design strategies existed quite literally across the street--make an old building new by keeping it old and making an old building new by making it completely new, we thought it could make for an interesting dialogue to combine those approaches into a third option, making an old building old and new simultaneously."  

"What makes the renovation and addition work at the Culver Building was it retained just enough detailing from its original construction that as architects we just don’t do a lot of anymore - details like the medallions at the top of the building and the brick trim work. You just can’t design history.  A building is either old and lived a life with the patina of a century of use or it isn’t," Enriquez continued. "I suppose it could kind of be faked, but it would be a parody of itself and, frankly, I wouldn’t know how to do that.  The team’s effort was to retain as much of that history as possible: the funky quality of the exposed wood timbers for example, and be very clear about when we were doing something new to the building.  I think we all felt like the finished building was special precisely because we let the old be old, made the new new, and allow everyone to see that relationship.

While standing on the Culver's third-floor penthouse deck a few days ago, the view down 12th Avenue was one of a street emerging from decades of slumber with a succession of retail and a growing sense architectural diversity. The Goodman family and their development company, Downtown Development Group, seem to grasp how the mix of new and old buildings, small and large ones, give an urban setting its vitality - making for places people want to congregate.

But amidst the success of this renovation, I also thought of another old building just a few blocks down Alder Street that seems to be facing a much darker fate. Recently it was reported that the Cornelius Hotel building at SW Alder and Park may be demolished by its owner, TMT Development.

Cornelius Hotel (photo by Brian Libby)

Completed in 1908 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, the Cornelius boasts an elegant French Renaissance style and is one of the last remaining downtown buildings with a mansard-style roof. It was designed by Bennes, Hendricks, and Tobey, and principal John Bennes designed much of the Oregon State University campus as well as numerous Portland buildings and homes, including Portland's now historic Hollywood Theatre.

"While certainly never as large or as grand as the Portland Hotel, Benson Hotel, or the Multnomah Hotel, the Cornelius has stood for more than 100 years as a testament to Portland’s aspirations as a growing city after the 1905 Lewis & Clark Exposition," writes the Architectural Heritage Center's Val Ballestrem on the Portland Preservation blog.

As recently as 2008, TMT Development had eyes the Cornelius for a boutique hotel conversion, and it's easy to see why. The Cornelius is ideally situated for taking advantage of downtown Portland as a tourist; it's less than half a block from the city's biggest cart pod area, with attractions like Powell's Books, the Portland Art Museum, and Pioneer Courthouse Square all within just a few minutes' stroll. But the hotel plan fell through during the Great Recession, and more recently TMT has unsuccessfully sought to partner with the city to make the building a haven for homeless veterans.

Cornelius Hotel (photo by Brian Libby)

"We've been working with (the city) for the last several years so we can maintain the building until we can get a tenant that's a good user," TMT President Vanessa Sturgeon told The Oregonian's Elliot Njus, but "a lot of smart developers haven't been able to find a way to make this project pencil."

TMT is the company behind the disastrous Park Avenue West project, an intended mixed-use tower that has instead languished for years as a hole in the ground, its construction halted in the early stages of the first Obama administration. Although TMT's founder, Tom Moyer, has been responsible for a host of Portland buildings including the Fox Tower, its reputation has already been substantially decimated by the inability to climb out of its Park Avenue West hole.

But while the Cornelius admittedly has its troubles, with fire and water damage helping to deliver a dreaded "U" sign in its windows marking it as unsafe amidst numerous code violations, demolishing it would be a further blight on this developer's record.

Culver Building (photo by Brian Libby)

Moyer once was part of an effort to connect the North and South Park Blocks, which would have created one long strip of downtown green space, comparable to Barcelona's Las Ramblas, but also would have knocked down several historic buildings in its path. It's as if TMT is trying to rekindle that defeated effort by single-handedly demolishing the historic architecture of Park Avenue.

One can't make a direct comparison between the Culver building's successful renovation and the Cornelius Hotel's unsuccessful one, for the two buildings had different sets of conditions - different levels of disrepair. It's probably more expensive to restore the Cornelius with its bigger scale and bigger structural problems. Even so, TMT bought the Cornelius for just $2.4 million back in 2002. Even if restoring the building requires capital the company itself doesn't have or can't borrow, wouldn't the seven stories of units provide more than that investment in continuing revenue once it's restored?

That said, there may still be hope for the homeless veterans' housing.  Central City Concern and Guardian Development, the organizations partnering on that plan, saw their efforts fizzle after losing out on funds from the Portland Housing Bureau. But according to Njus's story, there are other funds available: $2.4 million in federal historic tax credits; $850,000 in contributions from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and $7.8 million from the sale of federal low income housing tax credits.

All of which is plenty of reason for the City Council to deny TMT Development's demolition request; the National Register listing means Council has a chance to decide its fate. Those interested in seeing the building saved would be advised to contact Council members including Steve Novick, Nick Fish, Dan Saltzman, Amanda Fritz, and Mayor Charlie Hales.

Nearly every time I write a post about threats to a historic building, some exasperated reader leaves a comment reminding me/us that we can't expect the city to retain every old structure. It's naive and pointless, the argument goes, to expect aging architecture to always pencil out as a worthwhile contemporary investment. Maybe that's true as an abstract idea - we can't treat architecture as charity, or every old design as a masterpiece or signifier of history. And indeed, Portland will go on just fine if the Cornelius meets the wrecking ball. Yet conversely, TMT Development can't expect one to look upon their latest downtown development disaster and encourage more decimation. Nor can one look out from the deck of the Culver building a few short blocks away without seeing the value in our fabric of old buildings: a value in the cultural vitality they bring and, in turn, the economics that follow.

 

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Congregation and convergence at Alberta Abbey

Village Building Convergence stage at Alberta Abbey (photo by Matthew Henderson)

BY MATTHEW HENDERSON

Continuing our series on adaptive reuse among Portland's abundant stock of repurposed churches, a noble experiment, if precarious business venture, has been undertaken recently at an historic church at the corner of Northeast Alberta and Mallory Street.

Formerly Mallory Baptist Church, the striking brick building with its pointed spire, green from oxidation, resembles an old middle school. Inside its heavy-set doors, a wide, curved stairwell displays paintings by local artists, while striking a note of nostalgia that defies obvious definition. It's somewhere in-between arriving at school after the bell, visiting the dentist, or indeed, perhaps most plainly, arriving at a church.

This slight ambiguity seems to have served building owners Dennis Adams and Justin C. Hunt, who began a frenetic adventure of architectural (and social) retrofitting since purchasing the building last June.

 

Alberta Abbey sanctuary (photo by Matthew Henderson)

Involved in this re-envisioning were many sweat-infused renovations, countless consultations with technicians, tenants, and other interested parties, all manner of surprises associated with old building upkeep including roof leaks and boiler room mishaps, and a fire sale purging of many of the building's transfixing contents. It’s a testament to the church’s multiple past lives and the triumphs and failings of the building as a community hub.

What has emerged of late is Alberta Abbey, a mixed-use facility that embodies the diversity of the neighborhood that has helped to define it. The organization behind the project, Alberta Abbey Fellowship, consists, again, of the duo of Dennis and Justin, long-time friends who formed AAF in 2012 with a vision to revitalize the failing building in a way that could be replicated elsewhere. "The hope is to maximize this community asset by incorporating a diversity of uses," says Justin.

Beginning with just one primary tenant, a congregation called TGW which uses the sanctuary on Sundays and maintains offices there, Alberta Abbey has since become home to a political action non-profit, a seamstress, a mortician, two architects, an art therapist, a live-in caretaker, and a record label/recording studio/creative collaborative.

Alberta Abbey exterior (photo by Matthew Henderson)

Additionally, AAF has partnered with Kitchen Commons to begin promoting the use of their underutilized commercial kitchen for communal use and rental purposes. AAF's approach has been one of embracing diversity, pragmatism, and openness. It has prioritized long-term leases and promoted among its tenants the building's communal ethic and philosophy of utility.

The sanctuary, for example, is laid claim to every Sunday for the congregation and their church service. But other times throughout the week, the sanctuary, which seats upwards of 400, has been used for family movie nights, hip-hop concerts, photo shoots, and an ambient music series called M.A.S.S.

Barring any uses deemed inappropriate or offensive, the sanctuary is available for rent, along with the kitchen and former gymnasium, which are both situated in the sub-level of this deceptively large and cavernous building.

Village Building Convergence attendees at Alberta Abbey (photo by Matthew Henderson)

Upon visiting the building recently, I encountered a frenzied scene of slightly uncanny construction happening in the basement gymnasium. Stick-strewn, earthy amalgams employing natural building techniques were being assembled atop the sheen of the Abbey's newly refinished wood floors. The forms were beginning to resemble a stage, a treehouse-like loft, and various kiosks. It was all in preparation for the annual Village Building Convergence.

