All's Square at Oblique

 

Behind any successful architectural preservation project stands someone with extraordinary passion, dedication and perseverance.  Without commitment, preservation doesn’t happen.

Jack Chandler is a prime example.  Back in 2007, he noticed a two-story wooden building dating to 1891 at the southern edge of the Kerns neighborhood.  The old store with living quarters above was listing some 22 degrees off center and the City of Portland wanted to demolish it.

Chandler had other ideas.  He liked the idea of living above a business and he liked the old building and the history it represented as a neighborhood store through few different iterations. Relying on his background in construction management, he spent the next three years straightening and repairing the structure and revamping the plumbing and electricity.

 Architecturally, the two-story building is the kind of carpenter-built structure often found on the western American frontier where wood was the most common and available building material.  The flat frontage is topped with a simple bracketed cornice; the walls are clad with dutch lap siding.

With renovation complete, Chandler opened Oblique Coffee Roasters at 3039 SE Stark St., in 2010, roasting beans and selling individual drinks in a pleasant environment filled with a smattering of antiques and an oaken piano from 1903.  The original fir floor bears the patina and charm of its age.

 Chandler took the name “oblique” from the slant of the building as he found it.  But you only see the name on a small a-frame sign near the door.  Chandler restored the original store’s name on the large “Wm. Landauer” grocery sign painted on the eastern façade. 

 As it was for many small businesses, the three-year pandemic was tough on Oblique’s business.  “There was no way I could see that coming,” Chandler said.  Because the building predates Portland’s zoning code, it is grandfathered as a commercial use in a residential neighborhood.  Alas, that also means there are no nearby businesses that might attract coffee drinkers to it; Oblique’s most frequent customers are pedestrians enjoying the neighborhood.

 Still, Chandler has no regrets.  “I love the building.  I want to own it forever,” he said recently.

 Chandler has enjoyed the coffee business.  But in a city with some 200 individual coffee roasters and many better-known coffee houses, running Oblique is no straight line to financial success. Chandler at some point conceivably could lease the storefront for another commercial use, while still living upstairs.

 If you’re in the neighborhood, take time for some good coffee in a novel, charming environment.  If Jack is behind the counter, thank for a job well done restoring a historic piece of the city.

--Fred Leeson

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