Beautility- Beauty and Function Combined at BPA

“Beautility” is a word that appears to have been coined sometime in the 1950s, recognizing the productive marriage that was possible when things were both  attractive and functional.  I first came across the term doing work for the Bonneville Power Administration, BPA.  In the early 1960s BPA, having come to the realization that not everybody saw their transmission lines and substations as works of art, hired a noted Portland, Oregon architectural firm to help them come up with a better design model that would be, well, be-utiliful.  “Beautility" is what Stanton, Boles, Maguire and Church called their approach, published in that summer-blockbuster A Report on Appearance Planning for BPA, released in May 1966.  This is a sketch from that hard to find report.  I found mine at Powell's (and for just $5 too!)

BPA’s Beautility actually made waves in the electric utility world and there were numerous requests for the report during the late 1960s and early 1970s.  BPA took the advice to heart and looking at their control houses, and transmission lines, and substations, the educated eye can easily discern the impact the report had.  Today, as most of those 1960s-1970s era buildings near five decades of service, they are all potentially historic, despite their sometimes space-age design.  “Beautility,” like other works of so-called Mid-Century Modern design, is just now coming into its own.  I think some, like BPA's buildings at the Ceilio Converter Station, show below, already have.

Beautility isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, nor is it frequently what the average person conjures to mind as historic.  We’ll leave alone that electric transmission infrastructure isn’t what the average person often conjures to mind as historic either, other than to mention that you might try to imagine the Pacific Northwest (or anywhere) without it.  "Historic" and stunning architecture aren't synonyms and never were.

I am starting to work on a late Beautility period project for BPA…one clad in colorful panels that surely screams late 1960s.  While I am somewhat disappointed to learn that Stanton et al simply borrowed the term from somebody else, I am pleased to see the use of the word continues (though mostly for hair salons and grooming, according to Google.  Even Nike has a line of clothes under that term).  Still it seems there are few places where "Beautility" could be more appropriate than at BPA which is, after all, what most people consider to be a “Utility.”  One that during the 1960s made an effort toward beauty wherever it could.

The BPA Transmission System

Back to working on Bonneville Power Administration projects for the past few weeks, this time on a proposed transmission line that crosses the Columbia River between an established substation and a proposed new one that is being built to accommodate all of the new wind generation that is sprouting up along the Gorge.  This project is the first time I have gone through the “Registration Standards” that were developed as part of the BPA Multiple Property Documentation, applying them in a real world situation.

The MPD, which in one form or another has been under development for nearly five years, is intended as a significant management tool that will alleviate SOME of the paperwork that BPA and the eight SHPO offices it interacts with have to process.  Essentially, we defined a historic development context for BPA’s transmission system, all 15,000+ circuit miles and nearly 300 substations that allow them to be (more) easily reviewed for significance and establishes guidelines for evaluation of effect.  Hence the “Registration Standards” that I have been applying to the Big Eddy Substation and four transmission lines that will be affected by proposed project.  So far, so good, but then the two SHPOs haven’t had a chance to respond yet, and that will be the proverbial acid test.

Many people are somewhat surprised that a transmission line, or a switchyard, or a substation related to the generation and transmission of electricity could be considered historic.  Those are usually people who somehow think “historic” and “beautiful” are synonyms.  They aren’t, of course.  And when you think about a “system” that changed our way of life, that is associated with significant themes (like rural electrification, the development the defense or airplane industry in the Pacific Northwest, or the post-WWII development of our region) there are few elements of this region’s history with more impact than the decision to build dams on the Columbia River, create massive amounts of hydroelectricity, and distribute it at low cost throughout the region.  One could argue (and this one has) that there are few other Federal investments in the Pacific Northwest that have had more effect than the creation of BPA and the Federal Columbia River Power System.  The only things that even come close are the Interstate (which just replaced an earlier Federal system of highways) and the land grants associated with the arrival of the railroad.

Now I will turn my attention to the J. D. Ross Substation, in Vancouver, Washington.... a fascinating place that among other things demonstrates a utility can have a sense of style.

Yes, Virginia, utilities can be historic too....

