Research Kismet - River View Cemetery

Among the other projects floating around is a more comprehensive historic report on the wonderful River View Cemetery, in Portland.  This facility, established in 1881, was termed Portland’s verdant “City of the Dead” upon its opening, quickly becoming both a tourist destination (the trolley stop ended here for Sunday excursions) and the favored burial ground for the city’s elite.  Walking under the large trees and meandering through River View’s well-maintained, naturalistic, curving roads and paths, one can visit the final resting spots of a virtual Who Was Who of early Oregon, including numerous governors, mayors, senators and other notables like Harvey Scott, Abigail Scott Duniway and Henry Weinhard.  And then there are parts of the cemetery that read like a roadmap of downtown, with all the familiar names. 

As connected to Portland history as River View has been from the start, documentation on its history is unusually sparse.  There were a few laudatory reports in the Oregonian about “God’s Acre” before the turn of the century, and the occasional mention in the multiple subscription histories pioneer families published to celebrate their roles in founding the state and city, but nobody has ever sat down and actually written up “the” history of River View Cemetery.

When I started out on this project I assumed that River View, which has always had a fine sense of the importance of its design (they hired architects from Ellis Lawrence, to A.E. Doyle and Pietro Belluschi, among others) would have a fairly complete archive and that putting their story together would simply be a matter of camping out, developing the context, and arranging the pieces.  And while that is partially true (River View has the minutes of the organization’s management committee, along with copies of many of the building plans for the structures built after about 1930), the ONE thing that they didn’t have was the original plan, by German-American landscape architect Edward Otto Schwagerl (1843-1910).  Schwagerl was an interesting, and prolific, designer who worked all over the country, with important works in Ohio, Washington, Missouri and South Carolina (where he designed the grounds of the state capitol building)  The Oregonian made flowering mention of a public display of Schwagerl’s “..large and elaborate maps” in December 1879, but River View had nothing and neither, it seemed, did anyone else.

A few weeks ago while in Portland to use the OHS Library I was disappointed to discover they were closed for some annual cleaning.  Undaunted, I headed over to the PSU library, where I found some excellent journal articles on the history of the “Rural Cemetery” movement.  At noon, as I headed off for a quick bite before another meeting, I recalled that the City of Portland Archives had relocated to the PSU campus.  Finding they opened at 12:00 (and having had some earlier correspondence with the archivists regarding River View), I thought I’d pop in for 30 minutes and take a look.  The incredible staff as the Archives took up my mission with zeal, and brought out files and references in record time (Thank you Brian and Mary!) There, although mis-dated as “circa 1900” we were absolutely thrilled to find what I am pretty confidant is at least a sheet from the original Schwagerl plan for River View (it's not signed, sadly).  Along with its 19th century graphic quality and materials, the plan has one very interesting feature that places it pretty early in Portland’s history.  At the bottom of the design there is a wharf, for river-deliveries.

Any Port(al) in a Storm-Linn County

Among the several bridges we’re working on at the moment are four covered spans located in western Linn County, a county blessed with the second largest collection of covered bridge in Oregon, a state that boasts more covered bridges than any west of the Mississippi.  Linn County is in the process of making upgrades and improvements to the Short, Hoffman, Hannah and Larwood bridges, all of which rather still carry traffic.

Covered bridges are beloved anachronisms, relics of a time gone by when counties relied on standard plans from the State to quickly build spans over western Oregon’s many creeks and waterways.  This being Oregon, wood was plentiful and there was no shortage of skilled mechanics who could assemble stout bridges in a cost-effective fashion.  Original construction prices for covered spans would buy a small import car today.

As the state grew, traffic grew in volume and weight, especially on rural roads that often served logging trucks descending from the mountains leaden with trees on the way to the mill.  Covered bridges, though built of huge timber beams were often unequal to the task and so were replaced with steel and concrete to take those heavy truck loads.  Sometimes they were bypassed, by a new and larger bridge nearby, converted the old span into a pedestrian or bike bridge.  And sometimes the old covered bridge was strengthened and modified, but continued to function.  An example of this last category is the Hoffman Bridge, spanning Crabtree Creek, southwest of Scio, in central Linn County.

Crabtree Creek Covered Bridge was built in 1936.  It was renamed Hoffman after its builder…and perhaps to differentiate from several other covered bridges across that stream.  The original design, borrowed from the State Highway Commission, called for an arched portal, as the “ends” of a covered bridge are called.  As truck loads got larger (and as trucks got wider) portals (which are just single-thickness panels made up of wide boards) were often damaged.  In Log Truck v. Bridge situations, it’s usually the log truck that wins.  The common solution was to enlarge the portal, to create more clearance, and the typical method of doing so was a segmented arched opening.  At Hoffman this happened sometime after 1966.

The current restoration of the bridge includes replacing the bad metal roofing with wood shingle, as it was originally, and repairing and augmenting some of the structural members of the railing and timber deck, to better carry modern loads.  It would be nice to restore the original graceful lines of the portal, but log trucks are even bigger now than they were 50 years ago, so the logical decision is to leave it the way that it is.   

Schomburg's Painted Fish on the Clackamas

Back in the day private and public utilities made a point of providing innovative amenities as part of their projects, allowing the populations they served to appreciate the scale and creativity that went into providing them with water and electricity on a reliable basis.  Some companies took that role to heart.  Few have done a better job over the years than Portland General Electric, PGE, the pioneer power provider that serves most of Portland’s northern Willamette Valley including Portland and Salem.

PGE’s Trojan Nuclear Power Project included this really phenomenal “Visitor Information Center,” a futuristic building complete with cool staff uniforms that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Starship Enterprise.  There was a high-tech video-tour inside the atom and even an electric powered shuttle that took visitors and school groups right into the massive powerhouse.  Ah, the days before 911, when we didn’t have to treat infrastructure as a security risk.

