Why Historic Buildings Matter

 

With all the new buildings and modern housing facing SW Durham Road on the suburban flank of Tigard, it’s easy to miss the small, white wooden building that started life in 1920 as a two-room schoolhouse.

 After all these years, it’s worth glancing occasionally at the Durham School with a bell still residing in its small steeple.  A quick look at the modest building – expanded in 1937 and again in 1951s – tells us why historic buildings are important to save.

 Without its presence, we might not realize that the bountiful suburban sprawl around it was once primarily agricultural land.  Or that generations of children romped and played on its grounds, just as we once did wherever else we grew up.  And that human life is a continuing chain, and that we need to remember occasionally that others came before us, just as others will come after us.

The simple Craftsman-era architecture reminds us that simplicity can indeed embrace elegance, and that wooden buildings in our heritage can survive for prolonged periods if we bother to take care of them responsibly along the way.  Woodworkers can look at the building’s straight lines and recognize that yes, careful, lasting, quality work indeed preceded the loud buzzing of power tools.

The school and Durham Road are named after Albert Alonzo Durham, who succeeded as a miner in the California gold fields before arriving in the Tigard area in 1869.  Durham then built his subsequent economic success as a grist mill operator.  The area came to be known as “Durham Station” and as a stop along the Oregon Electric Railway.

The “old” Durham School we see today is actually the second Durham School.  It seems that no photographs remain of its predecessor erected in the 19th Century, and little is known about it today.

 The old school that survives has had several uses during its life, including tenure as an alternative high school.  The Tigard School District, to its great credit, seems committed to maintaining its classrooms and library for additional future use.  Adaptive reuse is a critical tool for saving historic buildings.

 The little white building offers another important lesson about historic preservation: monumental size or grandeur is not necessities for a genuine, important monument.

----Fred Leeson

 Join Building on History’s email list by writing “add me” to faroverpar463@gmail.com   (Please note that a hacker destroyed the earlier address.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Amazing 'Save' in Alameda

 

von Homeyer residence, facing west

When death and old age finally extracted the eccentric von Homeyer brothers from their lifetime home in Northeast Portland’s Alameda neighborhood, they left behind a daunting mess.

Seven junked cars sat in the back yard.  Years of hoarding left the interior of the 11/2-story home so packed with stuff there was barely room for passage.  Years of deferred maintenance took a toll from attic to basement.

In short, demolition seemed the obvious outcome.  Given city planners’ apparent lust for multifamily buildings, developers would salivate over the unusual trapezoidal lot at NE 24th Ave between Mason and Dunckley Streets.   

Alas, the developers never got the chance.  Nearby neighbors Jaylen and Michael Schmitt bought the property for $500,000, according to city property records, and spent months cleaning up the mess.  Then they worked on plans with MkM Architecture to restore and upgrade the house, built by the von Homeyer brother’s father in 1926.  It was the only home Hans and Karl von Homeyer ever had.

Schmitt said he and his wife had experience making renovations at their own home.  They also were concerned about what a new development would look like.  "We didn't want some monstrous mansion built across the street," he said. 

Alameda neighborhood historian Doug Decker, who has a marvelous grasp of researching city building and property records, found an original drawing of the house and its floorplan, designed by a Swedish immigrant architect, Ragnar Lambert Arnesen.   Decker’s investigations also uncovered many historic photographs and details of the von Homer family history.  You can read details as he uncovered them on Decker’s blog at www.alamedahistory.org.

South and east (rear) facades

Decker also found a building permit for 1959 which led to enclosure of columns on the front porch.  The added interior floor space provided more room for piano instruction offered to many students by Frances von Homeyer, mother of the two sons.  She died in 1990. 

As contemporary construction photographs show, the porch is being returned to its original open-air design.

Schmitt said he hopes to offer the house for sale when renovations are done, but he is not sure he will be able to recapture the investment at once.  If property values suggest he is risking a loss, he might offer the house as a rental until a sale makes financial sense. 

Neighbors taking action to save an interesting vintage home and to prevent construction of an imposing new building that wouldn’t relate to the context its neighborhood could prove to be a valuable, albeit rare, strategy for preservationists.

