fountain, benson tower

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Some unremarkable photos of the fountain in front of the Benson Tower condo building in downtown Portland. Water features like this are actually kind of rare downtown; usually developers elect to put in retail space instead. So when I was putting together a list of downtown fountains, this one came to mind and I put it on a todo list as a definite maybe. I'm rather bad at removing things from todo lists even when they don't turn out to be that spectacular in real life (like this one), so I figured I might as well go ahead and do the post anyway.

The Benson Tower is so named because it used to be home to the historic Simon Benson House, which was moved to the Portland State campus a few years ago to make room for this shiny new condo tower. I mention this because I came across someone's old photo of the house at its original location, probably taken sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s, around the time I was going to PSU. As you can see, the house was a ramshackle gothic horror at the time, and I'm still surprised they were able to move it without it crumbling into dust or exposing a hellmouth or something.

Also pictured is the late, lamented TeleCafe, a tiny, literally hole-in-the-wall coffee joint, (sorta-)famed for having a real, live land-line telephone on every table. Which would actually be way more exotic and ironic now than it was then. I don't recall whether the coffee was any good or not. At some point in the 90s it changed hands and became something like "Bag End" or "Hobbit Hole" or something along those lines. It's just as well the condo builders came, in a way, since the owners of the Hobbit trademark are legendarily sue-happy, especially now that Part I of the huge Hollywood big-budget movie version is out now.

The shiny new and relocated edition of the house is home to the PSU alumni association and has no room for a disreputable semi-underground coffee house. Here's another photo, this one showing the vacant lot before the Benson Tower went in. The Tip Top Cleaners building in the background was also demolished to make room for condos; I have no particular memories of it, except that I seem to recall it had a cool retro neon sign out front. FWIW.

Bunker Hill Bridge

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A few photos of Boston's Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, more commonly known as either the "Zakim Bridge" or the "Bunker Hill Bridge". The name was apparently a source of bitter disagreement and despite the title of the post I really don't have a strong opinion either way on that argument. I just needed to pick one or the other to use as a title, so I did.

As I was walking around Boston, I wasn't primarily interested in bridges, but this one's rather prominent and kept popping up in photos, so I figured I had enough material for a post about it. It's a new-ish bridge, opened in 2003 as part of the Big Dig project, and carries Interstate 93 over the Charles River. No pedestrian access, though, which obviously limits the chances for photos from the bridge. Legally, I mean. I was in town for a conference back in July, and another attendee apparently drove into downtown Boston at night and came back with photos taken somewhere on the bridge. He wouldn't explain precisely where he'd been or how he'd gotten there, but they were really great photos. Certainly compared to these mostly chance shots. On the other hand I can post these here without any chance of being hunted down by the city's grumpiest Irish cops. Plus there was basically zero danger involved in taking these, which is always a plus.

Cable-stayed bridges are generally attractive, in an ultramodern but somewhat generic sort of way, and this is a fairly nice example of the genre. It's just strange to see a 21st century bridge adopted as a symbol of such an old city, which I've seen a few times. I suppose it's good to be reminded that Boston is a living, breathing city and not just a huge open-air historical museum where nothing ever changes.

Pike Place Market

Photos of Seattle's Pike Place Market from the last time I was there, several years ago (same as the previous two posts). It's surprising how rarely I go to Seattle; it's not only the closest big city outside Portland, but I was actually born there and most of my relatives still live there. Come to think of it, that may be why I go there so rarely. I average about one trip every five years or so, usually for someone's birthday or a wedding or something.

When I lived there as a kid, I don't recall going to Pike Place Market at all. It could be that I just don't remember it, since we moved away when I was 6. But I suspect my parents felt the place was old and disreputable, nothing like the nice new suburban malls we usually shopped at. As an adult, it's one of the very few things I actually envy Seattle for having, even though it's full of tourists and trinket stands.

Portland tried its hand at a public market back in 1933, and although it had a very cool Art Deco building, it was a financial debacle and closed in less than a decade. The now-defunct Oregon Journal newspaper owned it for a while after WWII, and the building was finally demolished in 1969, and the site is now part of Waterfront Park. You'd never know there was once an eleven story building there.

So for a long time I thought Seattle had a unique thing here that you couldn't find anywhere else in the country. And it's true that many cities either lost or never had an equivalent. But there are a few here and there, like the West Side Market in Cleveland. which I was rather dazzled by when I visited in March of this year.