Village Building Convergence is a ten-day affair promoting "placemaking," an idea sprouted by architect-activist Mark Lakeman, who has become well known for fostering transformations of public spaces through ecologically-oriented community projects. With any luck, the communal spirit of the VBC will linger and combine with the groundwork laid by Adams and Hunt, and the Abbey flock can continue to thrive.

 

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St. Mary's and the post office: a modernist resurrection?

Francis and Hopkins Motors (rendering via Frozen Music)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

In late March, word came (via The Business Journal) that St. Mary’s Academy, the Catholic girls’ high school downtown along SW Sixth Avenue, is acquiring the former University Station post office building for expansion of its campus.

Most people would not think twice about the architectural significance of the recently abandoned postal station, a drab two-story structure with an adjacent surface parking lot. Yet the building, in its original form dating to 1948, was once a little modernist gem. And while chances are good that St. Mary’s would demolish the post office building, a look into its past, both aesthetically and historically, might prompt the school to consider restoration over the wrecking ball – to resurrect instead of condemn, you might say.

Originally known as the Francis Auto Sales building, it was one of the first modernist buildings in town completed after World War II. Designed by Richard Sundeleaf, it was constructed within a year of Pietro Belluschi’s internationally renowned Commonwealth Building, the first skyscraper in the United States with a glass and aluminum curtain wall (often credited as “America’s first modern office building”). And looking at original photos of the auto dealership, one can see the same international style simply applied at a smaller scale. 

Although Sundeleaf is probably best known today for a plethora of homes in Lake Oswego and Portland from the 1920s-40s drawing from English arts & crafts style, he had a kind of parallel career as the city’s foremost practitioner of streamline moderne industrial and commercial buildings. Particularly during the Great Depression, people wanted homes drawing from traditional architectural styles, providing a sense of continuity in times of uncertainty and upheaval. But whether it was the Oregon Portland Cement Company building in the Central Eastside, or the Bearing Service Company building in Northwest, or the Jantzen Building off Northeast Sandy Boulevard, Sundeleaf had a gift for commercial and industrial buildings that felt elegant even in their utilitarian, stripped-down style. 

Francis and Hopins Motors (image courtesy University of Oregon archives)

“Along with the Equitable Building [Pietro Belluschi], Sundeleaf’s car dealership was one of the city’s first glass boxes…[Sundeleaf’s] pièce de résistance,” write Gideon Bosker and Lena Lencek in Frozen Music: A History of Portland Architecture. Sundeleaf’s Francis and Hopkins Motors Showroom, they add, “brought Portlanders a touch of the glamorous ‘World of Tomorrow’ that the New York World’s Fair had promised them in 1939. It was Sundeleaf’s “pièce de résistance.” When the building was completed, a headline in The Oregonian called Francis and Hopkins Motors ‘The West’s Most Modern Automotive Establishment.’” 

“Crossing the transparent angularity of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion with the functional honesty of Loewy’s International Harvester Servicenter, Sundeleaf produced a design that pushed the automobile display window into the third dimension,” Bosker and Lencek continue. “Except for his signature rounded columns at the street elevation and the metal railing along the roof, every line of Francis and Hopkins Motors had been slicked down, smoothed over and modernized.” 

Chances are good that if St. Mary’s is going to purchase and redevelop a block-sized parcel of prime downtown real estate, they’re seeking more than just this two-story building that has been altered enough to make Sundeleaf’s elegant glass box something decidedly more banal. But restoring the Francis and Hopkins building to its original design would not only be a laudatory act of historic preservation; it would also give the school, as the building’s occupant, a prominent new face. The school’s current home, a brick fortress diagonally across Sixth Avenue from the post office/Francis Auto Sales building, is not the most inviting building. It’s been built onto numerous times and, though possessing an early 20th century modern style itself, it lacks much of any connection to the streetscape outside. Having a glassy, transparent architectural space, where passers by can get a sense of the classes and activities inside, could help promote St. Mary’s and make it feel part of downtown life rather than just a school that happens to be downtown. Most owners would tear this building down, but here’s hoping St. Mary’s answers to a higher authority.

 

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Portland Playhouse exemplifies church-to-arts transformation

Portland Playhouse (photo by Matthew Henderson)

BY MATTHEW HENDERSON

The community initiative to save the vacated St. Paul/Gethsemane church at NE Eighth and Failing and turn it into a non-profit community center has met its end. But around Portland there has quietly assembled a host of former churches (or Xhurches, as my blog calls them) now hosting a variety of artistic and neighborhood endeavors.

Gethsemane will instead be given to another church, one currently attended by one of Gethsemane's chief inheritors. The fate of the church had been in question in recent months, initially due to a developer's plans to raze the building to make room for condos. This gave rise to an effort led by Sabin neighborhood resident Diane Benson and a group of concerned neighbors who saw potential to restore the church for use as a community center.

Perhaps there’s no better use for a building, or at least no more obvious one, than that for which it was originally designed. But whether they stay churches or become something else, these buildings are an important link to the past, adding to the character of our neighborhoods, while acting as easy landmarks—even offering a touch of the picturesque.

One example of a successful church reuse is Portland Playhouse, which has had a positive impact on its surrounding community through its vital and affordable theater productions.

Portland Playhouse appeared on the scene in 2010 when the family trio of Brian, Michael, and Nikki Weaver moved to Portland from Boston in search of a space to start their theater company. They found the disheveled church building at NE 6th and Prescott and it was a match. Originally known as Highland Congregational Church and dating to 1903, the modest-sized, wood-framed church was later sold to an African American congregation following a pattern common to many early churches of North and Northeast Portland, where congregations comprised of German-Russian immigrants dwindled due to changing values among the church's younger congregants, and discrimination sustained by the two World Wars.

Portland Playhouse (photo by Matthew Henderson)

Now there is a new wave of turnover. For the Weavers, rent was affordable, the space was well-suited to their vision, and the location was good, barring issues relating to parking, which have since been formally resolved with the city council last year following an outpouring of support for the venue. Portland Playhouse is currently thriving, consistently garnering acclaim from local press outlets and theatergoers alike.

As for the building itself, it enjoys good visibility at its corner lot on Prescott. The embattlements on the church's wooden tower give the sense of entering a small castle, helping to prime the imagination for a potentially transportive theater experience. Inside, there are warm greetings, a smell of popcorn, with beer, wine, and candy concessions. Also, there is something special about the way in which the seats are situated facing each other, flanking the stage in bleacher fashion. It results in a uniquely intimate experience that, as director Brian Weaver puts it, "increases the awareness that you're an active participant in the event."

Attending a recent production of Mother Teresa Is Dead, I was impressed not only with the acting and story, but also the atmosphere: the vague sense that the building’s past life as a house of worship was somehow touching this present-day theatrical setting. Was anyone, or anything, watching with approval or displeasure? Or maybe it was merely the patina of the old building engendering the troupe to give their characters that much more resonance. More importantly, the cozy, intimate setting helped foster a closer bond between actors and audience. Portland Playhouse has certainly embraced the church architecture as an asset. 

It's worth noting that, in this growing trend of church adaptation, Portland seems to be a forerunner. I have been charting trends in church adaptation for the past few years, and off-hand I can think of nearly a dozen instances of church reuse in Portland alone, including a dance studio, a theater, multiple arts venues, multiple event halls, a communal living space, multiple residences—all located in former churches. Whether the abundance of disused churches in Portland and elsewhere reflects a broader decline in church attendance and religiosity is the subject of many reports and statistics (a Lewis & Clark sociologist has been compiling some interesting notes here in town), but one thing is certain: an opportunity exists for artists, entrepreneurs and the like to adopt these often beautiful spaces (some of them representing our highest architectural aspirations) and reuse them in ways which continue to serve the surrounding community.

At the same time, the Portland Playhouse almost burned out before it bloomed: one year ago, the facility lost its permit to stage plays at the church when the city determined it was acting as a retail establishment, rather than as a community center - the former being disallowed under current zoning. But to the Playhouse's credit, the King Neighborhood Association appealed the decision to City Council, with more than 80 people from the neighborhood testifying on the theater's behalf and none in opposition. The Council voted to reverse the decision, and the Portland Playhouse has been going strong in the year since - emboldened by its demonstrated community support.

 

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Frank Lloyd Wright's Gordon House: discussing its past and future

The Gordon House, Silverton (image courtesy Gordon House Conservancy)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

When a landmark Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house in Arizona the architect designed for his son was threatened with demolition last year, it might have had a familiar ring to Oregonians. Twelve years ago, the only Wright-designed building in Oregon was moved from its original location along the Willamette River in Charbonneau 21 miles south to the Oregon Garden outside Silverton.

Originally designed for Conrad and Evelyn Gordon in 1957 and completed in 1963, the Gordon House had stayed in the family’s ownership for most of that history. But in 2001, new owners, reportedly ignorant of Wright’s historical significance, sought to demolish the home to build anew.