----Fred Leeson

Join Building on History’s email list by writing “add me” to fredleeson@hotmail.com

Whither Albina?

 

Brent Leggs addresses Albina Preservation Initiative

The leader of a bold national initiative to preserve Black historic sites took a walking tour of Portland’s Albina neighborhood and offered a few tips about big plans to create a new neighborhood on the bare bones of the old Albina.

 Brent Leggs is the executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action fund that is using $150 million in donations to help preserve important Black historical sites nationwide.  The intent of the national campaign is “to add missing chapters of our American history,” Leggs said.

His tour of Albina showed Leggs that “you can literally see how urban renewal erased physical history,” he said.  Nevertheless, “I saw beauty.  I saw community resilience.  It’s exciting to see the reclamation of history.”

 Albina’s physical landscape, amounting to the “downtown” of Portland’s Black retail, dining and entertainment community, was seriously fractured by construction of the Veterans Memorial Coliseum   and by an Emmanuel Hospital urban renewal plan that wiped out several blocks of small businesses.  After the urban renewal plan lost funding in the 1970s, some of the land remains vacant 50 years later.

One attendee at Leggs’ speech noted that plans for the new Albina consist of taller buildings than ever existed, meaning that the neighborhood will have nothing of the urban feel of old Albina.

 Leggs said the important steps are to preserve what is left.  And to work with developers who can be convinced that the new plans should try to save and complement the past.  “The stories of every day matter,” he said, adding that Albina’s community history should be recognized as part of Portland’s history.  Leggs studied marketing and business at the University of Kentucky before becoming involved in historic preservation, giving him an idea of the upsides and downsides of working with developers.

Leggs also urged that donations be made to complete restoration of the Billy Webb Elks Lodge, a building with a century of Black Portland history that was seriously damaged by fire.  The wood-frame building was erected by the YWCA in the 1920s for Black residents when Portland’s downtown YWCA was segregated.  After integration of the downtown YWCA, the building was sold to a Black assemblage of Elks members.  Restore Oregon is leading the renovation [project.

 The appearance by Leggs was sponsored by the Oregon Black Pioneers, Moreland Resource Consulting and Restore Oregon.  Leggs, who also is a senior vice president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, ticked off several recent preservation victories for Black historic sites.  They include the Washington, D.C., home of Frederick Douglass; the boxing gym of Joe Frazier in Philadelphia; the A.G. Gaston Motel, a civil rights venue in Birmingham, Alabama; the Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza in Akron, Ohio; and Nina Simone’s childhood home in Tryon, N.C.

In the 1980s, Cathy Galbraith, then executive director of the Architectural Heritage Center, undertook an extensive history of significant Black properties in Northeast and North Portland.  The “Cornerstones of Community” volume could prove to be a useful reference in rebuilding the “new” Albina.

 ----Fred Leeson

 Join Building on History’s email list by writing “add me” to fredleeson@hotmail.com  

 

Welcome to the 'New' Benson Polytechnic High School

 

It would be wonderful to think that the hundreds of people who lined up to tour the renovated Benson Polytechnic High School were all dedicated preservationists.

 More accurately, the visitors were mostly Benson grads from many decades who returned “home,” so to speak, to see what was new and what remained of the school they once attended.  Indeed, there was plenty of old AND new as the public got its first look at the sixth Portland high school to undergo thorough renovation.

For sure, the costly renovation was a preservation victory that will allow the building completed in 1916 to achieve many more years of vocational and pre-college education.  The most historic parts of the building – the foyer, west wing, gymnasium and auditorium -- retain their historic look and feel. 

Benson foyer

Several ancillary buildings that were added periodically over the years on the eastern side of the main hall were removed and replaced by new facilities including an attractive outdoor plaza between the historic wing and the new additions.

 “They did take out a lot of history,” said one alum who graduated in 2,000.  Regardless, she was pleased that the historic wing was carefully restored and reinforced for earthquake protection.

 

Benson auditorium

It is a lesson that preservationists wish the Portland School Board would apply at the historic Cleveland High School in Southeast Portland.  The school board has voted to demolish Cleveland and replace it with a new building.  A better model is the sort careful preservation/renovation projects already carried out Benson and at Grant, Roosevelt, Franklin, and McDaniel High Schools.

