October 8, 2006
The Customs Building
A stroll around downtown Portland led me to the old customs building. It is a beautiful structure facing a downtown park. About a 15 minute exposure with the P.90 prototype during a conversation with a curious passerby led to this image.
The following information on this building was provided by Bart King from his book:
An Architectural Guidebook to Portland
9. U.S. Custom House 1901; addition 1938
220 NW Eighth Avenue
Architect: James Knox Taylor/Supervisor: Edgar M. Lazarus
This massive and somewhat unusually designed building sits regally within a full city block and on top of a huge in-fill. The Custom House was substantially built up on its site to avoid the flooding problems that plagued this part of town during the early 1900s, and its pilings go down 80-100 feet.
Variously described by as French Renaissance or Italian Renaissance Revival, the ornamentations of this classical, granite-faced building is fascinating. Columns, scrolls, quoins, arches. dentils, and keystones abound. Find the terra cotta lintel stones over the window arches showing interesting governmental symbols like the staff of Aesculapius, and the dreaded glove on a stick.
Among the profusion, one finds images of scales adorning the building. These reflect both the weighing of goods inspected for customs and the traditional scales of justice. Courthouses were originally intended for the top two floors of the Custom House, and revenue from customs duties was an important function of Portland’s waterfront. The forbidding ironwork on the windows of the first floor is original to the building, and was designed to protect confiscated contraband and bureaucratic treasures like seals and paperwork.
Inside, with over 100,000 square feet, there is a lot of building to explore. A 1977 restoration helps the marble and classical plaster moldings welcome the eye, and a grand cast-iron stairway rises to the fourth floor. (The top floors of the east and west wings were added in 1938.) The two towers visible from the front (west side) of the building are for ventilation, and do not contain bells. In 1906, a small metal tower was built near the north chimney that dropped a large “time” ball at noon each day. Sailors would sight it and set their ship clocks accordingly. Construction to the east of the Custom House eventually obstructed the tower, and it was removed in 1925.
In 2005, the General Service Administration (which manages all federal buildings) announced possible plans for a developer to transform the Custom House into a mixed-use building. The idea is to house a hotel here and perhaps also have space for the University of Oregon architecture school. Creating public accessibility to this beautiful building is an exciting prospect; expect the huge open courtyard enclosed by the elegant loggia on the west side to attract coffee drinkers.
James Knox Taylor (1857-1929) was the Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury when he designed this building. An advocate of classical design, Taylor worked with Cass Gilbert (architect of the U.S. Supreme Court Building) before establishing his own practice. Building supervisor Edgar Lazarus is well known for his distinctive Vista House design in the Columbia Gorge.