Although the Gordon House was well adapted to its site, the tall living room’s floor-to-ceiling glass framing offering views of the river to the north and Mt. Hood to the east, since being dismantled and carefully moved the house has somewhat quietly thrived. But the restoration is not complete.

As a fundraiser for the Gordon House, next Friday (April 12) in Portland, Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy president Larry Woodin will deliver a lecture called “Wright This Way: Saving the David and Gladys Wright House,” highlighting his organization’s role in that preservation fight as well as the Gordon House (5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at SmithCFI, 620 NE 19th Avenue, $25).

Recently Woodin and Gordon House director discussed by email the continuing Wright legacy in Oregon and beyond.

Portland Architecture: How close to fully restored would you say the Gordon House is today?

Murphy: “This year is the start of our second decade of restoration for long term preservation and sustainability.  We opened the house in 2002 at about 85% restored and have chipped away at the remaining 15% since then.  We have made it slowly but surely to about 95% complete now. We are working on fundraising for the remaining important capital projects that are outlined on our website and include the important MJ Murdock match, which doubles every preservation donation dollar.”

Upstairs at the Gordon House, pre-2001 move (photo by Brian Libby)

What are the goals for continuing stewardship of the Gordon House in the years ahead? What are the fundraising goals and how would that money be spent? 

Murphy: The Gordon House Conservancy under the oversight of the City of Silverton and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy work in cooperation to maintain the mission of education, interpretation, and preservation for the public.  The cooperative agreement is under a Preservation Easement that ensures sustainable stewardship. 

The capital restoration goal is currently projected to be $300,000 total with breakdowns that embrace the specific projects. The projects include the famous red concrete floors, interior and exterior wall surfacing, exterior and interior Western red cedar wood conservation, west balcony and roof structural strengthening, kitchen workspace restoration including skylight and light canisters, and landscape design restoration.

Besides its pedigree as a Frank Lloyd Wright design, what can the Gordon House teach us about quality single-family home design? How different is it from a typical subdivision builder home?

Murphy: The house is a model for sustainable passive energy control and should be the beginning of every home design and redesign with efficient use of natural resources in mind.  Radiant floor heat and cooling, building siting and use of deciduous trees with deep eaves for all year exposure, and Wright’s famous floating concrete floor and concrete central core are all exemplified at the Gordon House. Its spatial design concepts with the open circular floor plan, central family living area, functional spaces, real and virtual indoor/outdoor rooms, built-in furniture and storage, and hallways that earn their keep with storage units and extended vistas.

Gordon House, Charbonneau, 2001 (photo by Brian Libby)

Are there any lessons learned from the episode 12 years ago when the Gordon House had to be moved because its owners wanted to tear it down? 

Woodin: Moving a building is ALWAYS a last choice! Convincing the person who wants to tear down an important building to discuss options is critical; we could have gotten an exception to the local zoning if the Smiths had been willing to talk.  They took a very combative attitude and only agreed to the move due to the tax deduction they would receive. It was often challenging to persuade them, though the expense to move and rebuild the Gordon House was persuasive evidence—to find another option.

Given that Larry's lecture is about the Wright home threatened recently in Arizona, how does that preservation emergency compare and contrast with the Gordon House saga?

Woodin: It is similar in that the owner was combative. In this case we were able to get profound amounts of international media attention due to the unique nature of the building. (This owner too thought we should move the house - to Taliesin West, no less!)  The publicity helped galvanize the community. However, it also persuaded the owner he could ask a high price. It took seven months for us to find a donor to purchase the property. He intends to donate the property to a non-profit so it can be made available to the public. The more strategies preservationists learn about by studying diverse examples (regardless of where they took place), the more nimble and creative they can be locally.

 

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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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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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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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Ada Louise Huxtable’s Portland

Ada Louise Huxtable (photo by L. Garth Huxtable)

BY DAN HANECKOW

Ada Louise Huxtable, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times and Wall Street Journal architectural critic as well as a celebrated author and preservationist, died on January 7 at the age of 91.

Although New York City was the primary arena for this greatest of American architecture writers, Huxtable often traveled to other cities around the world, including Portland in 1970.

“Doctors bury their mistakes, architects plant vines and Portland covers them with roses.” So began Ada Louise Huxtable’s piece that appeared in the New York Times on June 19 of that year.

A month earlier, Huxtable had been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for architectural criticism. She visited Portland after attending the opening of the Alvar Aalto-designed Mount Angel Abbey Library.

Huxtable, the nation's most influential and acclaimed architecture critic, saw in Portland a prime example of the forces arrayed against American cities, albeit in a spectacular setting. The headline read: "In Portland Ore., Urban Decay is Masked by Natural Splendor."

Her initial impression was positive.

“Small scaled, comfortably pedestrian streets with a cosmopolitan architectural mix are bounded by the hills on the west and the Willamette River on the east, with spreading residential and industrial areas beyond that double the metropolitan population,” Huxtable wrote.

She noted there were battles over whether apartment houses should be allowed on the hills among single family homes, on how to save historic landmarks, and protect neighborhoods from an expanding in-town university.

She rhapsodized on snow capped peaks, a cyclorama sky and 35 miles of rustic foot trails, then concluded, “This is a dreamworld urbanism; a city blessed by nature and by man. It is so lovely that Portlanders are lulled into a kind of false security about its urban health.”

Portland had “a curious apathy,” Huxtable argued, to problems whose symptoms were obvious.

Downtown Portland around 1970

“The scattered bomb-site look of downtown parking lots made by demolishing older buildings that pay less than metered asphalt and the blocks given over totally to parking garages or a combination of open lot and garage, are destroying the cohesive character of the city as decisively as a charge of dynamite wherever they occur. Sixty percent of city ground is now covered by automobiles.”

“Inadequate public transportation was accompanied by rising fares. Suburban shopping centers demagnetized downtown.”

“Everything is not coming up roses.”

She was especially critical of the city’s new corporate skyline. Portland had “… a better-than-average assortment of the Anywhere U.S.A. products of the large, national, big-city architectural firms, with their interchangeable towers and plaza’s multiplying a slick, redundant formula.”

“Against the suave schlock of some of Portland’s current architectural imports, Mt. Hood doesn’t stand a chance.”

First National Bank of Oregon (now Wells Fargo tower)

“This tower will be tapered and rail-finned, with an accessory block-square box, in a manner that finally died unmourned in Detroit but that the Southern California sun seems to keep alive," the Times critic added. "In style, scale and impact it will be alien corn, in every sense of the word.”

“The neatly extravagant Unistyle commercial model by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, suitable for use by any major corporation in any American city, with soap sculpture on the inevitable plaza, rises to 375 feet.”

“No one has stopped looking at the tops of these buildings long enough to see what is happening on the ground. Each one is contributing to the devitalization of the city. Virtually all of them eliminate the life on the street. There is nothing on each square block on which these buildings rise- where there should be window, shops, pedestrian activities- but a corporate entrance and a parking garage."

Georgia Pacific Building (today Standard Insurance Center)

"This deadly design usually employs the most foolproof city-wrecking device ever adopted by architects, for which today’s practitioners must surely be called to account. It is the tower on an elevated plaza, or podium, one floor above ground level, which puts a concrete or marble bunker on the street- a blind, insolent formidable fortress raised against pedestrian humanity, and its friendliest function is to receive cars.”

“The new Portland then, consists largely of towers, bunkers and bomb sites," she wrote. "And the mathematics have not yet been devised that will dispose of all the cars that the working population of each new skyscraper brings.”

Huxtable praised the South Auditorium urban renewal area, somewhat faintly.

“Because the work has spanned the decade from 1958 to 1969, with some later use of rehabilitation for an extension of the original area, Portland was able to learn from the most desolate and early mistakes of other cities. Opinions on the necessity and efficacy of the relocation process vary.” The apartment towers by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill were handsome though. She attributed much of its success to the landscape of fresh lush growth, without which the plan would be sterile.

She adored Lawrence Halprin’s fountain installation.

Forecourt Fountain (today Ira Keller Fountain)

“The project is brought to life by Lovejoy Park – Lawrence Halprin’s fountain plaza, which is the area’s social center and a notable work of environmental space and sculpture. A larger edition is almost finished as a forecourt for the city’s neuter auditorium.” (In a later article she would describe the Ira Keller forecourt fountain as “one of the most important urban spaces since the Renaissance).

Portland’s Park Blocks and “,,,a handful of Victorian of commercial buildings (that) are protected by fierce citizen determination and a special design district designation,” also drew positive notice.

Skidmore/Old Town walking tour map, circa 1970s

Portland was not accustomed to notice by the New York Times. The attention was not entirely welcome. When The Oregonian ran the piece it was retitled to somewhat soften the blow: "Portland’s New Architecture: Towers, Bunkers, Bombsites."

“I don’t like the article and I’m surprised The Oregonian would publish something like this,” responded Ralph Voss, President of the First National Bank of Oregon, whose new building Huxtable described as alien corn. “I don’t know who she is, but I know who Charles Luckman is," Voss said of the First National building's relatively famous businessman-slash-architect. "I think she was just trying to be cute.”