Lately I have been back to staring at my computer screen, and at images, of T-lines, Control Houses, Switchyards, Radio Stations and the various other pieces of the multi-state, thousands-of-miles long, Bonneville Power Administration Transmission System, all as part of wrapping up a draft cover document for a Multiple Property Submittal.  Documenting the history and significance of BPA to the Pacific Northwest has become rather second nature, but it's still a good story.  Now, by tying that story to the built resources that BPA manages, we’re breaking new ground, at least as concerns BPA’s development after 1945 and the end of its first “Period of Significance.”  That has got me thinking about electricity, hydropower, and all the work that I’ve done over the years for PGE, PacifiCorp, EWEB and others, now including BPA, who operate the sinuous network of lines that ties them all together, in one way or another.

Starting out in preservation my experience and understanding of electrical generation pretty much stopped at expecting the local utility to supply the power for my computer and cursing them out in those rare instances when their system was down.  Over the years, having worked for most of the larger (and many of the smaller) utilities in Oregon, I have gained not only an understanding of just how complex the system that ends at a duplex receptacle really is, but an appreciation for the engineers and others that put it all together over the past century.  I think people forget that here in the Northwest electricity didn’t really exist until the late 19^th century and for many cities, and more rural areas, reliable, affordable, power is a post-WWII arrival.  There is a huge system of dams, and thermal plants, and now more and more “green” generation plants that chug away out of view to keep it so.

That's the Copco Dam, above.  It's scheduled for removal, if all the competing parties on the Klamath River can figure out who pays for it.  The Klamath Dams, like most early 20th century dam despite their recent bad press, are pretty incredible constructs.  Some engineer looked at a canyon a century ago and said “There.”  In the case of Copco, that engineer was John Christie Boyle, a fascinating, near Rennassiance-type, guy born in the tiny northern California town of Ft. Jones.  Directed by guys like Boyle, (or T.W. Sullivan, or J.D. Ross, or any number of other visionary leaders), workers with horses and, if they were lucky, steam engines, moved rock, and poured concrete and changed the course of the river to produce hydropower, still the most reliable form of energy production around.  Ever since, when the water flows, the turbines spin, and you get power out the other end.  Most dams, and much of the generation equipment within them, still rely on 19^th century technology in large part, simply because the technology is so simple there is little beyond improved control and fish passage that can be done to improve it. It is fashionable now to think of dams as "fish killers" that should be removed and replaced with wind turbines or solar arrays.  There are problems with that, if you like knowing that when you flick a switch there will be power to it, no matter the season.  Nothing, as usual, is as simple as the advertising copy.

The picture below, of the T.W. Sullivan Power House, operated by PGE at West Linn, produces some 16mW of clean, non-greenhouse gas producing, electricity.  Sullivan began life as “Station B,” built by the Willamette Falls Electric Company in 1893.  It is the second oldest continuously operated hydroelectric powerhouse in the country. I can't speak for others, but I am rather glad its still in operation.

Going the Extra Mile- "Public" Architecture done right....

Given that my last entry essentially amounts to a statement about the lack of vision and commitment some public entities place on their history or responsibility to the larger community, I’ve been thinking about a time when the situation was reversed and public entities, government, went the extra mile to set a standard.  Much of that relates to the New Deal, when FDR and crew took advantage of the nation’s economic condition to put as many people to work as they could, building infrastructure (like roads, parks and power systems) that we still enjoy.  My BPA work comes to mind,  along with the Oregon Caves Chateau project, as does Ken Burns’ current documentary on the National Parks.  Both BPA and the parks were considered near-socialism a the time, by the way, but it appears that we as a nation have somehow survived.

I think a more recent example of government going the extra mile can be found at the Grand Coulee Dam, operated by the Bureau of Reclamation.  BOR isn’t generally the first Federal agency people think of when it comes to supporting fine design but that’s what they did, when they hired Marcel Breuer to design Coulee’s Third Powerhouse, home of the largest electrical generation units in the world.

Breuer (1902-1981) was one of the Bauhaus boys and gained fame for his design of the Wassilly Chair, the first of those continuous chrome tubular sled-based designs that are still popular.  Like so many European modernists (he was a Hungarian Jew), Breuer left Germany in the 1930s and eventually ended up teaching at the Harvard School of Architecture with Walter Gropius.  As a practicing architect Breuer design scores of buildings, among them the Whitney Museum of Art. 