School district voters have yet to consider a bond measure that would pay for the Cleveland project.   In the meantime, preservation advocates hope there is still a chance for the school board to change its mind, especially if a preservation/renovation plan comes in with a better price tag.

In the meantime, take a careful look at Benson the next time you drive buy.  The building has been a valued piece of East Portland history for 108 years, and well worth keeping for its bygone architectural style and the countless memories created within it. 

New plaza looking east

----Fred Leeson

Join Building on History's email list by writing "add me" to fredleeson@hotmail.com

'Historic Enlightenment' in Portland Parks

 

New light and pole, Irving Park

The Portland Bureau of Parks and Recreation is nearing the end of a project to replace 250 light poles in 12 city parks, using new poles and lights that substantially replicate the design of predecessors that ranged up to 100 years old.

 The scope of the project ranges from 88 lights in Mt. Tabor Park and 65 in Irving Park, down to four in Ladd Circle.  While the new lights look like the old ones, they are lit with LED lights that a said to be 66 percent more efficient and bear sensors that automatically turn them on at dusk and off at dawn.  Most of the poles have been installed already; the remainder are scheduled to be finished by year’s end.

 In addition, the fixtures are designed to be “dark sky friendly,” meaning that the lights are restricted from sending light into the sky or bothering nearby residences.  While some LED lights can be glaringly white, the new installations offer a warmer, creamier nighttime glow.

Historic fixture at Architectural Heritage Center 

Trouble with the old light poles became an issue in June, 2022, when a babysitter and a young boy were resting in a hammock they had attached to a tree and a light pole, causing the pole to topple.  A city investigation concluded that dozens of the old poles were inadequately secured near the ground.  (It should be noted that attaching anything to a park light pole is a violation of the Portland City Code.)

 While nothing required the city to seek new poles and fixtures that looked comparable to the old ones, the decision carries an implicit suggestion that our parks have been important public spaces for decades.  The welcome historical symbolism suggests that the parks have been vital places for public recreation and respite for a long time – and should remain so for many decades to come. 

----Fred Leeson

 
Join Building on History’s email list by writing “add me” to fredleeson@hotmail.com

Progress at Two Historic Libraries

 

Albina Library

Two Portland architectural gems dating back to the Carnegie library era of the early 20th century are advancing with renovation projects that will inspire renewed library activity when finished in 2025.

 The larger project involves the Albina library at 216 NE Knott St. where a two-story addition behind the 1912 Spanish renaissance building will substantially expand facilities and activities.  The original building was designed early in the career of Ellis Lawrence, who for many years commuted between Portland and Eugene where he led the University of Oregon architecture program.

North Portland Library

The second historic library undergoing renovation is the North Portland library at 512 N. Killingsworth St.  It first opened in 1913, following the design of Josef Jacobberger who is best known for his work for the Catholic Church.  The North Portland library even shows some religious influences with its flattened gothic arches and elegant beams on the second floor reminiscent of a cathedral’s nave.

 Both buildings originally were funded by grants from Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy steel magnate who decided that his vast wealth could improve communities by erecting new libraries devoted to residential neighborhoods, rather than larger central city buildings.

 Both the Albina and North Portland libraries show the welcoming fundamentals insisted upon by Carnegie’s management team: Stairs rising from the sidewalk and electric lights generally flanking the doorway.  The theory was that visitors were to be “uplifted” and “enlightened” by their arrival.

 In all, Carnegie funded seven libraries in Multnomah County.  Three remain in the Multnomah County system, St. Johns, Albina and North Portland.  Two others, East Portland and Arleta, later were sold by the county and the last, South Portland, is used as a city Parks & Recreation office.

 The Albina project is expected to be finished in the second half of 2025; the smaller North Portland work is scheduled to be finished before next spring.  The new Albina space will include community meeting rooms and spaces devoted to teens and children.  North Portland will include a Black cultural center and a new outdoor space.

 Since both buildings are designated city landmarks, the plans had to be approved by the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission.  While that level of regulation was mandatory, the Multnomah County library staff should be complimented for their appreciation of, and dedication to, their beautiful historic architectural inventory.