“I guess she’s entitled to her opinion,” Bob Lee, a Georgia Pacific Vice President noted. “But the (Georgia Pacific) building was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, among the world’s leading architects. I think they are probably better equipped than the young lady in question. As a citizen I think for someone to blow into town and write an article critical of all Portland structures is presumptuous and preposterous.”

Others found merit it her observations.

“I wish we had more of the same sort of criticism. She said a lot of things many of us have been thinking, but we aren’t really free to criticize our fellow architects,” commented Gary Mitchell, a former chairman of the civic design committee of the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

“I think she’s brilliant and she’s dead right,” said Richard A. Campbell of Campbell, Yost and Partners (today YGH Architecture).

John Kenward, executive director of the Portland Development Commission, noted cohesive design in Portland was difficult to achieve because 47 percent of the city area was streets. “Full block, or combined block development is encouraged to get around the problem," he said. "Perhaps there is a point in comments about planning, in that we haven’t always given as much thought to it as we should.”

Norman Zimmer, architect (and ZGF principal) noted city dwellers needed to positively assert civic pride to ensure enlightened development and design in the future. “I have the feeling most of the people who make the decisions put on their hats and motor out to Dunthorp at night," he said. "It’s up to us in the city to get public awareness built up”.

Huxtable wound down her 1970 Times piece by writing, "Some day, some American city will discover the Malthusian truth that the greater number of automobiles, the less the city can accommodate them without destroying itself. The downtown that turns itself into a parking lot is spreading its own dissolution. The price for Portland is already alarmingly high. But there are no easy answers, or no American city would be in trouble.”

PDC Downtown Project publication, circa 1976

Two years later, Portland’s Downtown Plan of 1972 would be released. With its emphasis on transit, density, lively street level activity and preservation, it addressed many of the ills that Huxtable enumerated.

In hindsight, her piece was part of Portland’s process in recognizing a need for change. In the architectural community, her observations fell on fertile ground. Even the Oregonian agreed with her that downtown was too automobile oriented.

The results of the 1972 plan - a walkable Portland, lively with a re-magnetized downtown and a more balanced approach to the automobile - continues to be revisited by the New York Times.

Fountain inside Bank of California building

“The Bank of California building even put a fountain in its garage at the incongruous corner where the cars turn around onto the exit ramp. A switch Bernini never dreamed of. In the age of the automobile, it has a kind of ludicrous logic.”

The fountain can still be seen beneath the Union Bank of California building on Broadway between Washington and Stark, with the addition of bike racks next to it.

Two years away from the implementation of the 1972 Downtown Plan, Huxtable ended her article on a note hope, however distant.

"But some day," she wrote, "some American city will discover the Malthusian truth that the greater number of automobiles, the less the city can accommodate them without destroying itself. The downtown that turns itself into a parking lot is spreading its own dissolution.  "

That city to discover the truth and chart a different future, arguably, was the one she had just visited.

 

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Dinner hour at the restored Ladd Carriage House

Ladd Carriage House (photo by Brian Libby)

BY FRED LEESON

One of downtown Portland’s oldest and most charming buildings enters a new era this month after a twisting saga of architectural preservation that needed California entrepreneurs to complete.

The 130-year old Ladd Carriage House, one of downtown’s few remaining wooden buildings, opens soon as the Raven & Rose restaurant and pub. If the new upscale eating and drinking establishment achieves financial stability, it will mark a glorious turnaround for the historic building once seriously threatened by plans for a high-rise condo-turned-apartment tower next door. 

Today, the asymmetrical three-story Victorian Queen Anne former horse barn sits proudly on the same site as it did in 1883, notwithstanding a four-block move and a 16-month sojourn in 2008-09 while five stories of underground parking were dug out below.

But even after that dramatic move - and followed almost immediately by a major economic recession - the partly restored Victorian antique sat vacant for two years while local brokers tried to find a new use and a buyer. It took a Northern California family to see the potential for the brainchild of Lisa Mygrant that soon awaits Portland diners.

“They seemed to understand the significance of the building and the opportunity it presented almost immediately,” said Paul Falsetto, a preservationist with Carleton Hart Architecture in Portland. The job of making Mygrant’s vision fit into a tightly-regulated landmark on the National Register of Historic Places fell largely on the shoulders of Falsetto and Tracey Simpson, of Innovative Designed Environment Associates.

Ladd Carriage House and Ladd Tower (photos by Brian Libby)

Falsetto’s primary challenges included restoring the exterior as near as possible to its original design, adding a veritable boatload of mechanical equipment and vents into nearly non-existent spaces and reusing as much original architectural fabric as possible.

Ironically, for as old as it is, no photographs of the building have surfaced from near the date of its erection in 1883. Door and window configurations changed a number of times between its last use as a horse barn in 1923.

One fuzzy old picture showed a long-departed cupola in the center of the roof. “We could have refabricated it,” Falsetto said, “but we would have had to support it structurally all the way to the ground.” Doing so would have wiped out much of the restaurant’s tightly-planned open kitchen.

Falsetto worked with Portland architect and historian William J. Hawkins III in analyzing the facades and trying to replicate what might have been original appearances. “It is an asymmetrical building, but if you look at it in sections, the sections have a lot of symmetry to them,” Falsetto said. “We were really trying to get into the head of Joseph Sherwin,” the English-born architect who designed the carriage house for William Sargeant Ladd, a pioneer banker, mayor and philanthropist whose fingerprints also touch Portland’s earliest schools, library and churches.

Getting enough air in and out of the building without adding rooftop vents also took detailed planning. “Commercial kitchens suck in and pump out a lot of air,” Falsetto said. Intakes and vents with vertical louvers tucked under first-floor windows on the building’s north side provided much of the solution.

Working with Simpson, the interior designer, Mygrant wanted the feel of a comfortable English-style pub without trying to replicate any specific location or to look “cute.” Simpson leaned heavily on earth-tone colors with high dark wainscot on the walls and floors of salvaged oak and slate. The main-floor restaurant features several distinct small seating areas, including a wooden counter near a wood-fired brick oven built with bricks salvaged from an unneeded chimney. The main-floor ceiling includes several strips of original beaded ceiling boards, flanked by covered channels that hide densely-packed mechanical systems. The designers specifically eschewed open ductwork that festoons the ceilings of many old buildings.

Ladd Carriage House from SW Broadway (photo by Brian Libby)

The main bar is located on the second floor, accessible by elevator (“We did our best to make it disappear,” Falsetto said) or an L-shaped stairway. One’s eyes are attracted immediately to the scissor-style wooden braces that make the space unlike virtually any other in town. Careful eyes will note a few places where new, smoother boards were added for structural reasons to the original rough-cut timbers.

Research indicated that the eastern third of the building was used to house groomsmen for the horses and domestic help who worked in the Ladd mansion on the block now occupied by the Oregonian building. The restored building subtly retains the same proportion by putting offices, staff rooms and some baking facilities on the second floor and a mezzanine overlooking the second-floor bar.

Part of the formula that allowed for construction of the Ladd Tower and preservation of the carriage house included demolition of the charming Rosefriend Apartments on the same block. 

Demolition of the Rosefriend Apartments (video by Brian Libby)

Preservationists rued the loss of the Rosefriend at the same time they celebrated preservation of the carriage house.

“There never really was any choice,” Falsetto said. “The Rosefriend had no formal landmark status,” making it much easier to demolish than the carriage house, which was n the National Register. “That’s one of the reasons why the city (government) really needs to update its historic resources inventory,” Falsetto added.

Fred Leeson is a Portland journalist and board president of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation/Architectural Heritage Center.

 

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"It can bring us economic impact multiple times the renovation" - notes from City Council's Coliseum hearing

Memorial Coliseum (photo by Brian Libby) 

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Imagine if Portland hosted the nation's biggest regular-season college basketball tournament, one featuring the top programs in America. Imagine the return of the US Figure Skating Championships, or the Dew Sports tour, or Davis Cup tennis. These are the very real bookings for Memorial Coliseum, and can generate enough economic activity to more than pay for its restoration. And don't listen to me say it: Listen to the experts.

Last week, Portland's City Council began the process of voting on a $31.5 million renovation plan for Memorial Coliseum. The plan would tap $10 million in donations from the Winterhawks hockey team and pair it with $17.1 in Portland Development Commision funding and $4.4 million in loans.

Although I was one of the people testifying last week in favor of the Coliseum restoration (on behalf of the Friends of Memorial Coliseum and supporting partners like the American Institute of Architects, the Cascadia chapter of the US Green Building Council and the National Trust for Historic Preservation), I'd like to share here some of the other people's testimony. For while City Council invited public testimony from anyone in the community, not a single person spoke last week against the restoration, but countless community leaders came to argue for the building.

Tom Welter, executive director of the Oregon School Activities Association, which administers all school sports tournaments in the state, was one of those giving testimony.

