...You can see forever (from Portland Heights)

And if it's a bit hazy, you can still see pretty far.

Evening light, the PAM, and, of course, the ghost of Belluschi

Shattuck Hall

Now home to Portland State's architecture department, Shattuck Hall was originally built in 1915 as an elementary school, and in 2008 received a LEED silver certification for its modern renovation. Moreover, the modernization won both an Honor Award and a Sustainability Award from the American Institute of Architects. If you follow the link, you'll see a photo of an interior whose sleek modernity isn't even hinted at by the century-old exterior. But you will see where the redesign incorporated areas which expose the years of updates and structural morphings, making this a real learning laboratory for the students who study there.

Best bit of trivia for you art lovers out there: this was Mark Rothko's elementary school, which he transferred to from Failing School. His Jewish family lived on Lincoln and later on SW 2nd, in one of the tightly knit ethnic communities which was lost to the urban renewal projects of the mid-20th century. His parents moved a couple of blocks into the Shattuck district because it was in a slightly more affluent neighborhood and offered their son a better education. Some things never change. Rothko wasn't at Shattuck long, though; after a year at Failing where he started as speaking no English, he was placed in third grade at Shattuck, and then skipped to the fifth grade the following semester. Apparently, he was a bit of a quick study. See Mark Breslin's Rothko: A biography for more information.

Put that in your hot dog bun and eat it

Some of the merriest news I've seen this past week:

Portland food carts ranked best in world

Washington Park reservoirs

Personally, I find the Washington Park reservoirs (well, OK, the Tabor ones too) lovely, so much so that they evoke in me a certain starry-eyed naivete about Portland. They speak to me of a place which values elegance in design, nurtured early visionaries who developed a very particular sense of the place they wanted to leave to their children, is clean and safe enough to hold its drinking water open and above ground, and places great pride in its resources.

I only say this with my tongue part way in cheek: thank goodness the EPA has their feet firmly on the ground. They have little need for the nostalgia I like to get lost in, after all. I won't even touch their recent, seemingly uniformed decree that the city build a cryptosporidium prevention plant to treat the water Portland gets from the Bull Run reservoir. But I will admit that while I paid a lot of attention to that news last winter, I somehow missed the second part of the EPA rulings: that Portland replace their open-water reservoirs by 2014. In other words, it's hard to say if scenes like these will soon be missing from the Washington Park experience.

The latest news I could find on the matter is that the city drilled under the reservoir in May to ascertain the suitability of the slope for upgrades. There is talk of burying the reservoir, which seems in truth to mean constructing a "real" reservoir beneath the one you see in these photos and perhaps using the existing reservoir for another purpose. However, all plans seem a little up in the air at this point (or it could be that they've not yet been finalized or published). So I'm just going to let this post stand as a grateful gesture backwards towards a time when municipal projects kept an eye on design as well as functionality, and keep my fingers crossed for the future project, whatever it may be.

On a lighter note, to see the reservoir and other local landmarks in a hip and stylized recent Levis commercial, click here. Isn't it pretty? You know, if the powers that be featured our area in more commercials, we might just find our way out of this recession.

Follow Leif Erikson as far as you wish to go.

You probably know the history: ambitious speculators wanted a string of housing developments along the west hills. The city assessed taxes for plats along what we now know as Forest Park, and with all sorts of revenue-garnering development in mind, built a road. But Nature had other ideas, and the city fathers soon realized that keeping the road open to the automobile-hungry public would take far more effort than they bargained for. The Sons of Norway made a bid for the name, the city of Portland made a park, and Leif Erikson Drive was born to the delight of many future hikers, bikers, and daydreamers.

Leif Erikson runs through Forest Park like a spine: the internet is littered with trail reviews and warnings of mud. But a little searching will take you to some of the older history of the area, like the old timer who recalls boyhood days of exploring a mercury mine nearby until a prank inspired the city to blast the mine shut. Even better than that is the original park system proposal put together for the city by the Olmsted brothers. What follows are a few excerpts revealing their understanding of how parklands function in the public sphere. I think that if they saw the many ways Portland loves Forest Park today, they might be pleased.