 ----Fred Leeson

 Join Building on History’s email list by writing “add me” to fredleeson@hotmail.com

 

 

A 'Tasty' Architectural Treat

 

The best outcome for any landmark building is for it to continue thriving with its original use.  Case in point: Helen Bernhard Bakery.

This Northeast Portland “institution” famed for its cakes, pastries, rolls and breads, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.  Helen Bernhard, the wife of a Lutheran minister, started a cake business from her home as a hobby in 1924. 

As years rolled ahead, the Bernhard residence at 1725 N.E. Broadway was expanded twice to accommodate business growth.  Then, in 1939 – the height of the Great Depression no less – the bakery expanded into a new building next door 1717 N.E. Broadway, where today it continues to serve a grateful breadth of customers.

With its gambrel roof and multi-paned front windows, one might think the retail shop is a remodeled Dutch colonial house since those were common residential features of the time.  Not so.  At closer inspection, the ovens and baking equipment sit in a larger portion of the same building behind the gambrel roof.  The building was designed by Richard Sundeleaf, recognized for his industrial and residential work over a 60-year career in the Portland area. 

The former Bernhard residence next door 

Helen Bernhard died in 1968.  After she retired, two generations of her descendants operated the bakery before selling in 1988.  Since then, the successful enterprise is being run by the second generation of the purchasers in 1988.  

A century of success is an amazing landmark for any small business.  While it is the goodness of the baked goods that draws in customers, entering an attractive, well-designed historic retail space adds to the pleasure of a visit.  May it stay thus for years to come.

---Fred Leeson

Join Building on History’s email list by writing “add me” to fredleeson@hotmail.com 

 

Good News/Sad News

 

A Portland company renowned for saving and finding new uses for historic buildings has added another notch to its entrepreneurial belt with purchase of the four-story former Taft Hotel.

Through no fault of the McMenamin brothers, their purchase of the 117-year old building became possible after the sad failure of Portland’s disjointed systems for managing housing for troubled residents afflicted by personal tragedies including homelessness, mental disabilities and drug issues.

Until its closure late in 2021 because of management issues and maintenance problems, the Taft Hotel had provided housing for 70 low-income seniors, many suffering with mental and behavioral issues.

The $1.5 million purchase by the McMenamin brothers amounted to an interesting business opportunity, since the Taft building at 1337 SW Washington St. abuts the rear of the company’s popular Crystal Ballroom venue fronting on W. Burnside.  Purchase price for the 37,000 square foot building with 70 housing units and ground-level retail spaces amounted to no more than a single upscale Portland house.

The building had been owned by Reach Community Development, a non-profit low-income housing provider.  The Taft had been leased to a for-profit management company that walked away, citing building maintenance and other complaints.  

Mike and Brian McMenamin have built an eating, drinking, entertainment and lodging empire since 1984, by concentrating heavily on restoring historic buildings. Besides the Crystal Ballroom, their notable Portland-area venues include a former elementary building (Kennedy School) a funeral home (Chapel Pub) and county poor farm (Edgefield Lodge.)

The company speaks little to the press and keeps its plans tightly held.  The obvious opportunity at the Taft building is renovating into a boutique hotel since it sits close to the Crystal Ballroom and another McMenamin property, the Crystal Hotel, less than two blocks away.

While loss of the low-income housing is a blow to Portland’s fragmented low-income housing community, sale to the McMenamin chain could be an encouraging sign for downtown Portland, where numerous storefronts and office units remain vacant stemming from the COVID epidemic and downtown’s problems with unhoused campers and drug users.

The Taft building, completed in 1907, was designed by Portland architect Edgar Lazarus, who owned it until his death in 1939.  Lazarus also designed the nine-story Electric Building is best known for the Vista House at Crown Point, which takes advantage of magnificent views high above the Columbia River highway in eastern Multnomah County.

The Taft reflects what some historians call the "Chicago school" of architecture, with the tri-partite windows and wide spandrels.  The building was known for many years as Hotel Ramapo until changing to the Taft Hotel nameplate in 1955.  It because a residential care facility in 1985/86.