"We conduct 116 state championships each year. We use Memorial Coliseum as much as the Rose Festival," said Welter. "Our first tournament was in 1966 and this is the 47th consecutive year. For our wrestling tournaments, we have 160 of our high schools come into Portland. But currently our basketball tournaments are not held there because the scoreboard doesn’t work. For the vast majority, it’s the pinnacle of their athletic career. We want to provide the best venue and experience possible. Right now we’re using the Rose Garden. We can’t afford to be there much longer, because we don’t draw the crowds. We’re very interested in moving that event to the Coliseum."

Welter's testimony was important because it helps articulate the model for a two-arena configuration such as we have with the Coliseum and the Rose Quarter. The Coliseum is our place for amateur athletics, for college graduations and community activities in addition to minor-leage Winterhawks hockey, while the Rose Garden is where our top pro team, the Trail Blazers, play and where top concert tours touch down.

But it's the two-arena configuration's ability to host large events in both arenas at once that gives the Coliseum added econonomic value.

Speaking of which, next came Drew Mahalic, CEO of the Oregon Sports Authority.

"It can be a catalyst for much-needed economic development," he told City Council. "The renovation of the Coliseum can place Portland in a class by itself. We’ll be the only city anywhere with two first-rate arenas just a few feet apart that can give us advantages to get events that nobody else can get. It gives us a chance to get back the US Figure Skating Championships, to get back the Dew Tour."

"In just a few years - this one excites me so much - we are going to be able to host the greatest in season basketball tournament of all time," Mahalic added, "with 24 teams coming to Portland - Kentucky, Duke, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida - to celebrate Phil Knight’s 80th birthday. That can’t happen without a renovated Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The economic impact from that event alone will exceed $31 million, which is the amount we’re talking about for the restoration. This can give our city a competitive advantage. It can bring us economic impact multiple times the renovation. It’s really what we’ve been waiting for, and I would encourage you to favorably consider it."

Memorial Coliseum (photo by Brian Libby)

For those who question the Coliseum's architectural value despite its listing on the National Register of Historic Places, consider the economic support for the building offered by Carly Riter of the Portland Business Alliance.

"A lot of painstaking and detailed work has gone into this proposal," Riter told City Council. "The result is a collaborative deal that works, that lays the groundwork for future partnerships, and provides real community benefit for the neighborhood, the city, and the region. This project is exactly the kind of investment that urban renewal was designed to provide, and produces the short and long term benefits that epitomize the role of urban renewal."

"Second, this development will catalyze this area and spur economic investment in the broader Rose Quarter area," Riter added. "This project will provide certainty for other investors that the city is a dedicated partner in revitalizing this neighborhood. Third, it creates a local and regional benefit by offering a viable entertainment facility for the Portland Winterhawks and other events. This attracts new energy to the area, enlivening it with civic and economic activity. Having the city and the PDC involved in this project and poised to assist with future development opportunities in this area will support additional strategic investment."

Ronald Carr addressed Mayor Adams and Council on behalf of local veterans.

"We are veterans and we know what it means to serve…as well as the sacrifices made by our families back home," Carr said. "We remember every person who gave a sacrifice…in America we value the life of every human being, and this is a driving force in everything we do as veterans. We leave no one behind and we remember. Forever, we remember."

"Throughout our history, we’ve heard many battle cries: Remember the Maine. Remember the Alamo. Remember Pearl Harbor, and remember 9/11," Carr added. "It’s not just that we want to remember. It’s also that we need to remember. We need to help other people in other generations remember by sharing these stories, memories and traditions with our children and grandchildren. This is why the Veterans Memorial Coliseum and Memorial Gardens are so important to our community and society. It comes down to something as simple as this: we want and need to remember, but it is extremely important to never forget."

Finally, Jeff Curtis of the Portland Rose Festival Foundation spoke. "This is the home of our largest event and a significant one. It’s part of our history," he told the Council. "Back in 1961, the Rose Festival was one of the stakeholders that was part of a conversation to get the building constructed. We were one of the first events in that facility. The facility designed its doors in parallel fashion specifically to be the home of the Grand Floral Parade. So there’s a lot of historical and emotional ties to our beloved Grand Floral Parade. There’s an economic value to the Rose Festival, and the building is a big factor in our Grand Floral Parade and our operating budget. But it also provides an opportunity for tour groups, seniors, who don’t want to go out on the streets. It’s the only parade venue in the United States that’s indoors. That’s a competitive advantage in the special events and tourism market."

Finally, Fred Leeson, president of the Architectural Heritage Center (and a contributor to this blog) addressed Council.

"I read through the ordinances yesterday online, and I noticed all the references to the economic risk," Leeson began. "I just wanted remind some of you who probably were not here in the 1970s, when I was a newspaper reporter for the Oregon Journal and covering the Exposition and Recreation Commission, which then managed the Coliseum, is that the Coliseum gave up literally millions of dollars from its revenue to subsidize Civic Stadium and Civic Auditorium. In so in a sense, in supporting the Coliseum now, we’re making good on a past debt."

City Council is tentatively set to vote next week on the Coliseum restoration. The coalition of public and private sector stakeholders making this project happen is a fragile one: the announcement recently of major sanctions against the Winterhawks by the Western Hockey League sent some around City Hall wondering if it would force the team to back out of the deal. So far that hasn't happened, and Mayor Adams spoke personnally with the team's owner recently, receiving a renewed expression of support for the Coliseum restoration. The incoming City Council set to take office next year may also want to weigh in. But for now, with a little luck, the saving of this great building may be within reach.

 

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Thirty years later: a conversation with Michael Graves about the Portland Building

Portland Building (photo by Brian Libby)

BY LUKE AREHART

World renowned American architect Michael Graves has been practicing architecture since 1964 and has completed nearly 200 built examples of his craft to date, spanning many countries on four continents. Originally celebrated as one of the New York Five in the early 1970s (along with legends like Richard Meier and Peter Eisenman), Graves later became known not only for his building commissions  but a host of product designs for Target.

Graves completed one of his earliest works, The Portland Building, 30 years ago this winter. The building, one of the nation’s first major works of postmodern architecture, remains one of the most polarizing designs in history. But more than any other local building (except for perhaps Pietro Belluschi’s Equitable Building or John Yeon’s Watzek House), its impact on American architecture cannot be overstated.

Recently, Graves spoke about the Portland Building from his office in Princeton, New Jersey. 

Portland Architecture: It’s been 30 years since The Portland Building has been built. What are your current thoughts and emotions toward this historic building?

Michael Graves: I love it as much as ever. It was an important building for Portland and it was an important building for me obviously because I hadn’t done many big buildings then; it was a first on many accounts. Somebody said the other day, who called and was doing an interview, that this building changed the course of architecture in America. 

 What are your recollections about the design competition in which you won this project?

You asked about my recollections of the competition? That would take a book. It wasn’t a competition about the aesthetics because we had won on the points, which were a part of the program. You got points for doing various things: the windows, the walls, everything gave you points or subtracted points. We won on points, we won on the budget, and we won on timing. We supplied them 40,000 square foot extra for the rental of the building, all of that we did but still we hadn’t won and the reason we didn’t win was people were questioning the aesthetics of the building and the local architects were very much against it, as it was a threat to modernism. Finally we won out and by that time Phillip Johnson had left the jury, so it was up to the committee to decide, which they did on their own. 

What was your relationship like with Phillip Johnson? 

My relationship with Philip Johnson was one of knowing him casually. As I remember, I had given a lecture in New York, and he came to that. One of the ways Phillip stayed young during his career was to be friendly with the younger group of architects who he called, “the kids.” You could be 65 years old, and he would call you a kid; he was 90. He was a cheerleader for architecture and I thought that he was good on the jury, getting them to see the differences and the similarities between the schemes and he was not biased in that regard, so I was happy that he was chosen for the jury. 

I think you could write a book about this next question as well: Do you recall your initial approach/strategy in designing this building?

Sure, yes you’re right, it’s a book. I wanted to make an urban building. In opposition to let’s say the Orbanco building (currently Congress Center) across the street, which for me is not an urban building, it’s a stand-alone building and it could be built out in the desert, and it wouldn’t make any difference. Because its ground level is not pedestrian friendly and I wanted to make something that people could use at the ground level. In fact, it was part of the points system because the city planners of Portland had had enough of the Orbanco dialogue by that time, and they specified that new buildings in Portland had to have ground level activity. That’s why we have a loggia around three sides of our building.

I wanted to make a building that was civic, something that would work with the City Hall, which I greatly admired, which was next door and one that would fit into the other buildings in Portland. A lot people would say that my building doesn’t do that, but I think that’s probably the coloration of the building that causes them say that. Our building doesn’t have much forgiveness in the surface because of the budget. Our building is straight up and straight down after it does its step back because it’s essentially a concrete column and all that is dealing with the budget. 

Michael Graves (image courtesy of the architect)

Perhaps the budget is what compromised things.