There's a proposal floating around Portland that would build a shiny new public market at the west end of the Morrison Bridge, near the site of our fair city's previous debacle. This has been going around in circles for close to a decade now, and they haven't started construction yet, and to be honest I'm not entirely convinced the new one would fare better than the original. It's not as if we have a lack of options for upscale meat and produce here. I'd be much more impressed if they were working to bring affordable fresh produce to Lents or Rockwood instead of building another fancy creative class amenity for downtown. But hey, that's just me being a voice in the wilderness again. Still, if they build it, I'll probably show up and take some photos of it at some point.

Seattle Central Library

A few old photos of Seattle's Central Library. I usually roll my eyes when cities bring in Big Name Architects to design civic institutions for them, especially when said architects spend a great deal of time theorizing and conceptualizing and talking about their unbuilt projects. I do like the building, though, so all's well that ends well. And Wikipedia insists Mr. Koolhaas once wrote a screenplay for Russ Meyer. Which, speaking in my capacity as a fan of bad movies, wins him a few points.

Space Needle

A few nighttime photos of the Space Needle in Seattle from a few years back. I don't have any daytime photos of it, nor do I have any from the top. The last time I was at the top, I had lunch at the revolving restaurant and caught a bug from a plate of potato skins. Oh, the indignity. This was back in the late 1980s when people thought potato skins were fancy for some reason; it was a dark and primitive time. I'm told everything's under new management and so forth now.

Willamette Falls

A slideshow of Willamette Falls photos, from the viewpoint off 99E on the Oregon City side of the river. This is about the best view you can get of the falls without owning a boat or getting a job at one of the paper mills next to the falls. It's the only industrialized, urban waterfall we have in the area and doesn't fit our usual idea of waterfalls, which are tall, skinny, and mostly untouched by the modern world. So tourist guidebooks to the area often ignore these falls. The closest US analogies I can think of might be the Falls of St. Anthony in Minneapolis; Spokane Falls in Spokane, Wa; and High Falls in Rochester NY.

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Willamette Falls is a significant place in Oregon history, so at the risk of sounding like a third-rate Wikipedia clone (and one that relies heavily on Wikipedia, at that), it feels like I should at least try to relate a few interesting tidbits about the place rather than just going, hey, here's yet another slide show, enjoy.

The waterfall

People who care about these things claim Willamette Falls is somewhat of a big deal: 17th widest waterfall in the world, and 37th largest by volume of water. It would be in the top 20, in fact, except that much of the river is diverted away for hydropower, which we'll get to in a minute.

Fish

Several of the photos in this set show people fishing below the falls. The falls have been a prime fishing spot for migratory fish since time immemorial, primarily salmon and lamprey. Because of this, Willamette Falls and other major waterfalls around the Northwest were major cultural centers for native tribes of the region, and figured prominently in stories and legends. (One appeared here recently in a post about Coalca Landing State Park, explaining the origin of the park's once-famous balancing rock). The tribes retained their traditional fishing rights here after the 1855 treaty in which they lost virtually all of their land. The word "retained" is important here: Despite what the nation's racist uncles may have said over Thanksgiving dinner, this is not a matter of the federal government granting special rights to a minority. They were here first, the falls and the fish were theirs to begin with, and they never gave up their pre-existing rights.

I should note, however, that fishing rights don't guarantee an actual supply of fish. Lamprey populations continue to decline, and salmon runs are no healthier here than they are anywhere else.

History

The falls also explain why Oregon City is where it is. The town was founded in 1829 as a Hudson's Bay Company outpost (the main fort being across the Columbia River at Ft. Vancouver), as the falls were a convenient way to power a lumber mill. It would be several decades before the founding of Portland, so Oregon City was the major settlement in the region and served as the territorial capital. That, in turn, meant that the Oregon Trail ended here, as newly arrived pioneers had to stop by the courthouse to file their land claim papers.

The falls also meant that Oregon City was initially the head of navigation on the Willamette. A number of East Coast cities were founded along the Fall Line, and it would have been reasonable to think the pattern would repeat here as well. Ships couldn't go any further upstream, and moving products by land in the pre-rail, pre-paved road era was difficult and something you wanted to minimize if possible, so it seemed logical that a seaport would develop here. Portland soon took this role away from Oregon City, however; the credit's often given to (relatively) easier land routes, particularly the old Plank Road west to the farmland of the Tualatin Valley. This later evolved into Canyon Road, and then today's Sunset Highway (US 26).

Transportation

The falls didn't remain a barrier for long; in 1873 the Willamette Falls Locks opened, giving river traffic a route around the falls. They were initially a private venture but later became an Army Corps of Engineers project.

Over time river traffic lost out to the railroads, and both dwindled further once paved roads and motor vehicles arrived in the Northwest. The falls saw very little traffic in recent years and maintenance costs continued to escalate, so the Corps finally placed the locks in "non-operating status" in 2011. This seems to be bureaucratic lingo for "permanently closed" without actually saying "permanent".

