Built-in beauty
Downtown abounds in architectural treasures
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Fred Leeson
The Oregonian
A couple of years ago, a friend urged Michelle Bernard to check out the little building on Southwest First Avenue. So Bernard made a special trip to take a look.
The building looked back.
Just below the third-story pediment, the face of a young Victorian woman with a mere hint of a smile peered down, flanked by two ugly gents with weird hair and long tongues dangling. The faces have been locked in the tableau since the late 1880s or '90s, when a third story was added to the original two-story edifice.
"Right then, I knew I wanted to work here," says Bernard, who is salon director at HairM, an upscale men's grooming parlor at 818 S.W. First Ave. HairM moved into the narrow building five years ago, when the first two floors were celebrating their, oh, 125th anniversary.
As towers spring up downtown, in the Pearl and South Waterfront, the skinny building that has housed a sewing machine company, dry-goods store and a reggae bar, among its various tenants, is proof that parts of downtown and their roofline treasures aren't changing.
"When you're walking downtown or stuck in traffic, it always pays to look up," says Cathy Galbraith, executive director of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group for architectural preservation. "You may be surprised at what you see."
Fortunately for architecture buffs, the recent building boom has had little impact on historic downtown structures. In response to public outcry in 2006, a proposed tower that threatened the Ladd Carriage House, was adjusted slightly on its block to allow preservation of the 1883 wooden confection. The carriage house will return to its original location at 1331 S.W. Broadway after a garage is completed that will sit under the building.
In the past year, substantial restorations of the iron-front Bickel Block at 70 N.W. Couch St. and the DeSoto Building, a former car dealership at 720 N.W. Davis St., have shown that preservation is alive in the hands of sensitive developers such as Venerable Properties and James Winkler, respectively.
Meanwhile, negotiations are continuing on plans to convert the 1901 U.S. Custom House at 220 N.W. Eighth Ave. into a boutique hotel. The goal was announced in 2005, and the federal General Services Administration is still working with a Chicago-based developer.
"There have been some obstacles," says Bill Lesh, a GSA spokesman. The venture would breathe new life into one of Portland's most ornate historic structures, which features elaborate exterior window frames as part of its Renaissance Revival design.
In the 1880s and '90s, Portland's lowest-numbered avenues were dominated by cast-iron building fronts, such as the tastefully preserved Blagen Block at 34 N.W. First Ave. and the small building that houses HairM. But serious floods pushed the heart of downtown west, and the lowest avenues lost their luster.
"Buildings were not maintained," says William J. Hawkins III, a Portland architect and architectural historian. "Sheet-metal cornices and wood cornices need to be maintained in our weather. Many of them just came off as time went on." And many buildings from the cast-iron era were demolished for parking and for new Morrison Bridge ramps in the 1950s.
Downtown's westward migration in the early 1900s coincided with the development of steel-frame construction, which allowed the use of heavy terra cotta for ornamentation. Starting as clay pressed into molds and then glazed and fired, terra cotta allowed a wide range of decorative shapes and color.
Perhaps Portland's most elaborately decorated building is the well-maintained U.S. National Bank main office at 321 S.W. Sixth Ave. Built in sections in a Roman Corinthian style in 1917 and 1925, it's a richly decorated terra-cotta palace that is impressive inside and out.
"It's beyond belief," Galbraith says. "It's got everything."
"We have people coming through all the time, especially in summer," says Harry Martin, a security officer who has worked the lobby for 10 years. "I love every minute of it." The bank has prepared a free one-page building history for visitors.
The bank was designed by A.E. Doyle, a superstar of his era, who probably has had more impact on downtown than any other architect. Doyle was trained in the major historical styles in favor during the era, and his office turned out an almost dizzying array of buildings with ornamentation that traces to Greece, Italy, France and England.
Doyle's downtown buildings, many featuring terra-cotta decorations, include the Benson Hotel, Meier & Frank (now Macy's), the Multnomah County Central Library, the American Bank Building, the Pittock Block and the Oregon National Building.
Despite its successes, the terra-cotta era died at the hands of trends that seemed unimaginable in the Roaring Twenties: economic depression and radical new ideas about architecture.
"The modern movement came in throes of the Depression," Hawkins says. "It was just very hard to come up with the money to be more elaborate with. The whole design movement was getting spare. It was a total change of attitude about decorative work."
At the same time, many architects were rethinking their role and the role of their work in modern culture.
"Some of the architects were revolting against a system they thought didn't work socially," Hawkins says. "There were a lot of social movements trying to support a broad middle class rather than the extreme wealth some cities had."
Modernism exerted itself full force after World War II. Pietro Belluschi, a Portland architect who began his career in Doyle's office, earned national acclaim for the Equitable (now Commonwealth) Building at 421 S.W. Sixth Ave. with its sleek, nearly seamless facade of glass and aluminum.
"Belluschi stripped the building of ornament and got down to good proportions," Hawkins says. "Good taste still came through. The materials were beautiful."
As buildings grew taller, there was even less need for ornamentation. Even at 12 to 15 stories, the terra-cotta decorations on Portland's first-generation "skyscrapers" are not easy to admire except from the upper floors of a nearby building.
As they started climbing to 20, 30 and 40 stories, Portland's tall buildings became a celebration of materials rather than decoration, such as the pink granite in the U.S. Bancorp Tower and white marble on the First Interstate Bank tower (now Wells Fargo Center).
A postmodern revolution, of which the eccentric Portland Building at 1120 S.W. Fifth Ave. was a highly publicized example, flirted with new types of decoration, but the revolution didn't take. Hawkins says the latest trend in tall buildings is seeking a more sculptural feel by adding curves to walls and breaking up flat roofs.
Examples include the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse, the Fox Tower and some new towers in the South Waterfront using ovoid shapes.
"To me that's highly promising," Hawkins says. "I think some of the new buildings are really very good. They make a much richer architectural environment."
Galbraith of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation says a revival of Craftsman-style detailing in new residential construction is under way, but she doesn't foresee a return to historic decoration in commercial buildings.
"As a rule," she says, "the architectural profession doesn't want to be perceived as mimicking earlier history."
So, next time you're in the vicinity of Southwest First Avenue, stop by and smile back at the Victorian woman smiling down from the third story of No. 818. Chances are you won't see her anywhere else.
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