The budget was so low that it was lower than a spec house would be built for in the suburbs of Portland at the time. People forget how much the budget really caused the building to be like Bob Venturi’s edict of the ‘decorated shed,’ a duck which is a building that has shape to it or a decorated shed. Ours is more of a decorated shed in that it uses color instead of form to make its differences because of the budget.

Did you know at the time that your building would put Portland on the architectural map?

No, I wasn’t worried about maps, and that wasn’t my position at all. Shortly after doing the Portland Building, we did the Humana Building in Louisville and it had a much more reasonable budget and I suppose it put Louisville on the map, but I wasn’t aware of that. That’s not why I do architecture; it really doesn’t have anything to do with making a statement like that. I wanted to make a good building. 

The Portland Building is distinct largely because of the color and imagery of the facade. What was your process in creating the composition? 

I was lecturing at the time at Princeton as a professor, and I very much believe in the tripartite arrangement of base, body and head to buildings, where the stories are different where you enter the building at the base, the body of the building is where you are accommodated and the head of the building which reaches the sky and often is lighter in coloration and façade treatment and so on, very much the way a column is base, body and head. This is really what I was after.

As I said before, I was making a civic building and composing in a way that would use the differences in the program. First of all shops of the ground level, which are colored green, green tile originally to go with the Mothers and Daughters park/garden behind the building which was a wonderful site for us. Above that, the spaces for the city and the keystone which is a different glass formation looking back at Fifth Avenue and the park, we had rental offices which were a part of the program; they were ways of breaking up the façade in the program.

If you were able to go through the process again, would you still come to Portland to design?   

Many times over, sure. I love Portland and have very, very good memories of Portland. Even at the end when Belluschi asked me to dinner and he said he wanted to ‘bury the hatchet.’ Well, I didn’t have a hatchet to bury because I wasn’t against Belluschi or anybody else, but he was against my building. He said once it’s built there was nothing he could do about it, so we might as well be friends.

Graves and Pietro Belluschi (photo courtesy Saul Zaik)

Did you see the photograph of yourself sticking your tongue out at Pietro Belluschi at that dinner?

I thought it was charming. Where did you get it? 

Saul Zaik’s office. 

He must have been there.

Beyond that, do you recall any friction between yourself and late Portland architect Pietro Belluschi? 

No, I didn’t know him at all. One time he got up at a committee meeting and said if I had columns, I ought to make them out of real material like marble, like the ones in the City Hall. I got up after him and said, “I think Mr. Belluschi should take a better look at the columns, because they are all faux painted, they’re not real, they’re plaster.” That was just something that was humorous; I wasn’t trying to show him up. 

What are your thoughts of Portland now, in comparison with the early 1980s? 

I really can’t answer that question because I haven’t been there. I usually go places where I’m invited to build and to work, and I haven’t been invited back [to Portland] (chuckles) and I doubt that I will be.

Would you be open to the idea of a renovation of The Portland Building, perhaps with an interior atrium or some other means for additional natural light? 

That’s not a possibility, for additional light you’d have to go up 15 floors to get top light with an atrium. The whole building is a structural column, so it wouldn’t sustain that kind of thing. In a way that’s just a silly notion. You couldn’t take the guts out of the building; you’d lose all of the office space in the center.

Why are the windows relatively small given our often overcast climate?

The country was going through an energy crisis at the time and we actually got points for making small windows so that we could contain the energy in the building. There was a conflict there: I may have made them too small and a lot of people think I did. They were used to floor-to-ceiling glass in buildings like the Orbanco building but I was determined not to do that because I don’t think that makes an urban scene. Nobody ever talks about buildings like the Orbanco building in terms of a place to work. It should be noted that I didn’t do the interiors of the building, I wanted to and I competed to, but they were given to Zimmer Gunsul Frasca. 

Did you have a working relationship like with the firm designing the interior of this building?

I know Bob Frasca from college, but we didn’t talk to them during that time and they didn’t contact us.

The Portland Building seems very much of its era, a time of excitement about postmodernism in the late 1970s and '80s. Given how historic styles can fall in and out of favor, do you think The Portland Building or postmodernism will find a resurgence of interest in the future? 

What do you think postmodernism as a style is? I ask that question because nobody can answer it. It’s just a way of putting people in the closet and saying “You’re a deconstructivist,” “You’re a post-modernist,” “You’re a hyper-realist,” “You’re a figurative architect,” You’re a new urbanist.” It’s just a way for journalism to put a tag on somebody because it makes their job so much easier.

As an architect, when they say: “Are you a postmodernist” I always ask, “What is that?” And they don’t know, they have no idea; it’s just a name to them.

For me, postmodernism is a way to see the traditional city. It’s a way that, for instance, Fifth Avenue in Portland gains more traction with the transit mall and all of that than if it were a glass box city even in an empty square, which is what one of the competitors proposed. I think it’s important that when we walk in the city, that we are part of the city, that the buildings of the city speak back to us. This is what I am after in my architecture. 

I really don’t care whether so-called postmodernism, whatever one thinks that it is or any other style returns. I just want people to do good architecture.

Who are some of your favorite architects working today? 

Most of my favorites are dead. One of them, Aldo Rossi, died years ago. I suppose I’d have to say one of the architects who I admire is Leon Krier. 

As a landmark building that was named to the National Register of Historic Places last year, is The Portland Building intentionally missing from michaelgraves.com? 

No, is it missing? 

Yes, on your completed works timeline and map. 

Okay, we’ll fix that. No, it’s not intentional at all.

Given its color and playful sense of appropriated imagery, how much of a relationship do you see between postmodern architecture and Pop Art artists like Andy Warhol? 

No I don’t. It would be more in the monochromatic architecture of Mies van der Rohe than Andy Warhol. 

You made your first post-Portland Building visit back to city in 2002. What were your feelings and emotions?

It’s a wonderful city. It rains a little too much but everybody knows that. So does Seattle, but that’s part of its charm. That’s what makes it so green and lush; it’s a very positive thing. It seems to me that if all cities were as vital as Portland we’d have a wonderful place to live in America.

 

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HPLO seeks seismic safeguards for thousands of historic brick buildings

Gilbert Building, downtown Portland (photo by Brian Libby)

BY FRED LEESON

Architects and builders gave no thought to earthquakes in the nineteenth and much of the 20^th centuries when they built literally thousands of brick buildings across Oregon. 

Now that scientists have learned about tectonic plates under the Pacific Ocean and the likelihood of major earthquakes affecting heavily populated areas of Oregon, those unreinforced masonry structures pose a serious risk to students, residents, office workers and shoppers who use them. 

Besides harm to human life, destruction of those buildings would wipe out numerous historic landmarks, the hearts of historic business districts, thousands of low-rent housing units, dozens of schools and the vintage architectural fabric that gives us  a sense of place and human continuity.

Can these buildings be “saved” in advance?  How to do it?  What tools and incentives are needed to upgrade more than 4,800 unreinforced masonry buildings (likely a low estimate) in Oregon?

The Historic Preservation League of Oregon, a statewide preservation advocacy organization, has spent the last year probing those questions and looking for potential answers.  “Resilient Masonry Buildings,” the HPLO’s special report (available at historicpreservationleague.org)  suggests eight potential steps, ranging from more complete inventories to revised building codes and financial incentives.

“We didn’t solve all the problems,” says Brandon Spencer-Hartle, the HPLO’s field representative who wrote the report after meeting with some 250 interested parties in four locations around the state.  “This is just a starting point.  We heard a lot of ideas out there.”

Spencer-Hartle said the study looked at more than just seismic issues.  He said difficulties with Americans with Disability Act access and internal elevators make many older brick buildings dysfunctional on their upper floors.

The study attempted to get a grasp on the number of Oregon buildings erected with unreinforced masonry.  Only Portland and Medford have done inventories, and even those numbers may be suspect.  “Without an engineer, it’s hard to determine what is unreinforced masonry and what isn’t,” said Natalie Perrin, a preservationist who worked on the report.  Regardless of the number, “It’s a massive amount of square feet,” she said.

An intriguing suggestion raised in the report is creation of a voluntary, standardized ranking system for seismic bracing that would let tenants and prospective building users know how resilient an improved  building is.  It would be akin to the LEED ranking system for energy and environmental design.  “Recognizable plaques placed on the exterior of qualifying buildings would boost public awareness, activate market demand and generate better pay-back for investments in retrofitting,” the report states. Spencer-Hartle said such a rating system is being studied in Northern California, another high-risk earthquake region.

Earthquake bracing is expensive work, especially for being an “invisible” improvement.  The HPLO report suggests that new financial incentives are needed to assist building owners, including state, local and federal possibilities.  “If it is a public good,” Spencer-Hartle says, “how should public money be directed to preservation?”

One idea is trying to leverage federal FEMA funding – the idea being that repairs now will reduce damage in a future emergency.  Spencer-Hartle said Oregon needs to revisit state incentives.   At present, owners of designated landmarks qualify for  10-year property tax abatements, with the idea being  that money saved on taxes is directed to preservation needs.  Spencer-Hartle said the 10-year tax break is inadequate for financing large-scale preservation projects.

