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 …

Every year that we can man­age it, we will go to the Hood River Fruit Loop tour. (But then we’ll accept just about any excuse to drive out to the Colum­bia River Gorge.) The hills lead­ing up to Mount Hood are a beau­ti­ful back­drop to the agri­cul­tural endeav­ors that bring us so much culi­nary delight. We always enjoy stop­ping at dif­fer­ent places each year to see if we can remem­ber where we went the year before. It’s just one of the lit­tle joys of get­ting older …

This year we decided to reverse our usual route so that we might arrive at one of our favorite des­ti­na­tions in time for lunch. This great house sits just across the street from the Apple Val­ley Coun­try Store and Bak­ery. Since I’m right in the mid­dle of rebuild­ing our porch, I have a height­ened aware­ness of porches — and this is a par­tic­u­larly sub­stan­tial example.

So the first order of busi­ness is stand­ing in line next to the smoker for some bar­be­cue. A lit­tle solo gui­tar music play­ing in the back­ground made up for the annoy­ing over-parenting going on behind us. Once lunch was fin­ished, it was time to go into the store and sam­ple the wide vari­ety of fruit jams and pre­serves that they pro­duce and sell. If there is still room after lunch and sam­pling, there also good pies being made and served on site as well.

Towards the end of our tour we once again sought out this amaz­ing, icon­o­clas­tic apple and pear orchard — The Mount Hood Organic Farms and Cot­tages. The pro­pri­etor has not only a wealth of fruit knowl­edge but also a pro­cliv­ity for eccen­tric archi­tec­ture as well. The photo above is his vin­tage apple sorter in a long room appar­ently designed to house it.

The odd thing to me is the appar­ent dis­con­nect between my expe­ri­ence of the place and the one pre­sented on their web site. Per­haps the eccen­tric archi­tec­ture crowd just isn’t well-heeled enough to go after.

This is a detail of some of the work under­way to dec­o­rate the build­ing com­pound that looks to be a long term owner/builder project.

A view across sev­eral of the build­ings gives a sense of the over­all effect. Of course, much more of it is under con­struc­tion than com­pleted at this point.

Before we depart, Lisa takes in a view of Mount Hood from the large invit­ing green in front of the build­ings. Her view from that van­tage point is directly towards the mag­nif­i­cent Mt. Hood.

After more demo­li­tion of yet another wall we found this card for Hodes Auto Parts neatly tucked into the paper lin­ing behind the fir lap sheath­ing. I liked the vin­tage look of the card and since it too came from an appar­ently orig­i­nal wall, I guessed that it too would date from 1928 when the house was orig­i­nally con­structed. I did a quick search on the inter­net later that evening and found a ref­er­ence to a post­card with an adver­tise­ment for Hodes Auto Parts dat­ing to 1928 — Bingo!

Then it occurred to me why the design looked so famil­iar. The logo I cre­ated for my cam­era design busi­ness was inten­tion­ally cre­ated to have a vin­tage look and it bears a remark­able resem­blance to Hodes’ card.
It must be a sign …

I placed the logo on a sim­i­lar card size here to show the resemblance.

In other news, my wife Lisa is begin­ning her con­tri­bu­tions to the Bun­galoft sec­tion of the Métier blog. Look for the first install­ment com­ing soon.

Kurt

Busy.
Not quite too busy but enough to keep me off the blog for a bit.
With the recent arrival of sum­mer weather in Port­land the sched­ule is top-heavy with the Bun­galoft project. A free­stand­ing Struc­tural Insu­lated Panel addi­tion fol­lowed by removal of all but the bath­room walls in our orig­i­nal 1928 bun­ga­low and the con­nec­tion of the two with an angu­lar breeze­way will be the real­iza­tion of the Bun­galoft con­cept (at least as we envi­sion it). It’s a small but inter­est­ing archi­tec­tural project that should make it to the pages of the blog at some point.

In the mean­time work on the 5 inch pan cam­era blue­tooth con­troller project continues.

The 28th Avenue Wood­work­ing Stu­dios (as I have now unof­fi­cially chris­tened this build­ing I work in) has some very inter­est­ing inhab­i­tants includ­ing Jason Andrew Designs. Jason has been work­ing on a beau­ti­ful series of fur­ni­ture pieces since he arrived. Fol­low­ing numer­ous con­ver­sa­tions about our respec­tive work, we embarked upon a bit of col­lab­o­ra­tion on Jason’s most recent design — a twist­ing, black-stained, Ash cof­fee table. Jason asked me to make a set of alu­minum feet for the tapered legs of the table. We’re look­ing at a few other designs for alu­minum feet and pulls.

I’m be look­ing for­ward to the usual bar­rage of sum­mer activ­ity includ­ing one of my favorites — the Adult Soap­box Derby.

Start­ing line at the Adult Soap­box Derby in Port­land, Oregon

The com­pet­i­tive spirit thrives and the water flies.

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.