Metropolis Books
Our image of ourselves is defined in part by our what-might-have-beens. What if, we wonder, we had married our high-school sweetheart? What if we’d majored in business instead of art? What if we’d taken that job in Chicago? The mind reels from the possibilities.
The same goes for our built environment -- that is, the cities around us. The new book "Never Built New York," by Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell, captures the far-out ideas (a dome over Manhattan!) that made it to the drawing board but never made it to the Big Apple's skyline. An exhibition based on the book comes to New York's Queens Museum in September.
Needless to say, New York isn’t the only city with buildings and grand urban plans that never came to pass. Portland has had its share, too -- fantastical ideas that would have resulted in a completely different city than the one we know today. Let’s take a look at some of the buildings and ideas that never happened in the Rose City and beyond...
Oregonian archives
The Portland that could have been, Part I
In 1986, the Oregon School of Design organized an exhibit called “Visions of the Future,” open to students and professional architects alike. It was dedicated to imagining how Portland would look ... well, right about now. The particular vision seen in the image here has a monolithic, divorced-from-nature feel to it that seems rather unPortland, but the design received kudos. Portland's actual future, of course, turned out to be somewhat different -- and, unfortunately, it doesn’t include the Oregon School of Design. The architecture school closed in 1991.
Oregonian archives
The Portland that could have been, Part II
Broome Oringdulph designer Rudy Barton's “Visions of the Future” proposal included a man-made island in the Willamette River, “starting upstream of the Hawthorne Bridge and extending north past the Morrison,” turning Portland into a kind of American Venice. The Oregonian’s Alan R. Hayakawa wrote that at first glance it seemed “crazy,” but “a second look at Barton’s seductive presentation makes it clear that the project could really be built, and it would be lovely.” He continued: “Pedestrians -- but no cars -- could get there from either of those two bridges from the east side. Institutions such as the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, an aquarium and an arboretum would be linked by pedestrian paths and a network of small canals. Parks, restaurants, gardens and waterways would combine to create a special place in the river, at once within the city and removed from it.”
The view from a Pearl District aerie (Oregonian)
The Portland that could have been, Part III
Gary Caperna, another visionary in the “Visions of the Future” exhibit, imagined a downtown where Portlanders clamored to live. In 1986’s pre-Pearl District Portland, The Oregonian’s Hayakawa found the notion hard to fathom. Caperna, he wrote, offered “tiny towers, elegant from the outside, [that] stack multilevel living spaces interconnected by walkways above the ground. The idea looks nifty, but would enough people want to live in a four-level, 1,200-square-foot apartment, even if it had a smashing view of the city?”
The Masonic Temple (Oregonian)
The Portland that could have been, Part IV
The “Visions of the Future” exhibit offered a plethora of possibilities. Another idea: “Douglas Keys suggested a high school for the performing arts on the vacant three-quarter-block site between the Masonic Temple and the Roosevelt Hotel at the north end of the South Park Blocks,” The Oregonian wrote. “Keys’ school would challenge the massive scale of the Masonic, and its eclectic style assembles everything from a portico modeled on a Greek temple to a cylindrical tower to modernist ‘exposed-structure’ upper stories.” The Portland Art Museum purchased the Masonic Temple building in the 1990s; it underwent a $42 million renovation and opened in 2005. The Roosevelt Hotel is now condos, and the vacant three-quarter-block is ... surface parking.
The Oregonian
The Portland Building
Some people love downtown's Portland Public Service Building, and some people hate it. (Many city employees who work in it fall into the latter group, thanks to tilting floors and persistent dampness, among other construction problems.) But love it or hate it, the late Michael Graves' 1982 tour de force is a memorable and important accomplishment -- and that's not even taking into account the iconic Portlandia sculpture hanging over the entrance. The building "helped define the American Post-Modern style," The Oregon Encyclopedia writes. Graves said his goal was to "humanize" the office building, no small ambition in the "Dilbert" age.
"Michael Graves"/University of Oregon Library
The Portland Building that could have been, Part I
The building, with its alternating colors and automobile-like grille, looks like it leapt fully formed from a dream, but in fact Graves played with a variety of similar but distinct looks for it. Early design sketches show that a claw-like pedestal was a possibility for the first two floors. Another gave off a kind of Noah’s Ark look. Still another had an Egyptian aesthetic. These are what Graves called “referential sketches”: they served as “a visual diary, a record of an architect’s discovery.” Such early sketches, he wrote, “might not even be a drawing that relates to a building or any time in history. It’s not likely to represent ‘reality,’ but rather to capture an idea.”