Spencer-Hartle said the HPLO will convene meetings in 2013 aimed at exploring rehabilitation incentives in greater detail.  In the meantime, the clock is ticking for Oregon’s unreinforced masonry buildings.

 

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City Council to vote on Memorial Coliseum restoration Thursday

Memorial Coliseum (photo by Julius Schulman, from Modernism Rediscovered)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

It's a vote that has been more than three years in the making, but will demonstrate our city's values for generations to come. This Thursday, City Council will vote on the proposed $31 million deal to restore Memorial Coliseum, the one-of-a-kind arena at the heart of a transforming Rose Quarter district.

The vote had been expected more than a year ago, with City Council already ruling on numerous occasions to go forward with negotiations and designs. But because of the extremely intricate and sensitive deal structure, which involves the Trail Blazers' Portland Arena Management and an extension of that agency's running of both arenas (even though one is privately owned and one public), and which involves urban renewal dollars from numerous sources, the decision by Council is only coming now.

Under the proposed deal, the Portland Development Commission would be responsible for $17.1 million the Coliseum and the Winterhawks hockey team would contribute $10 million. PDC would also loan the city $4.4 million, to be repaid over 20 years from ticket-tax and parking revenues.

In other words, the city is receiving $10 million in free renovations, and all we have to do is spend $17 million. It's not to say $17 million isn't a lot of money, but given that the Coliseum is a profitable arena - even hosting more events some years than the Rose Garden next door - that is an investment in making more money. The two-arena configuration also helps the Rose Quarter generate more revenue than it would with one arena.

What's more, there is a huge amount of untapped revenue sitting in the Rose Quarter that can help further renovate the district and the arena. The Coliseum in particular is surrounded by asphalt and concrete, land the city can sell the development rights to without compromising the parking revenue of the two buildings' shared parking garages. Simply build over the parking with high-density, mixed-use buildings and there are millions to be made. That can act as leverage for restoring and maintaining the Coliseum. The Coliseum also is the only arena or auditorium in Portland of that size, about 6,000-8,000 (after the restoration). If we don't restore the Coliseum, we'll eventually need to build a new facility to match that audience size. And it would cost much more than $17.1 million.

And with a new streetcar line along the Rose Quarter's northern edge, the value of this land is starting to rise exponentially. We've already seen this happen in the Pearl District. The city needs to stop worrying about the $17.1 million contribution to the Coliseum and think about the money to be made in enabling development along Broadway.

Bottom line: the Coliseum is a net money maker in the long run, even though its deferred maintenance is a short-term drain.

And when you add the developable riverfront property along the Rose Quarter's western edge, the value of this broader parcel becomes even greater. After all, how can we debate whether to keep a world-renowned, money-making arena when we're using exceptionally valuable riverfront central-city land as a surface parking lot? What are we, Phoenix? Las Vegas?

The Rose Quarter should be Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square moment: a chance to reshape the center of the city with high-density, pedestrian-friendly, sustainable development. We should be dreaming about how this primary east-side transit center can be filled with hotels, offices, retail and residences, a win-win for everyone. Instead, we're like a cat that turns from grooming its coat to eating its fur off. We worry about restoring a great arena with a busy, lucrative schedule at bargain basement prices instead of how that restoration can unleash millions in private development.

Brian Libby's "Why Memorial Coliseum Matters" City Club talk, 2011.

 

By now I've written countless times about Memorial Coliseum's special architecture. But in case you're reading about this for the first time, keep in mind: this is more or less the only major arena in the world with a 360-degree view to the outside. Stand in the Coliseum's seating bowl and you can see the entire downtown skyline and the Willamette River. But that view has been blocked away with a fabric black curtain for most of the building's history in order to make it like any other arena. As it happens, though, unique design has tremendous economic value. If we open the curtain for good, we can give Memorial Coliseum an all new identity based on the ability to have indoor events that feel like they're outside: something perfect for our rainy climate.

Memorial Coliseum is the equivalent of four city blocks in size, but it's standing on just four columns. It was completed in 1960, embodying the era of JFK, NASA and post-war optimism in America. It was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, one of the great American architecture firms of the 20th century, responsible for icons like the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Burj Kalifa tower in Dubai (currently the world's tallest building), and the new World Trade Center in New York. Throughout the United States and the world, this era of modern architecture has come to be celebrated for its simple fusion of glass, steel and concrete.

Memorial Coliseum gives Portland the kind of architectural history it otherwise largely lacks compared to older cities of the eastern United States and of Europe. Our city once destroyed much of its heritage by tearing down most of its waterfront cast-iron architecture of the early 20th century, something that has cost us economically as well as culturally, as such historic districts have shown their value to succeeding generations. With the City Council's approval of Memorial Coliseum's restoration on Thursday, we can demonstrate that Portland now appreciates and protects its most special places.

In recent decades, Portland has faced an ultimatum for some of its most cherished and architecturally significant buildings, such as City Hall and Central Library. In those cases, the city has restored rather than replaced, a decision no one argues today. Why would we do differently for a building with even more international historic architectural value in Memorial Coliseum? It doesn't have the detailed exterior facade of either of those old buildings because it's from the midcentury-modern era, defined by open space, light, volume and streamlined style. Yet Memorial Coliseum is the most architecturally significant building in Portland. You don't have to be a fan of modernism to recognize that it's now officially historic.

Rose Parade at Memorial Coliseum, 2010 (photo by Jeremy Bitterman)

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the American Institute of Architects, and the US Green Building Council have all sent letters to Mayor Adams and Council expressing support for Memorial Coliseum's restoration.

Memorial Coliseum is also a veterans memorial that the war veterans of Oregon have rallied to protect. (It's now officially called Veterans Memorial Coliseum.) They recognize that it's not just the memorial plaques outside the building that honor veterans: it's the whole building that does so, with the arena's unmatched openness to the outside sunlight symbolizing an inoculation against the terrors of World War II. When I work to support Memorial Coliseum's survival, for example, it's with the support of my 91-year-old grandfather, a WWII vet who landed at Normandy as part of the D-Day invasion and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

Of course there are, at first glance, reasons to be skeptical of the Coliseum plan. It's being voted on during a lame-duck City Council session. It devotes scarce city dollars to an arena when we already have a newer one next door. But the more one looks at the blend of economic, historical and cultural factors swirling around the Coliseum and Rose Quarter, the more this restoration seems to pay for itself, many times over.

The Coliseum can be called America's only transparent arena. And whether we keep or discard our historic architecture will make transparent Portland's values about design, the environment, history and the future of place-making in our city.

As a co-founder of the Friends of Memorial Coliseum, I can't pretend any impartiality or objectivity on this vote. Memorial Coliseum is the only issue for which I've ever deliberately abandoned my journalist's role and embraced full-fledged activism. But as someone born and raised in Oregon, who grew up watching concerts and basketball games at Memorial Coliseum, I can't walk away from our responsibility to history. As a journalist who has spent more than a decade writing about design in Portland and the broader world, I can't sit on the sidelines as the future of what I see as the city's greatest building hangs in the balance - or as the centerpiece of our next great central-city district takes shape.

 

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The Ocean: five tiny restaurants and an epiphany

The Ocean on NE Glisan (photo by Brian Libby)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Kevin Cavenaugh, the architect-trained developer who has spent much of the last decade embodying smart do-it-yourself place making in Portland, said something to me yesterday I've scarcely heard from any architect.

"I know as an architect I'm good but not great," he confessed as we stood outside The Ocean, a long-empty former tire center on NE Glisan he transformed into a quintet of tiny restaurant spaces. (Cavenaugh is not registered as an architect but has an architecture degree.) But by acting as a sort of enabler, renovating existing buildings on the cheap but in a way that attracts creative, passionate small businesses with a desire to experiment, he can create the kind of architecture that is noteworthy not for its elaborate forms or materials but instead for its ability to come a hot spot with high foot traffic, as he's done with past projects like the Box + One Lofts and The Rocket building.

The Ocean, which is having its grand opening this Saturday, is also very Portland, both in its aesthetic and in how it embraces the city's small-scale, shopkeeper economy. Its renovation includes some attractive wood trim and lots of glass, but the design essentially just retained the automobile bays and garage doors of the former tire-center building from which it was built . As a developer, Cavenaugh was smart and sustainably minded enough to re-use what was there in a way that directly helped attract and enable the kinds of businesses that located there.

The Ocean's mini outlets have indoor seating for 10-15 customers, smaller than most all brick-and-mortar restaurants but palatial compared to food carts, the biggest food phenomenon in Portland. The size is a kind of sweet spot in that can attract cart owners, many of whom find running carts a difficult business: overheated in summer, freezing and wet through the winter, with very small profit margins even when you're busy. Yet because the overhead is low, it's not as big of a leap to come to a built space of just 600 square feet per restaurant.