"The backwardness of municipal park systems is not so much due to lack of intelligence and lack of public spirit, as to a defective development of the love of beauty, as compared with a well-developed appreciation of practical, utilitarian progress."

"Parks, like public libraries and art museums, must meet the public needs in the main, else they will lose their power for educating the public to better things, but they should be managed by wise and public-spirited men who will strive to gradually and considerately improve the public taste. The people can be led toward higher ideals, but they must in the main be led unconsciously and by force of example rather than scolding."

"It is true that some people look upon such woods merely as a troublesome encumbrance standing in the way of more profitable use of the land, but future generations will not feel so and will bless the men who were wise enough to get such woods preserved. Future generations, however, will be likely to appreciate the wild beauty and the grandeur of the tall fir trees in this forest park or reservation, as it would perhaps better be called, its deep, shady ravines and bold, view-commanding spurs far more than do the majority of the citizens of today, many of who are familiar with similar original woods. But such primeval woods will become as rare about Portland as they are about Boston. If these woods are preserved, they will surely come to be regarded as marvelously beautiful."

On a clear day...

F*** the rich? Maybe not always a good idea

That first bit is a piece of graffiti I saw on a hidden staircase landing while on my walk today from Chapman School up to Pittock Mansion. For those of you who know the neighborhoods such a walk would lead through, you also know that the graffiti artist did a better than usual job of targeting his audience. Those neighborhoods--Northwest Portland, Kings Heights-- were not built for the weak of wallet. The earth was literally moved in order for the homes to be built there; Laura Foster does a good job describing the sluicing process necessary to construct the terraces in her book Portland Hill Walks (yes, I finished City Walks and have moved on to other company for my days). But Portland in all of her admirable social consciousness does tend to have a fairly vocal divide between the haves and have nots, so let's take a look at perhaps the most familiar symbol of wealth in this town, Pittock Mansion.

First of all, Pittock was not exactly landed gentry. The apocryphal story tells us that Henry Pittock came to Oregon at nineteen and eased himself into a job at The Oregonian, but his boss could not afford to pay him and instead handed over to Henry ownership of the paper. This would have been around 1860, just before Portland truly began growing into the city we think of it as being today.

Moreover, the Pittocks may have been physically above all the rest of the rabble milling across the muck and planks that made up our city streets at the time they lived in the mansion from 1914-1919, but that's about the extent of their separation, as far as I can tell. For instance, Georgiana Pittock, also of humble origins, not only had a hand in starting Portland's Rose Festival, but also helped to found the Martha Washington Home for Single Working Women and helped found the Ladies' Relief Society. She sounds like a surprisingly progressive turn of the century woman I would feel fortunate to know today.

And lastly, the early demonstration of some of the values Portlanders hold very dear today, i.e. keeping things local and building to work within a landscape rather than over top of it, were part of the original conception of the mansion's design. None of this makes the Pittocks sound like the cliche obliviously wealthy family. But a lot of it does make them sound like we should perhaps be grateful to have had them as a cornerstone in the city's lineage.

Wow. Had you known me fifteen years ago, you might have never guessed I would write a blog post defending the very wealthy, and there is something deep within me that still twitches a bit at the thought. However, I like to think I've grown.

Also, I do want to include one bit of trivia about Georgiana I ran across here, but couldn't easily verify at a "more reliable source": the doyenne of the home was apparently so frugal that she saved the silver foil from her tea packages for years, and then later used the foil to cover the ceiling in the entryway of the mansion. Gotta love a DIY girl.

Is Forest Park in danger?

Pieced together from private holdings, Forest Park has been part of the people's vision of Portland for the better part of two centuries. It's our crown jewel. It's one of the largest urban forested park areas in the United States. It's the metaphoric backbone of our city and our identity. But is it safe for our future enjoyment? The Portland City Club is not so sure.