University of Oregon Library
The Portland Building that could have been, Part II
If you want to see all the permutations and possibilities Graves worked through, take a look at the book "Michael Graves: Buildings and Projects 1966-1981" (Rizzoli International). Even as the computer took over his profession, the acclaimed architect remained a strong proponent of working through architectural problems on paper. "Architecture cannot divorce itself from drawing, no matter how impressive the technology gets," he wrote in the New York Times in 2012. "Drawings are not just end products: they are part of the thought process of architectural design. Drawings express the interaction of our minds, eyes and hands. This last statement is absolutely crucial to the difference between those who draw to conceptualize architecture and those who use the computer."
The Oregonian
The Portland Building that could have been, Part III
The Portland Building’s architect was chosen through a rigorous design competition overseen by the legendary Philip Johnson, who created New York’s Lipstick Building and Pittsburgh’s neogothic PPG Place, among many other iconic works. Johnson’s playful description of the three Portland Building designs that were named the finalists: “the temple, the doughnut and the classic glass box.” Graves’ offering was the one Johnson dubbed “the temple.” The “classic glass box” -- a 12-story building with “all-glass skin” -- was by Canadian architect Arthur Erickson. Aldo Giurgola, whose design featured rounded corners and a 100-foot-tall lobby with glass walls, designed the “doughnut.” The image above is Erickson’s design model.
University of Oregon Library
The Portland Building that could have been, Part IV
Then there’s this amazing sketch that’s in the University of Oregon Library’s extensive collection of images related to the Portland Building. Was this an architect’s attempt to, as Graves put it, “capture an idea” for the downtown project? Ummm, no. A UO librarian pointed out that the sketch is signed by cartoonist (and Addams Family creator) Charles Addams, who did not moonlight as an architect. It seems the late University of Oregon art professor Marion Dean Ross included it in the library’s Portland Building collection, perhaps indicating the direction he wished Graves had gone. Or it could be that the widespread contemporary criticism of Graves’ design made Ross think of the comment that “Lady Bird” Johnson, the former first lady, made when asked about the property that would become the LBJ Ranch. "Well, it looked a bit like a Charles Addams cartoon,” Johnson said. “And I think that if I'd been told that I was going to buy it and start trying to make it into a home I would have turned and run."
Oregonian archives
Memorial Coliseum
A few years ago, city politicos wanted to raze Memorial Coliseum -- the building where the Trail Blazers won their one and only NBA championship -- and replace it with a minor-league baseball stadium. But the coliseum's proponents fought off that effort, insisting it was one of Portland's design highlights. Then-City Commissioner Randy Leonard couldn't believe that many Portlanders -- including real, live architects -- would resist efforts to knock down the building. "It's amazing to me that some people have persuaded others that the coliseum is some kind of an architectural gem when it's in reality a child only a mother could love," Leonard said. "The dirty little secret in Portland is that it's ugly. Somebody needed to say it."
Shiels Obletz Johnsen
Memorial Athletic Recreation Complex, Part I
So Commissioner Leonard said it: Memorial Coliseum, in his view, is ugly. It’s nevertheless staying upright, though it remains outdated and leaks money. So what now? One fascinating proposal that gained a burst of attention in 2010: turning the Blazers’ former home into the Memorial Athletic Recreation Complex, or MARC. At first glance at the design, the coliseum looks exactly as it always has: a big, glass-sheathed box. But the MARC renovation idea promised a lighter, airier interior, giving commuters passing by on Broadway street a gander at a memorably active space.
Shiels Obletz Johnsen
MARC, Part II
The project-management firm Shiels Obletz Johnsen put forward the plan for the Memorial Athletic Recreation Complex. The firm called it a “sports village,” and the proposal would have added new floors featuring a sleek velodrome track, basketball courts, an Olympic-sized swimming pool and other athletic offerings for weekend warriors. This would have deemphasized the unique bowl arena, which would have been shrunk down but remained big enough to continue hosting the Portland Winterhawks hockey team.
Shiels Obletz Johnsen
MARC, Part III
Up against an ambitious retail-and-entertainment district proposal called "Jumptown," Shiels Obletz Johnsen tried a hard sell. "This is a defining moment for the future of the Rose Quarter, Memorial Coliseum and our city," Douglas Obletz said in a statement. "Now is the time for the citizens of Portland to step up in support of a community project that symbolizes what Portland is about. The MARC represents responsible use of public assets, promotes health and wellness, serves kids and families, preserves our architectural heritage, commemorates our veterans and enhances tourism and economic development."
