Last spring I was in Lincoln City, staying at a friend's beach house with some family visiting from West Virginia. One of the days we were there we ventured into town, visiting my daughter's favorite LC store, The Rocking Horse. The Rocking Horse has a prodigious collection of vintage and antique postcards which swallowed a good hour (at least) of my time that day.
I came home with this 25-cent treasure.
As a new-ish Portlander, I had to search for a while before I could figure out what building this actually was. It's certainly not one I remembered seeing before, and I soon discovered why: this building--now known as the Keller Auditorium, a building I'd definitely visited!--had undergone some pretty radical revisions in its century-long life.
Here's a picture of it in 1958, ten years before the radical 1968 renovation which transformed it into a bastion of the International style so popular at the time. At that point, pre-1968, it was still known as the Portland Municipal Auditorium.
And
here, in case you need a reminder, is what the building was transformed into (this photo taken only a few years after the update). It was also given the new, and more familiar, name The Portland Civic Auditorium. No wonder it was so hard to recognize.
I'm not a great judge of international style architecture; sometimes it strikes me with its elegant restraint, but I generally favor older buildings, like (ahem) them one in the original postcard. I am amused, however, by architecture critic
Ada Louise Huxtable's description of the building as "a building of unrelieved blandness."
I don't entirely agree, though, as the west-facing wall of windows simply glows when the interior lights are lit, letting passersby have a glimpse at a very glittery world inside while patrons have a wonderful view on the Keller Fountain across the street.
This brings me to the final impetus for compiling this post. A couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to go to the Keller for the open OBT company class and technical rehearsal for
Sleeping Beauty. Although it really was fascinating to see the inner workings of the ballet, between dance sessions I was distracted enough to snap these two shots on my phone camera. Other than that entrance, it's my humble opinion that the exterior of the building underplays expectations for the interior. The lights alone sparkle with elegance.
Maybe this lighting configuration was a product of the most recent renovation--funded by Ira Keller--in 2000, the one which gained the auditorium its current name. In any case, what a history there is to this place. Thank you, Rocking Horse, for a great treasure hunt!