While the interior of the Taft building is reported to be in awful condition, the building has already been retrofitted with earthquake bracing which rates as a plus for the buyers.  That alone, along with the McMenamins’ reputation for undertaking responsible preservation projects, could provide the Taft building with many honorable decades ahead.  

 ---Fred Leeson

Join Building on History’s email list by writing “add me” to
fredleeson@hotmail.com  

 

Let's Save a Bridge Tower (or Two)

 

(Multnomah County)

Two diminutive, octagonal towers each a mere 11 feet wide rate high among Portland’s best-known landmarks.

Ask almost any Portland resident where the image above is located and the answer likely will be: “Burnside Bridge.”

Two operator’s towers with tile roofs were built on the two heavy bridge piers to provide controls for opening and closing bascules large ships pass.  Both have small staircases; one has a bathroom and the control equipment while the other is used for storage.

Neither will survive when Multnomah County builds its new “earthquake ready” bridge now in the preliminary design stage.  The “new” Burnside will replace the one that opened in 1926.

 There is no need nor space for retaining the historic towers in whatever form the new bridge takes.  Which begs the question: Will they be demolished or can a new use be found for or even both?

The county is well aware of the significance of the towers to the city’s landscape.  However, the budget for the new bridge must be limited to new bridge construction, and not for potential preservation and re-use of the towers somewhere else.

 However, because the bridge and towers are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the county cannot destroy historic fabric them willy-nilly.  Steve Dotterrer, a board member of the Architectural Heritage Center, sits on a committee charged with monitoring what happens to the bridges historic elements, including the towers and balustrades (railings). He said there have been “exploratory” talks with the county, but it is clear that the county budget cannot be used for erecting a tower at a new location.

 Heather Flint Chatto, the AHC’s executive director, said preservationists probably need to figure out a public/private venture that could preserve one of the towers perhaps in Waterfront Park as some sort of kiosk that includes a historic description.

 The towers were designed by the Portland architectural firm of Houghtaling and Dougan.  They may have been added when one of the bridge design engineers criticized Portland for having ugly bridges.  Houghtaling and Dougan also are known for designing the former Washington High School and the classical downtown Portland Elks Lodge that is now part of the Sentinel Hotel.

 While destruction of the operators’ towers is not eminent, it is a good time to start working on a preservation plan.  Given their compact size, it amounts to a “small” but important project.

 -----Fred Leeson

 Join Building on History’s email list by writing “add me” to fredleeson@hotmail.com

 

 

 

Can Cleveland High School Be Saved?

 

In coming months, trying to save Grover Cleveland High School from demolition might ripen into a major Portland preservation issue.

 The Portland School Board has approved plans to demolish the 1929-era school and build a replacement on the same site, while Cleveland students would be bussed to the former Marshall High site in the meantime.  The board has already authorized architects to start drawing the plans.

 Trouble is, voters have not yet been asked to approve funding for the Cleveland project.  And the districts own preliminary studies indicate that thoroughly rebuilding the school’s interior with new classrooms and mechanical systems could cost less than a new building.  The refurbishing also would bear fewer environmental consequences than tearing down and building anew.

 The school district also cited a survey of 1413 respondents, 81 percent of whom said they preferred a new building to renovating the old.  Alas, 40 percent of those respondents were students who likely didn’t have any appreciation of the environmental costs of demolition and starting new.  Concern also has been raised about how wording in the questionnaire may have foreordained the answers.

 

So far, no public stances have been taken by the two neighborhood associations directly related to Cleveland.  The school sits in the Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood, while the football field four blocks away – “Cleveland Stadium” – lies in Richmond.  Decisions by those associations could have an effect on the anticipated ballot measure for funding or encourage the district to change its mind.

The board of directors of the Architectural Heritage Center, a non-profit organization that strives to protect historic buildings and public places, voted strongly in favor of preserving the historic structure.  The directors said the first priority should be renovating it as a high school; if that fails, the building should be saved for some adaptive reuse, such as a community center or private business.  The directors also noted the added environmental costs of demolition and new construction.

It will take a significant community expression if the building is to be saved in any form.