Power

People in the Northwest usually think of hydroelectric power as something that involves a massive Bonneville-style dam, but Willamette Falls is home to PGE's historic Thomas W. Sullivan Plant, which has just a low dam above the falls to divert water into its turbines. Constructed in 1895, it's one of the nation's oldest hydropower plants still in operation, and was recently certified as "green power", which seems to mean that it's considered relatively benign to fish. An earlier hydro project at the falls enabled the nation's first long distance transmission of electricity, in June 1889, sending power from the falls to downtown Portland, 14 miles away. A historical marker in downtown's Lownsdale Square marks the event.

A page at the Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation provides a look inside the Sullivan Plant, which has a set of rather steampunk-looking vintage turbines.

Paper

The most prominent, and smelliest, part of the development around the falls is the paper industry. The falls were home to the Blue Heron paper mill on the Oregon City side, and the West Linn Paper Company on the West Linn side of the river, but the Blue Heron mill closed abruptly in 2011. The mill specialized in paper recycling, and apparently it's now more profitable to ship waste paper to China than it is to recycle it here. Which is yet another reminder that international trade is often bizarre and nonsensical. There are a few photos of the now-demolished powerhouse for the Blue Heron mill here

Future

In 2011, both the locks and one of the two paper mills at the falls closed, and both closures seem to be fairly permanent. The other mill seems to be prospering, as far as I know, and the hydro plant is licensed to operate thru the year 2034, but the closures still raise a question of what (if anything) to do with the falls going forward.

Willamette Falls Heritage Foundation and the Willamette Falls Heritage Area Coalition are interested in the historic preservation aspects of the falls, the latter group wanting to involve the National Park Service in the effort. The city government is apparently interested in shifting gears and becoming a creative class hub, and Metro's expressed interest in buying the old Blue Heron site, which would likely mean at least part of the site becoming a park at some point in the distant future, and probably repurposing at least some of the historic mill buildings, similar to what's under discussion for the remote Bull Run Powerhouse. Speaking strictly as someone who likes taking photos of waterfalls, that sounds like a great idea. With one important caveat, namely that I'm not interested in throwing anyone out of work just so I can get better waterfall photos.

november leaves

november sunset (ii)

november dusk

Alive

Some photos of "Alive", the new arts-themed mural on the back of the Keller Auditorium building, on 2nd Avenue between Clay & Market. This is part of my daily commute, and I'm pleased to have something colorful to look at instead of the old blank grey wall.

Before the austerity-and-budget-cuts crowd starts in with the usual whining about the city spending money on nice things in this economy (or any other economy), I should point out it only cost us around $3,200. I imagine much of that was for the paint, and painting the wall a flat ugly grey again would've likely cost about the same.

A neat thing about the mural (and probably one reason it was so cheap) is that it was created by a a PSU professor, assisted by students from her Art 399 class. One student blogged some nice photos of his section of the mural, inspired by the work of the French painter Raoul Dufy. I seem to recall having a Dufy calendar a few years ago, for whatever that's worth. All in all, this one gets the big seal of approval.

Soldiers Monument, Lownsdale Square

A photoset of the 1906 Soldiers Monument in Lownsdale Square, one of the city's surprising number of Spanish-American War memorials. A post over at Dave Knows PDX gives a little history of the monument.

The memorial was designed by the famous San Francisco sculptor Douglas Tilden (1860-1935). Tilden was deaf since the age of 4 and had a very successful career in what's thought of today as a not very accommodating era. Tilden was also rumored to have been gay, which (true or not) is bound to infuriate the sort of person who usually loves war and war memorials, even in this enlightened post-DADT era. These would likely be the same people who freaked out when someone used a little temporary chalk on and around the monument's base during the Occupy Portland protests last year, which you'll see in a few photos in this set. They shrieked on and on about how the memorial had been permanently defiled or destroyed or something, when in reality no damage, either permanent or temporary, was actually done to it. I imagine their heads would explode if they heard the rumors about the sculptor. Maybe they'd sue, or invite Fred Phelps to come protest the statue, or something.

More about Tilden and his Bay Area works at Found SF and SF City Guides.

A 1951 Oregonian article "Portland's Outdoor Statues" (July 8th, 1951) lists it among the city's "important" public art pieces. The others included the Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt statues on the Park Blocks, and the Thompson Elk between Lownsdale and Chapman Squares, as well as the Thomas Jefferson statue at Jefferson High School, and a religious statue out at the Grotto. While I'm linking to old blog posts, I should point out that two previous subjects are right at the Soldiers Monument: The Ft. Sumter Cannons, and Benchmark Zero. So if you go to Lownsdale Square to look at the statue, you might as well look down and see those as well.