Next up we're taking a look at Under the Same Sky, a very large mural in downtown Portland by Canadian[1] artist Kevin Ledo, whose website describes it briefly: "Under the Same Sky, 50’ x 60’, w/ exterior wall and spray paint, APTart Diversity project, Portland, Oregon, USA | Painted for the ‘awareness and prevention through art’ project, ‘paint outside the lines’". Ledo's website and Instagram obviously cover a lot of other murals besides this one; most are in a similar style[2], with a sorta-photorealistic portrait or two surrounded by a colorful design, like this recent example in Lynn, MA.
The mural's painted on the side of the historic Bishop's House building at 223 SW Harvey Milk (formerly Stark St.). The building looks extra fancy in front because it was built in 1879 as the official residence of the local Catholic archbishop, though due to a bit of exceptionally poor planning it only served in that role for a couple of years. The cathedral[3] next door was already being replaced by a larger one up in NW Portland, and when it opened this house was immediately obsolete and the archbishop had to move again. An 1892 panorama of downtown at Vintage Portland shows the Bishop's House sandwiched in between the old cathedral along 3rd and an ordinary 3-story commercial building facing 2nd. The latter building was probably demolished sometime in the 1950s to make room for today's surface parking lot, so that's where the blank wall for the mural came from. Jumping ahead to 2022, the house is now home to the Al-Amir Lebanese restaurant plus various offices upstairs. Some years ago -- and I remember seeing a news item about this at the time but can't find it now -- utility crews discovered underground wires connecting the Bishop's House building with the city's old police headquarters a block north on SW Oak, and the theory was that the wires were an old direct private phone line. It remains a mystery to this day what the line was for and who was calling whom and for what purpose.
Back in the pre-Covid era -- which seems like a billion years ago now -- I once had an office that directly faced this mural for a while. I liked it; it was colorful, and cheerful, and a big improvement over the vast blank wall it replaced. I'm kind of surprised I didn't do a post about it back then, but I suppose it didn't feel like there was any great urgency to it at the time.
1. Speaking of Canadian things, Ledo recently (2021) did a mural in Sudbury, Ontario in memory of Jeopardy host Alex Trebek, who was born there, and was kind of a big deal across Canada. Here's a CBC article about the mural. I've only been to Sudbury once, back in the mid-1990s, back when the town was most famous for the Inco Superstack, the world's second-highest smokestack (and highest in the Western Hemisphere) at 1250 feet. The superstack was built for what is still the world's largest nickel mine, back when people thought a tall smokestack dispersed toxins well enough that no additional pollution control gear was needed; you could tell you were approaching Sudbury by road because the surrounding forest became increasingly sparse and sickly-looking the closer you got, even before you got your first glimpse of the smokestack itself. The only thing I remember of the city itself was stopping for gas and the attendant saw my license plate and had never heard of Oregon before and had no idea there were states wedged in between California and the US-Canada border. I don't seem to have taken any photos of the place, though, despite how weird it seemed at the time. Anyway the big smokestack has been replaced with a couple of smaller ones and is supposed to be demolished at some point in the near future, so it's fortunate the city now has a new and much less toxic landmark for people to visit.
2.A 2020 GQ Magazine profile of the artist, co-produced with Lexus, argues that Ledo's style exceeds expectations just like the new 2021 Lexus IS does. Over on the youtubes, Doug DeMuro (a well-known auto reviewer with 4.4m subscribers) says it's just 'average', while another guy with 859 subscribers says DeMuro is wrong, which is how debates usually go over there. I have never driven one of these, or any sort of Lexus at all, and have no opinion whatsoever on the matter.
3.The old cathedral was demolished in 1895, not long after the panorama photo I linked to above was taken. A contemporary news item on the demolition said debris from the old building would be used in a new 2 story office building on the site. Which might be the same two story building that's there now. If so, the ground floor was home to the recently-departed and widely missed Cameron's Books, which had been there since the 1930s. For almost as long, the second floor was home to the Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant, which was reputedly the worst Chinese place in the whole metro area but somehow stayed in business anyway. A few years ago it morphed into today's "Golden Dragon Exotic Club", keeping the previous name and even inheriting its pile of single-star Yelp reviews. The whole building is pretty decrepit-looking these days and would likely have been torn down for condos or a luxury hotel ages ago if there wasn't a historic structure next door, mid-block in about the most inconvenient place possible. I suppose they could just build around it like the house in "Up", or the similar real-life one on the PSU campus. Long story short: Old building, semi-colorful backstory, draw whatever conclusions you like.
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