Breuer's Visitor Center, designed in 1967, is a rather unexpectedly round  building among all the linearity of the huge Grand Coulee Dam that makes it quite striking.  It's well done and interesting on the interior too.  The Third Powerhouse has this amazing textural exterior of folded sculptural triangles of concrete, that form a massive battered stupa (look  it up) below the dam.  It rather looks as if it is covered with origami and comments from Visitors Center display report that the folds have a structural component, stiffening the shell of building.  Form, Function, etc.  Those modernists, huh?  Interior images of the powerhouse reveal decorative terrazzo floors and fine metal work.  Now THAT is public architecture (although the public apparently isn't allowed inside the powerhouse anymore, thanks to security).  I give BOR credit for hiring Breuer to begin with, and for maintaining the integrity of his design since the late-1960s.
  

Supposedly I will have an opportunity to work on this project in the near future, as there is some proposed modifications to the powerhouse generation in the works that will involve BPA and their substation up the hill.  I’m looking forward to the chance to perhaps see the inside of the powerhouse.  There are at least two other interesting design items at Grand Coulee that intrigue me...first the gold skinned "Public Safety Building" and more directly tied to the project, the fascinating "shoji-arch" like t-lines that lead up the hill.  Wonder if they are by Breuer too, or just took some inspiration from his efforts.  Great public architecture is like that....it has the power to inspire others.

Multiple Property Submittals

When I was at the UO, learning the preservation ropes, a group of us came up with the mnemonic “BDOSS” (pronounced Be-Doss) to get through the HP 101 question of “what types of resources are eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (Buildings, Districts, Objects, Sites, and Structures). It worked. I still remember it.

However, like Roger Maris’ 61 homeruns, BDOSS should really be BDOSS* since the Park Service has added variations to that original group of five including linear districts, non-contiguous districts, Traditional Cultural Properties (TCP’s) and what is the focus of this blogpost (you were wondering, right?) a “Multiple Property Submittals” or MPS. An MPS is a group of resources, of any time, that are related. Some of the classic examples of MPS (back when they were called Thematic nominations) were things like the Covered Bridges of Oregon or the CCC-built structures of the National Forest Service.

I have worked on what amounts to MPS documentation before, mostly for the far flung resources of hydroelectric projects, but I am now in the process of starting to layout the formal submittal on the Bonneville Power Administration Transmission System, which is, um, more far flung than most. This nomination will encompass resources in seven states, ranging from transmission lines to radio towers, control rooms and “untanking houses,” all related to the 70+ year history of public power development in the Pacific Northwest.

The MPS format essentially defines the “BPA Universe,” the realm and extent of the resources that are related to the significant themes by geography and type and, after defining what sorts of resources are out there that MAY be significant, establishes thresholds of integrity for each resource type to determine if they ARE significant. For an entity such as BPA, with literally 1000s of “things” to consider, an MPS submittal should save a lot of time and effort from a regulatory standpoint. Assuming I get it right!

In the meantime, as posted before, I am often finding my time spent staring at pictures of substations, or t-lines or radio towers or any of the other various pieces of the BPA puzzle in an effort to determine the significant patterns. WHAT makes a transmission line significant and how much can you modify it without losing some essential quality that makes it so? Good thing I like T-lines. The following is my current desktop, which probably certifies me as being in the thick of t-line thought .....

Tracking the Elusive T-Line

Yeah, I know, it's not what you thought "restoration consultants" did, but it's what this one is doing. Driving 1500 plus miles in the last four days, trying to unravel maps, aerial images, Garmin GPS locations and drive all at the same time (not really..Joyce is navigating and doing a fine job of it, thank you very much) in search of miles and miles and miles of Transmission Lines that run all over the Pacific Northwest (or at least, at the moment, northern Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana). It's a good thing the T-lines themselves standout from the landscape but DRIVING to the substations is occasionally a challenge (I have only given up once so far though....at Dworshak, where my definitely not 4WD vehicle wasn't up to the grade). The payoff, when you find what you are looking for, is worth it though. T-Lines are quite remarkable, when you actually stop to think about them (and yes, I realize most people don't).

The system built by Bonneville Power Administration over the past seventy or so years is really a pretty remarkable achievement. Of course, I am rarely disappointed by the audacity of engineers to design such a grid and make it all work. Or of the men (and one presumes, women) who actually go out and plant these steel and wood towers in neat lines over mountains, streams and valleys, from Point A to Point B.

