Lisa and I decided one after­noon to check out some of the notable build­ings along the newly opened tran­sit mall.

TriMet, the Port­land area tran­sit author­ity, recently opened the new North/South light rail route in the down­town area. After a lengthy period of con­struc­tion, traf­fic snarls and busi­nesses strug­gling to deal with the tur­moil, a free-ride day opened the new route.

It is inter­est­ing to sense the con­trast between the mod­ern electric-powered tran­sit infra­struc­ture and the clas­si­cally inspired buildings.

Replac­ing all but one lane of auto­mo­bile traf­fic on two major down­town streets is an exam­ple of the self con­scious deci­sion Port­land made about it’s trans­porta­tion future. And yet it could be argued that Portland’s grow­ing net­work of light rail is, if any­thing, a les­son learned from the past.

The sleek new MAX light rail train

There was once an exten­sive net­work of elec­tric trol­leys through­out Port­land. Like so many other Amer­i­can cities, the auto­mo­bile led to the even­tual aban­don­ment of most of that legacy.

It’s per­haps ironic to con­tem­plate the fact that some of the the ear­li­est Port­land trol­ley lines were set up as real estate pro­mo­tion lines although this is not true of the trol­ley shown below.

Mt Tabor Trol­ley — PDXHistory.com

The PDXHistory.com web site has an inter­est­ing page of early street­car his­tory in Port­land which includes the photo above — Mt. Tabor Car No. 438 near 65th & Belmont.

Our habit of tak­ing the occa­sional walk­ing tour of Portland’s archi­tec­ture was rewarded on this par­tic­u­lar day by the beau­ti­ful light that often fol­lows a bit of rain while there’s still water on the ground.

I enjoy that brief time between the soft light of a over­cast day and the chal­leng­ing light of a cloud­less sky when things seem espe­cially vibrant. We seized the moment and strolled along to take in some less famil­iar build­ings from the city’s past.

Bet even here were reminders of the trou­bled economy.

It was a nice dis­trac­tion from the Bun­galoft project.

We’re think­ing it would be cool to have a small group of peo­ple who would like to do archi­tec­ture walks. Maybe a Meetup group is in the works …

Peel P50

At 6′ 5″ inches tall, my inter­est in things small might seem inex­plic­a­ble, but the fact remains — small things are cool. And there is not much cooler than a Peel P50. Check out the links at left and @ the image of the Peel P50 above for some great shots of this great lit­tle vin­tage wonder.

Isetta plus teardrop

When I was a bit shorter my father worked for Porsche Cars South­west in San Anto­nio, Texas, the south­west regional dis­trib­u­tor for Porsche (“por sha, not porsh” as he used to say.) I grew up around inter­est­ing cars and car peo­ple.
So when my young eyes first glimped a BMW Iseta, I knew that it was just about the coolest thing a car could be — small. Of course, the next log­i­cal step is to add a teardrop trailer — another grow­ing inter­est of mine. An even smaller one can be seen here on the Tales and Trails website.

The park — in the mid­dle of Naito Parkway!

One wet Port­land after­noon Lisa and I set off on one our peri­odic archi­tec­ture tours in the down­town area. I decided it was time to visit Portland’s small­est park.

Mill Ends Park

It was a per­fect, rainy Port­land after­noon, the kind that makes color sub­lime and car tires hiss. Mill Ends Park, cre­ated as a home for lep­rechauns, appears with dif­fer­ent veg­e­ta­tive scenery in every pic­ture you will find of it.
Port­land being a cen­ter of the once boom­ing lum­ber indus­try, the term Mill’s End refers to the pieces left over in the process of con­vert­ing tress to lumber. The story of the park’s cre­ation is an inter­est­ing bit of Port­land his­tory and worth inves­ti­gat­ing at the Port­land Parks and Recre­ation site.

The cur­rent theme.

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.