Oregonian Building Redux

 

                                                                (Postcard, 1948)        

Portland’s most internationally-famed architect, Pietro Belluschi, is widely remembered for the Equitable Savings building he completed in 1948.  Its innovative sleek glass and aluminum design is considered the world’s first curtain-wall building that ushered in the International Style of modern skyscrapers.

Less well-known is another Belluschi building also finished in 1948. The 6-story Oregonian Building at 1320 SW Broadway also was a relentlessly modern building designed to meet a new era of mid-century communications, with printing presses, radio studios and a television station.  The newspaper bragged about it being “the largest structure built in Oregon in the last 10 years.”

 The block-size building was interesting in other ways, too.  Its main Broadway façade had a second entrance for Hostess House, the Oregonian newspaper’s model kitchen and space for cooking instruction.  The corner at Broadway and Jefferson was designated as a small retail spot, to be filled for many years by a drug store and a restaurant.

 On the fourth floor, space was allocated for a cafeteria or restaurant including open-air seating on a plaza above the third floor.

 On the Sixth Avenue side, big two-story windows were intended to give pedestrians a view of the huge newspaper presses that could churn out 90,000 broadsheet issues per hour.  They were so heavy they had to have a separate foundation.  A tunnel through the middle of the building provided access for circulation trucks and newsprint deliveries.

(Contemporary view, same vantage)

  The radio studios for KGW on the fourth floor had sound-proofed walls and ceilings, and air-lock entrances designed to keep out extraneous noise.  When the building opened in June, 1948, the newspaper described the noise protections thusly:  “The rushing roar of the presses, the rhythmic clacking of the linotypes and frenzied whine of metal saws in the composing room, the shouts and clicking typewriters in the newsroom, KGW wanted none of them.”

 Ultimately, the building failed to meet its ambitious intentions.  As a result of a disagreement with the newspaper company, Pietro Belluschi took his name off the final drawings.  The huge picture windows on Sixth Avenue became so spattered with ink that it was largely impossible to see the presses at work.

 The fourth-floor restaurant never materialized. Its space became the newsroom for the companion Oregon Journal newspaper when it merged with the Oregonian in the early 1960s and the outdoor seating plaza went unused. 

 KGW Radio did use the studios for a few years, but the Oregonian sold its interest in KGW before any TV broadcasting occurred in the building. 

In the 1970s, the Oregonian switched to a new printing process with presses in a different building.  Combining newsroom staffs late in 1982 led to major internal remodels on three floors.  When growth of the internet led to implosion of the newspaper business, the Oregonian moved out of the building in 2014 for rental space elsewhere.

 Dan Haneckow, a Portland historian, toured the building shortly after the Oregonian newsroom closed.  “It was fascinating, ” he said.  “Time seemed to have stopped in the early 1990s.  There was a decrepit grandeur to the place.  You could see how important it was. At the same time the world had passed it by.  Lots of old technology, sometimes strewn about the floor.  Awful drop ceilings which I assume have been removed.”

 Indeed.  An extensive internal remodel was completed earlier this year.  The designers respected Belluschi’s building envelope with its limestone panels and base of polished gneiss.  New potential small retail spaces have been created on the north and side sides of the building, in addition to the original retail location at the corner of Broadway and Jefferson.

 A canopy sheltering the main entrance and a secondary retail entrance on Broadway is new, providing welcome rain protection.

(New canopy, Broadway entrance)

The new primary tenant is AWS Elemental, an Amazon subsidiary that provides internet services involving digital content production, storage, processing and distribution.  In other words, the building continues to be a communications hub of a different kind for the following era.  To the preservationist's eye, it is a successful adaptation of a worthy building for new uses. 

Ironically, the same month the Oregonian Building opened, June, 1948, Pietro Belluschi was honored as a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, one of the nation’s highest awards.  It was his 25th year in Portland.  His other notable works included the Portland Art Museum, the J.P. Finley & Sons Mortuary (sadly demolished) the Equitable building and renovation of the Union Station train depot.  

 Belluschi’s long career was far from over.  He left Portland in 1951 and returned in the 1980s, continuing to be a prolific architect and consultant until his death in 1994 at 94.  One of his many, many legacies remains at 1320 SW Broadway.