...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...