As to the question of "what does this mean" and why is somebody like me looking at transmission lines, of all things, I am still puzzling that out. I can tell you that the Pacific Northwest wouldn't be what it is, would not have developed as it has, without BPA and its miles of transmission lines (or, to be fair, without the Army Corps and Bureau of Reclamation dams that generate the power to begin with). Clearly, from the perspective of the National Register, there is little doubt that BPA's construction constitutes a "significant theme" within the history of the PNW, if not the nation. How these lines relate that significance, and more importantly from BPA's standpoint, how their "integrity" is evaluated in a manner that allows their continued utility, remains an open question.

On to Washington, and tomorrow, Grand Coulee!

Bonneville, Part 2

As noted earlier, Bonneville has LOTS of resources, spread out over 15,000 circuit miles of transmission lines, seven states, hundreds of substations, and all sorts of overlaying regions, maintenance districts, transmission line maintenance districts, offices, and more. Next week I head out and about into the field to see a "representative sample," or at least a hopefully representative sample, along the Columbia River, into Idaho and Montana, and across Washington. There is a LOT to see.


The point of this is continue the process of documenting the BPA Transmission System from a historic standpoint, in this case to update the current status of portions of the "Master Grid" as being eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. That document, prepared in 1986-87, determined some transmission lines significant, some substations significant, and many others not so, all within the original loop of the BPA system, the "Master Grid," that was completed by 1949. Everything else, by definition, wasn't historic. The scatter-shot approach created a huge management issue for BPA and, given that everything is connected and works as a "system" didn't make a lot of sense, at least from my standpoint.

Last year, in the first phase of my BPA work, I researched and wrote Corridors of Power, a historic context statement that essentially attempted to answer the research question "Did BPA do anything of historic significance after 1949 and, if so, do their resources effectively relate that significance?" [That's how we CRM people speak....pretty stilted, isn't it?]. Anyway, of course, as a major Federal agency with impact on virtually every sector of the Pacific Northwest, BPA did indeed accomplish much of significance after completing the Master Grid. More about that later. From a management standpoint though, the fact that much of its system could be considered historic, and so eligible for the NR, creates something of a challenge for an entity like BPA. As with any Federal undertaking, all their projects are subject to review under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. But as a key element in the energy infrastructure in seven states (and, depending how you look at, in parts of western Canada and California as well), BPA has frequent need to update, modify, change and potentially impact every aspect of its "system" in ways that don't exactly mesh with normal historic preservation intent. Trying to craft a management plan that both honors the significant history of the Bonneville Power Administration and allows them an ability to continue to provide safe, efficient, and cost-effective service to millions of Americans, is the endgame in this year long project.

In the meantime, I will be driving around the PNW, craning my neck through the windshield, following T-lines to substations, and puzzling over questions such as "how many towers can you relocate before you adversely effect a corridor?" or "Are insulators important to integrity?" or "Does changing the loading door in an 1965 "Beautility"-designed substation constitute a loss of character?"

Bonneville Power...

In what is likely the single biggest project I've ever been involved with, this Summer I will be touring throughout the PNW to gain a better understanding of the built resources of the Bonneville Power Administration, BPA. For those that have never thought about it, here's an eye-opener....BPA does not generate any power. Not a watt. By law. BPA was set up during FDR's "New Deal" to transmit and market the power generated at the Bonneville Dam, operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Later BPA was given authority to transmit and market the power generated at Grand Coulee, operated by the US Bureau of Reclamation. At the time it was assumed by everyone that BPA, the Corps, and the Bureau would combine their activities in the Northwest under some large umbrella entity modeled after the Tennessee Valley Authority. It didn't work out that way and today BPA operates more than 15,000 circuit miles of transmission line, hundreds of substation, control rooms, a microwave system, and all of the infrastructure required to keep it working in parts of SEVEN states. Oh, and their system forms the backbone of the Northwest Power Pool, meaning it is integral to the entire electric grid of the Northwest and beyond, including major connections from Canada to California.


And they still don't generate a watt of their own.

I will be working for BPA trying to help the Administration streamline its requirements under Section 106 of the NHPA for what quite literally will be years and years. Rest assured, this won't be the last post on the topic as I begin to become more knowledgeable about towers and what all that electricity meant to the development of the Pacific Northwest.