Going, Going....Gone (Sorry, Elmer)

 

For 90 years, this gabled, shingled building served as clubhouse for the Broadmoor Golf Course, an 18-hole public course on N.E. Columbia Boulevard.  The family-owned course closed for good last fall. The doors and windows were boarded up. 

Today, the site of the old clubhouse is bare earth.  Scraped.  Over and done. 

 The land is zoned both industrial and open space.  Eventually, the frontage on Columbia Boulevard will converted to some industrial use,, like an exciting parking lot for big trucks, or a tasteful concrete warehouse with no employees.  Meanwhile, the northern portion of the old golf course will be retained as wetlands.  The Columbia Slough is no longer an intimidating water hazard for middling golfers. 

  When the huge Amazon distribution building was erected on the site of the old Portland Meadows horse track, its developers had to compensate for the wetlands lost as part of that project; a portion of the former golf course fulfills that requirement.

 The Broadmoor clubhouse was one of the few buildings designed by Elmer Feig that was NOT an apartment building.  During the 1920s, a decade of fast growth in Portland, Feig designed at least 33 apartment buildings, most of which survive.   Some of them are among the interesting of his era. 

Technically, Feig never was a licensed architect.  He had studied architecture at the University of Oregon, and worked for the city as a plans inspector from 1922 to 1927.  He operated an architecture office in Portland until 1935, when the Depression had essentially closed the construction business.

Feig then moved to Orlando, Florida, where he worked as a construction supervisor.  He retired to Yamhill County in 1965, and died three years later.

 While none of Feig’s apartments are exact duplications, he had design elements that he used frequently.  He liked fireplaces and heavy brocaded plaster finishes in his lobbies, even if the fireplaces were only decorative.  He liked colorful Spanish tiles on lobby floors.  Apartments almost invariably had coved ceilings and brocaded plaster walls; kitchens had many built-in cupboards.

Here are a few of Feig’s interesting apartments:

 
 Aronson Court Apartments, 1930.  Romanesque arches and turret towers were intended to capture “old world charm.”  

Aronson lobby

The lobby has been maintained in original condition.  No matter if the weather is sunny or rainy, when people enter here they know they are in…a different place.

 

Zenabe Court Apartments, 1929.  Some of Feig’s designs were like paired boxes, with a deeply-recessed entry way.  He often used corded cast stone to surround doors or windows.  The candle-like decorations also occurred often.

 

The recessed lobby provides an elegant entry passage, but requires extra steps to get to a unit.

 Irving Manor, 1928.  One of Feig’s smaller buildings.  Many of his doorway designs with Romanesque arches were similar to this on his smaller apartments. 

 

Flanders Apartments, 1930.  One of his larger designs shows Feig’s preferred decorative ornaments.  Regrettably from a visual standpoint, the fire escapes had to be added later.

The Depression ended Feig's career as an apartment designer in Portland.  Now eight and nine decades later, many of the current tenants love his buildings.  His Broadmoor golf clubhouse, however, is history.

------Fred Leeson

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