&Shi '
This Trail Blazers-backed idea for the Memorial Coliseum would have included remaking the entire Rose Quarter, long a goal for both the city and anyone who owns property in the area. As far as the coliseum goes, the development proposal removes seats to create "party decks" for fans to mingle and network while occasionally watching the Winterhawks whack at the puck below. The plan links the coliseum and Moda Center to underutilized property across North Interstate Avenue. The notoriously lifeless area gets new restaurants, shops, a hotel and even a Nike museum. "We wanted to not develop an approach in a vacuum," a proposal spokesman said in 2010. "We wanted to make sure it fits in with the plan of a vibrant district."
Courtesy of PDC
The Portland that still might be
Sometimes dreams do come true. One that looks like it will indeed pan out: the redevelopment of the U.S. Postal Service property in the Pearl District. The sprawling post-office complex that crowds the ramp to the Broadway Bridge has been an eyesore ever since the neighborhood began to transform in the 1990s from an industrial wasteland to a high-end residential-and-retail drawing card. "Whatever is built, Portland wants to go up -- creating a dense, urban neighborhood with thousands of new jobs and residents, public open spaces and thousands of parking spaces," The Oregonian's Andrew Theen wrote in 2015. Early concepts for the property include a skyscraper that would be the city's tallest, stretching beyond the 546-foot-tall Wells Fargo Center, and an expansive public plaza that would link Union Station on the other side of Broadway to the new development. Plans also include a "Green Loop" that would extend the North Park Blocks. The city of Portland is purchasing the 13.4-acre post-office property for $88 million.
Courtesy of Snohetta
James Beard Public Market
It's probably still going to happen, but not downtown and with a significantly reworked design. A gleaming indoor public market was going to be the centerpiece of a development at the west end of the Morrison Bridge. "The public market has been an elusive vision for more than a decade," The Oregonian wrote last fall, "but seemed to gain serious momentum in 2011" when the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners chose an ambitious development that included it. Ultimately, on- and off-ramps for the Morrison Bridge proved troublesome. The market's developers are now looking at a 16-acre property on the east side.
Oregonian archives
The Portland that once was
The flip side of never-built classics are torn-down classics. The memorial coliseum was saved but not all architectural gems have been so lucky. The example above: The 1920s art-deco Broadway Theater between Salmon and Main, which fell before the wrecking ball in the 1980s. The staid 1000 Broadway Building replaced it. There are plenty more lost Portland architectural treasures we could highlight. Here are three ...
The Oregonian
The Oregonian Building
The 1892 building was the city’s tallest until 1911. The elegant, steel-framed building with the soaring clock tower housed the newspaper’s newsroom and printing press until the late 1940s. It was razed in 1950.
The Oregonian
Portland Public Market
Long before plans for the James Beard project sprouted, Portland had a landmark public market on the downtown waterfront. Opened in the midst of the Depression, it was marketed as the country's "largest supermarket" -- but it failed to catch on with the public. The 1930s building was used by the U.S. Navy during World War II and then by the now-defunct Oregon Journal newspaper. It was demolished in 1969.
The Oregonian
Portland Hotel
Another lost landmark is the magnificent 19th century hotel that stood where Pioneer Courthouse Square now can be found. For decades, this hotel was the place for well-heeled Portland visitors to stay -- including multiple U.S. presidents. The 284-room hotel was knocked down in the early 1950s, despite The Oregonian calling it "one of the last remaining symbols of the city's gracious, leisurely past." The property was a parking lot for three decades until the construction of Pioneer Courthouse Square.
AP
Tribune Tower
Portland is far from the only city where denizens look at their skyline and wonder what might have been. Every city is haunted by ambitious projects that never happened -- even Chicago, with its world-class architecture. One of the Windy City’s most famous buildings is the neo-gothic Tribune Tower on the north side of the Chicago River. In 1922, the Tribune Co. launched a design competition for “the most beautiful building in the world.” The entry by Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells was ultimately selected, leading to the creation of the building that’s recognizable around the world. But other submissions in that competition have tantalized Chicago architecture buffs ever since...
Author's collection
Tribune Tower, Take 2
Hood and Howell's "Tribune Monument" is famous, but at least one of the other 259 competition entries might have been even more eye-catching and certainly would have been more avant-garde. That's the strange and memorable design by Austrian architect Adolf Loos. "Loos often said that real architecture could only be seen in the grave or memorial," British writer Oliver Wainwright wrote in 2011, "and here he fused the two with colossal might: a monumental column of offices perched atop a vast tomb of public functions, entirely clad in polished black granite." The Chicago Architecture Foundation, offering a less downbeat interpretation, says Loos' mesmerizing "Doric column ... may have been a pun on the columns printed in the newspaper."
