Painted Ladies

NW Glisan Street

“Those Victorians must have had fun,” said my friend who likes old houses.  She was referring to the bright, multi-colored paint jobs on old houses that have come to be known as Painted Ladies.

 Alas, if the Victorians had fun with their houses, it WASN’T because of the vibrant pinks, purples, yellows and other hues applied to the architectural details.  No, the Painted Ladies arose from the Flower Power generation in San Francisco in the 1960s.

 The trend began in 1963 when an artist named Butch Kardum used multiple colors to accentuate the details of his mother’s house on Steiner Street. His creative paint job attracted criticism, but his neieighbors followed suit, creating a street widely photographed by tourists to this day.  The name Painted Ladies comes from a 1978 book written about the phenomenon. 

Steiner Street (Library of Congress)

An example of Painted Ladies in Portland occurs on NW Glisan Street, where four houses dating to 1906 – shown at the top – have four or more colors applied individually to various details.  (The bright yellow digging machine in the street is purely coincidental.)  These houses reflect the Craftsman era, where the overall designs were simpler than the Italianate and Edwardian designs that flourished in Nineteenth Century San Francisco.  Nevertheless, the colors do grab one’s eyes.

 In the original era of Victorian and Edwardian houses, color schemes generally included just one or two colors on the main walls and a third color for brackets, cornices and window and door surrounds.  The colors available at the turn of the 20th Century were more bland than the palette available now.

 Bright colors on the Painted Ladies are eye-catching in themselves.  But if you are accustomed to looking at architectural details, the vibrant colors help an observer appreciate the various parts that contribute to the architectural whole.  They offer a window into design techniques and craftsmanship from the long-gone era.

 In addition, the Painted Ladies also testify to the skill of the color designers and careful work y the painters.  Painted Ladies don’t come from spray guns.  One drawback:  The Sun's radiation makes the bright colors fade faster than the gentler, traditional hues.

If you know of other Painted Ladies worthy of our attention in the Portland area, feel free to add them in a comment. 

 ---Fred Leeson

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