Cavenaugh told me there is a great enough demand for this size of micro-retail space that filling The Ocean was relatively easy. Yet it was also important in his mind to choose the right tenants. Slowburger, for example, stems from the popular burger served at Slow Bar, but it's also something more uncommon than the (admittedly very delicious) local Little Big Burger chain already branching out in multiple locations. Besides Slowburger, there is also Basa Basa, a Korean chicken wings restaurant from TV chef Caprial Pence, who previously headed the higher-end restaurant Caprial's Bistro before it closed during the recession. Pence's involvement is another example, besides Slowburger, of how Cavenaugh created a kind of theme within the restaurant theme: the chance for established chefs and food-drink proprietors to experiment with new concepts. There is also Uno Mas, a tacqueria, 24th & Meatballs for unctuous orbs of pork and beef (operated by Tabla Mediterranean restaurant owner Adam Berger), and cart-turned-restaurant The Pie Spot for both savory and sweet pies.

The building itself is also as colorful as the cuisine offerings. "As you approach Glisan Street, boisterous colors and sounds from a handful of tiny restaurants spill out of a building once owned by a Dodge dealership," wrote food critic Michael Russell in The Oregonian. "Rolling wooden garage doors, glossy picnic benches and bright marquees mark The Ocean mini-restaurant hub."

The Ocean (photos by Brian Libby)

Cavenaugh certainly hasn't re-invented the wheel here. The Ocean doesn't look radically different from a strip mall or. But instead of a small parking lot in front, there are tables. Instead of cars moving out, it's people congregating. It's instant place making rooted in existing buildings, something realistic to replicate on a wide scale. It's also not too different from strings of new retail establishments in other parts of town, such as bike-friendly Williams Avenue on the border between North and Northeast Portland. In both cases, the heavy street traffic going by helps. The Ocean, at NE 24th and Glisan Street, isn't at as busy as Williams, but given its centralized location, it could soon be - both with The Ocean's direct help and as a result of increasing density amidst a returning real estate market.

"We want to change intersections," Cavenaugh says. "We know it’s a profitable financial model." It just is profitable, like the restaurants, on a small scale - so much so that banks and investors are hard to find. Cavenaugh and others have been exploring the creation of a private-equity fund for such businesses in the future. "There’s an innate inefficiency," to funding clusters of tiny businesses and developments, he says, "but over a 10 to 20 year period there’s a higher rate of return."

And while the economy certainly seems to have rebounded in the last four years, this kind of small-scale development seems a more realistic response than larger-scale buildings such as the half-block whoppers regularly built in South Waterfront and the Pearl District during the 2000s. Both in terms of scale and aesthetics, smaller and older may be better in multiple ways. That may not sound as exciting to architects, but it can still mean business and the opportunity to be creative as well as to create popular, high-traffic spaces.  

"There is a breed of businesses and residents that prefer to be in old buildings, and in some cases will actually pay higher rent," says Liz Dunn of Dunn & Hobbes, the Seattle developer behind Melrose Market, a similar project to The Ocean. "The spaces are affordable because they’re small. The per square foot cost is healthy by any perspective. But the spaces are small. We couldn’t have done that in a new building. The character isn’t the same."

Dunn and Cavenaugh both believe there is an untapped demand for small retail spaces, something most new buildings ignore even they often are mixed-use with ground-floor retail that goes unleased. "I think there’s more understanding of this in Portland, but in Seattle you get more outside money wanting to develop at the half block or full block scale," Dunn says. "We attract more equity than Portland but they want to deploy money at scale, and they don’t care if it’s in a neighborhood where they have to tear down four buildings to do that."

Depending on how you measure it, sometimes a renovated one-story building can achieve greater density than a new multi-story one. Not only is it inherently more sustainable in terms of physical resources, but if done well it can attract more people than it ever houses.

"I’m not anti density at all," Dunn says. "It’s just a question of how you insert it into the city, in terms of outcomes. Density is a means to an end. It’s not an end of itself. You want to know the buildings are well used, which means that stuff like curating the right mix is more important than the total amount of space if your goal is many people using the building throughout the day, and leading connected lives without driving unless they want to. It’s about intensity of use versus density. We focus way too much on raw square footage and not on bodies per square foot per hour."

A key in both Dunn's and Cavenaugh's projects was the personal involvement. Larger development companies may have the greater pockets, but they have small touches that can help these small businesses succeed. "It’s not just giving them the keys and saying, 'I hope you’re successful,'" Cavenaugh explains. "It’s saying, 'The first 24 months are scary. I’m going to help you keep open.'"

 

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"What's the right thing to do?" Remembering developer, historic preservationist Art DeMuro

Art DeMuro (image courtesy Venerable Properties)

BY FRED LEESON

Portland has been blessed with several architectural preservationists over the years.

Eric Ladd, who died in 2000, is often recognized as the first, with his efforts to help move the Kamm house and plans for his never-completed Ladd Colony in the 1960s. Then one can turn to architects George McMath, father of the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission and municipal landmark designations, and William J. Hawkins III, whose grasp of history and detail is well preserved in his architectural history books and restoration projects. Certainly one must include the late Bill Naito, who showed that old buildings could have creative new lives in Old Town and elsewhere, and the McMenamin brothers, who built a thriving, whimsical empire on beer, old buildings and history. 

But none may have more lasting significance than Art DeMuro. In hardly more than 20 years in Portland, the Chicago-born preservationist/developer restored many significant landmarks for decades of continued productive use. And in the months and days before his untimely death at age 57 in September, DeMuro made financial commitments intended to bolster Oregon’s preservation community and to train generations of additional preservation experts.

His largest gift, $2.8 million, went to the University of Oregon Historic Preservation Program. It likely will go to an endowed chair in preservation. This past January, in announcing the gift, DeMuro said, “My hope is that the passion of us who engaged intimately in the field spreads to become a more common social ethic throughout our culture….Once a historic building is lost, all of that history is gone. If I can train and inspire other people to do the same thing when I am gone, there are 10 people in my place to carry on. I need to know that I did all I possibly could to support what I care about; my hope is that others will want to join in and make it a bigger effort.”

Art DeMuro (image courtesy Venerable Properties)

In the days before his death, DeMuro also committed to donating $750,000 to the Bosco-Milligan Foundation, to pay off outstanding debts on the foundation’s Architectural Heritage Center and to start a permanent endowment. He also committed to giving “a very sizable amount” to the Historic Preservation League of Oregon, according to its executive director, Peggy Moretti. The HPLO is a state-wide preservation advocacy organization that works in association with local preservation groups such as Portland’s Bosco-Milligan.

Cathy Galbraith, Bosco-Milligan’s executive director, said she hopes to build an endowment totaling $1 million during the next year. At a 5 percent return, that would generate $50,000 per year in operating revenue without shrinking the long-term next egg. Galbraith said the endowment would be a major step in achieving “financial sustainability” for the 25-year old Portland-based preservation foundation.

Craig Kelly, DeMuro’s long-time partner in the Venerable Group, announced the commitment to Bosco-Milligan at the organization’s annual fund-raising auction on Oct. 20. Kelly choked with emotion when he read DeMuro’s comments about expanding support for preservation. “It is still hard for me to say Art’s words,” he said later. 

In some ways, DeMuro was an unlikely success in Portland. In a city often noted for its insular business networks, he was an “outsider” who arrived in 1991 after working in the family real estate business in Phoenix, Arizona. And in a city often noted for its casual behavior, DeMuro seldom appeared in public without a dark suit and tie, shined shoes and his jet-black hair, neatly styled.

After hardly more than 10 years in Portland, he was appointed to the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission in a seat designated for a “developer.” But as Galbraith noted, he was no pushover for developers. He proved to be a stickler for architectural details and preservation of as much historic fabric as possible when renovation plans came before the commission. In his final three years, serving as landmarks chair, he used gentle humor whenever possible to ease tension and make the review process more comprehensible to applicants.

Ladd Carriage House (image courtesy Wikipedia Commons)

DeMuro’s firm accomplished more than a dozen restoration/renovation projects in Portland and Astoria. The best known are the Ladd Carriage House, which had to be moved several blocks and then returned to its original location atop new underground parking, and four buildings linked together in Old Town’s White Stag block to become the Portland branch of the University of Oregon’s architecture school. At his death, the Venerable firm was working on plans to renovate the old Washington High School into housing and other uses – a project that DeMuro had called his most complicated ever. His business associates plan to carry on with it.

Historic preservationist Paul Falsetto, who worked on the Ladd restoration, recalls an episode in which a major structural flaw was uncovered. Work had to be stopped while engineering options were studied and costs evaluated. When the options were presented to DeMuro, Falsetto said DeMuro asked only one question: “What’s the right thing to do?”

If DeMuro’s legacy does motivate a new generation of preservationists, perhaps that’s the best question for them and all preservation activists to remember.

Fred Leeson is board president of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation and its Architectural Heritage Center.

 

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