 The four-acre Cleveland site comprises the 1929 building designed in a Classical Revival style by the district architect of the time, George H. Jones. Subsequent additions of less architectural importance were built adjacent to the original in 1957, 1958 and 1968.  At some point, the multi-paned double-hung windows were removed from classrooms in the 1919 building, but restoring them with comparable new windows could return the historic facades to their original appearance.

 The historic facades are red brick with staggered quoins of glazed terra cotta surrounding multiple doorways and exterior corners.  A historic evaluation performed by the school district in 2007 concluded that Cleveland “retains its integrity of feeling, association, materials, setting and workmanship” reflecting its origins and history.  The study concluded that the building would be eligible to for placement on the National Register of Historic Places.

During a 14-year tenure as the district architect, Jones designed 25 buildings in the era of Portland’s rapid growth.  Many of them – Irvington, Beaumont, Riggler, Duniway and Beaumont to name a few – stand as charming and well-loved monuments in their neighborhoods. 

 The Cleveland project is another step in the district’s plan to improve all Portland high schools for another century.  So far, the district has done comprehensive and tasteful restoration/modernization projects at Roosevelt, Franklin, Grant, Madison and Benson.  The school board opted to tear down Lincoln and build new, and made the same decision at Jefferson, where restoring the much-abused historic building was not supported by the neighborhood.

The good news, then, is that the district might be willing to be flexible.  That’s what preservationists should be asking for at Cleveland, hoping that it leads to a better outcome than demolition.

---Fred Leeson

Join Building on History's email list by writing "add me" to fredleeson@hotmail.com

 

 

 

The Fountain Dictates the Answer

Ira Keller and fountain designer Angela Danadjieva, 1970

When the Portland City Council sits down to decide on the location of a new Civic Auditorium, one immutable factor should make the decision easy.

 Sitting across the street from the current site is what Architectural Digest calls one of the world’s most “stunning” fountains.  The same one that the nation’s premier architecture critic of the era called “one of the most important urban spaces since the Renaissance.”

 The Ira Keller (nee: Forecourt) Fountain was designed to sit at the Civic Auditorium’s entrance.  It creates a vital, vibrant human space in front of the performance venue, gracing audiences with a spectacular experience both entering and leaving the Auditorium. Very simply, there is nothing that can match it anywhere in Portland – or anywhere else.

For this reason alone, the new Auditorium needs to sit in exactly the same place as the current one.  Building a new auditorium anywhere else would be a massive disservice to the fountain and to its role in the public realm.  The competing site is an old motel once desired by Portland State University that PSU now hopes to unload.

 Architectural Heritage Center directors and other preservation advocates also recommend keeping the current auditorium site.  But there has been little discussion about the value of the fountain and its potential to add greatness to a new auditorium across the street. (Or about consequences if the fountain becomes stranded.) 

The architecture critic who raved about the fountain in 1970 was Ada Louise Huxtable of the New York Times, who won the first-ever Pulitzer Prize for criticism the same year.  While applauding the fountain, she was less enamored with the Auditorium we see today. 

 She called it “a building of unrelieved blandness, sauced with piped-in music at non-performance hours.”  That should be a clue that we can do better – by designing a new auditorium that complements the fountain.  Portland’s best architectural minds should create a building that combines the drama of the fountain with the beauty of the art and music within the auditorium’s walls.

 And here’s another vital factor that must be considered when the City Council makes its decision:  What becomes of the fountain’s environs if the auditorium moves elsewhere?  Could the auditorium block become a parking lot?  Or a high-rise condo?  Imagine how the public would feel if the fountain becomes a “forecourt” for a parking lot, or the private front yard for upscale condo owners? 

Huxtable’s review of the fountain in 1970 touched on the importance of creative, attractive open spaces adding value to historic cities harking back to the Renaissance.   “These spaces have been the human and artistic cores of cities,” she wrote. “The 20th Century has substituted the parking lot.”

 We don’t do Portland a favor by diminishing a valuable asset we already have.  Let’s make the public space even more attractive and desirable with a well-designed new auditorium.

 -----Fred Leeson

Join Building on History’s email list by writing “add me” to fredleeson@hotmail.com