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| Newspaper advertisement, 1964 |
One encouraging thought for architectural preservationists
is that we don’t have to worry about saving “historic” projects that never made
it off the drawing boards. This
inspiration is prompted by a new exhibit at the Architectural Heritage Center
called Unbuilt Portland.
The exhibit includes a dramatic painting showing 15 bulky stories
of apartments grafted atop the old Masonic Temple (shown below) that is now a part
of the Portland Art Museum. Among other non-starters is a tall spire that
thankfully was never added to A.E. Doyle’s classical Roman temple of the U.S.
National Bank downtown, some underground parking and highway plans..
The prospect of failed proposals brings to mind another major project not mentioned in the AHC exhibit. It was a plan submitted to voters twice in
1964 to build at 64,700-seat domed stadium close to Delta Park in North
Portland. Proponents hoped the $25
million project would land a major football or baseball franchise, and perhaps
even the U.S. Olympics.
The concept of a domed, multi-purpose stadium was still new
in 1964, when Houston’s Astrodome was not yet completed and several
other cities were conceiving stadia that could house both major league baseball
and football teams.
The Delta Dome was unique in that it would have had natural ventilation from air flowing through a gap between the
larger inverted bowl that comprised the Plexiglas roof and the smaller seating
bowl below. The creative design was the
product of the big Skidmore Owings Merrill firm that had designed Memorial
Coliseum just a few years earlier.
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| Apartment proposal, circa 1955 |
Delta Dome drew heavy support from local politicians, sports
enthusiasts and business interests who believed the new stadium would be an economic
stimulant. A sportswriter contended the
ballot measures gave Portlanders the choice of being “a Big League City or a
Sad Sack Town.”
Voters in May and again in November of 1964 took the sad
sack town option, and that was the last we heard of Delta Dome.
Had the dome been erected, there was a strong opinion that
Al Davis would have located his AFL football team, the Raiders, in Portland
instead of Oakland. How long he would
have remained in Portland is a good question; Davis later moved from Oakland to
Los Angeles, then back to Oakland; his son later fled Oakland for Las Vegas.
Further, the domed stadium concept proved unsuccessful
elsewhere. Today the Astrodome is long vacant;
Seattle built the Kingdome and later imploded it. It turned out that stadia built for both
football and baseball didn’t provide optimum seating for either sport, and
major league cities these days have erected separate venues for the two sports.
With the defeat of Delta Dome, the City of Portland decided
to buy Multnomah Stadium from the private Multnomah Athletic Club. The 1920s-era stadium has been renovated
several times since and is now used almost exclusively for professional soccer. However,
its current seating capacity of 25,000 suggests that another significant
expansion likely will be in the offing (as Building on History has suggested earlier) if professional soccer continues to grow
in popularity.
The Architectural Heritage Center's Unbuilt Portland exhibit (along with other displays) is open Thursdays
through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 701 SE Grand Ave. It might leave you with the realization that
sometimes the city is better off with what it doesn’t achieve.
----Fred Leeson
Join Building on History’s mailing list by writing “add me”
to fredleeson@hotmail.com
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