Metropolis Books
The Los Angeles that never was
Before authors Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell compiled "Never Built New York," they collected design sketches, official planning documents and much more for Los Angeles projects that didn't happen. The result: their fascinating 2013 book, "Never Built Los Angeles." Let's take a look at a couple of the La-La Land ideas that never got off the ground.
Metropolis Books
Frank Lloyd Wright Jr.'s L.A. Civic Center
"Frank Lloyd Wright was not the only one of the Wrights to be thinking big," Lubell told Smithsonian magazine. "His son, Lloyd Wright, was equally ambitious and innovative."
In 1925, the younger Wright submitted a proposal to a Los Angeles Times design contest that sought to shape a hoped-for redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles. Wright's idea would have moved automobile traffic underground, with subterranean highways next to commuter rail. Ground level was for -- gasp! -- walking. City Hall in this imagined L.A. would have sat at the top of a hill, with the rest of downtown's buildings cascading down and away from it, like dominoes. The government buildings have a Mayan aesthetic and are linked by raised walkways. Wrote the Wall Street Journal in 2013: "It was a grandiose amalgam of Art Deco buildings that, as [the writer] Anais Nin described in her diary, could have made Los Angeles 'the most beautiful city in the world.'"
Metropolis Books
Trump Tower Los Angeles
Anais Nin probably would have reached a different conclusion about L.A. after looking at Donald Trump's 1990 plan for a 125-story skyscraper in the city. But the gilded tower, cleaved down the middle of each side so it would resemble a series of diamonds, would have been a technological beaut. "Due to new understanding and concepts in seismic and wind engineering, the mega-structure project opened the door to ideas about lightness, slender structural forms and reduced natural damping in skyscrapers," the engineering firm Nabih Yousseff writes on its website. The massive tower, designed by Johnson Fain, would have been the city's tallest. Trump's wife at the time, Ivana, particularly liked the diamond imagery. Said one of the architects working on the project: "She lit up" when she realized it. Her husband boasted he was going to spend a billion dollars building the tower, but it never happened.
Lucas Museum
The Lucas Museum
One high-profile project that is going to happen in Los Angeles: The George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. The low-slung, space-ship-like museum will be built in Exposition Park near his University of Southern California alma mater. (He had previously planned on putting the museum in Chicago before running into grass-roots opposition.) But L.A.’s win meant a loss for San Francisco...
Lucas Museum
The Lucas Museum that won't be
San Francisco has long struggled to remake Treasure Island, the man-made islet in the bay between S.F. and Oakland. "The island was built for the 1939 World's Fair, then used as a World War II naval base," the Chicago Tribune wrote last year. "These days it's populated mainly by seagulls, boarded-up barracks, some art studios and old warehouses, but officials hope the museum triggers its transformation." Lucas ultimately chose the City of Angels, so the island's transformation will need another angel to kick-start its revitalization.
YouTube
Palace of the Soviets
Moving on from Los Angeles and the West Coast, let’s look at the signature Moscow development that didn’t happen. This project was supposed to be physical proof of the superiority of communism. Work on the massive government complex began in 1937, but World War II soon brought construction to a halt. Boris Iofan’s neo-classical design -- the winner of an intense international competition -- called for a tiered skyscraper topped by a statue of Lenin with an outstretched hand. The building would have been the world’s tallest structure. The steel framing that had been put in place by the end of the 1930s was dismantled and used for the war effort. The project was never restarted.
YouTube
Palace of the Soviets, Part II
Most of the design submissions for the Palace of the Soviets project were classical in nature, but Russian constructivist Moisei Ginzburg offered a post-modernist look for international socialism. His design offered up a series of science-fiction-like globes, or pods, that remained relatively low to the ground. Though he was a top architect of the Soviet regime, his design did not gain much favor among the competition’s judges. He was best known for designing communal housing, most notably 1930’s Narkomfin Building.
AP
Dubai's Twin Towers
Here’s a project that still might happen, someday. Announced to great fanfare shortly before the global Great Recession, the rocket-like towers were the centerpiece of a massive $25 billion United Arab Emirates project known as The Lagoons. “This new Dubai will leapfrog many of the world’s other global cities," the developers declared. The project is on hold right now. The skyscrapers, if built, would be the world’s tallest twin towers, surpassing Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas.
Pioneer Courthouse Square design (Oregonian archive)
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Oregonians love their architecture -- and love writing about it. Here are four local blogs that are worth checking out.
-- Douglas Perry
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