  

PGE's hydro side wasn't slacking off either.  On the Clackamas River, PGE developed a “Fish Viewing Station” adjacent to the North Fork Fish Ladder, at 1.9 miles long once the longest such feature in the world.  The Viewing Station, a little boxy building that looks all the world like a truck-mounted storage container, has three large windows cut into the side of the ladder, so you can see the fish swimming by.  And for the back wall, PGE hired Alex Schomburg to paint a mural, identifying the various fish species that used the ladder in incredibly realistic detail.  Installed in 1963 (as near as I can tell at this point), the viewing station and the mural were focal points for any number of school tours, as Clackamas and Multnomah county children toured the project and learned a little about how power is made, and how fish runs were protected in the process.

Now, what is interesting about this is that Alex Schomburg wasn’t just some guy off the street.  Born in Puerto Rico in 1905, Schomburg was a hugely influential artist, mostly remembered for the artwork for hundreds and hundreds of 1930-1950s comic books and science fiction magazines.  His work included everything from Captain America to concept drawings for Stanley Kubrick’s famed 2001: A Space Odyssey.  “A portfolio of Alex Schomburg’s work is a visual diary of 20^th century illustration art and popular culture,” wrote Amy Wagner, in The Fantastic Art of Alex Schomburg, an article published in Illustration magazine.  You can read more about Schomburg, and see more of his fantastic art, at http://www.alexschomburg.com/ a site that is maintained by Mr. Schomburg's estate.  There has even a been a book, shown above, about his artwork.

 

 

 

Schomburg moved to Hillsboro, Oregon in 1962, after having come west, to Spokane, to live near his son.  A year later, though nobody seems to know how, he connected with PGE and lent his considerable skill to the fish of Clackamas, a far cry from his normal comic and science fiction subjects.  Today, half a century later, that mural is still there, even if it’s no longer accessible to the public.  I think we’ll try to do something about that.

Carl R. Berg: A "Tile" of Two Theatres

If you have been reading these posts for awhile, you will recall the excitement of last year when we “struck tile” in the exterior Foyer of Medford’s Holly Theatre.  That tile, hidden under the ugly glue-down carpet and a thin layer of mortar, was a series of hexagonal field tiles with four 1x1 green tiles in the center.  The design provided the inspiration for entirely new work that was installed in time for the Holly’s “Grand Relighting” in April 2012, not to mention the underside of the marquee (which is also a hex pattern).  The future of the Holly, as an element of the so-called JPR-SOU dispute, is entirely open to question at the moment, but that’s another post.

I assumed, as an exterior element, that the Holly tile was the work of Frank Chamberlain Clark, a prolific and highly regarded southern Oregon architect who is credited with the exterior design of the theatre.  That now appears to be wrong.  The interiors of the Holly were  by Carl R. Berg, a theatre designer who worked for B. F. Shearer, out of Seattle and was responsible for 100s of theatres during his long career.  Another of Berg’s interiors is the fabulous Egyptian Theatre, in Coos Bay, also a project that we have been working to help reopen and restore.

Earlier this week, while touring the Egyptian in depth with the engineers who are working to craft a solution that will allow us to get the building back open and in use, I finally had the time to really poke around and look at things (previously I’ve only been in the theatre for a few short bursts of hour or less each.  This week I got to be inside for hours and hours!).  Anyway, behind the bad 1970s concession stand, behind the pretty cool 6x6 floor tiles, there was another tile surface, sort of a trapezoidal shaped area that was filled with smaller mosaic floor tile in a very familiar looking pattern.

Granted that this design isn’t exactly as unique as a snowflake or fingerprints, but I am going to take this as evidence that the same designer was responsible for tile elements at both the Holly and the Egyptian.  That designer would surely be Mr. Berg.  Now I am curious if there is a hex pattern tile at the Cordova Theatre, in Pullman, Washington.  Does anyone know?

I wish I’d seen the Egyptian floor sooner.  It’s in much better condition than that of the Holly foyer, but how could it not be?  It’s on the interior and nobody ever covered it with concrete!  It's in good enough condition that I will hope it can be retained as part of some re-designed, more attractive, and more functional, concession area in the Egyptian's future.

Found Oregon- Simnasho Church

While out in Wasco County last week, tracking T-lines (which often involves driving slowly up some dirt road and craning your neck through the windows to see where some group of nearly invisible conductors track across the landscape to a giant latticework tower.  When you finally stop and get out of the car, underneath this huge humming thing, you feel like a moron for having not seen it in the first place) I happened to be cruising through the town of Simnasho, on the Warm Springs Reservation.  All things being equal, the Warm Springs has a GREAT road system, well-marked, mostly paved, and really easy to navigate.  The intersection of S-400 and S-100 (one of which is also numbered Road 3, I have no idea why) is downtown Simnasho.  According to the McArthurs, the post office here began in 1886 and with several service gaps more or less continued until July 1954.  Today Simnasho has a small market, an elementary school, and some residences but for my purposes the intersection was mostly notable for a neat collection of early wood-frame residential buildings.  And, in the “Found Oregon” series, the really amazing Simnasho Church.  It was an unexpected diversion from T-line inspired neck-craning, and for most people certainly made for better pictures.

 

I wasn’t able to find out much about the church beyond the fact that there are a LOT of photos of it all over the web.  A local history site reports that it was Presbyterian, and hasn't been used since the late-1960s. I can believe it.  The church and the small house to the west, what I assume must have the manse, are something of a testament to the impacts of the environment on wood buildings.  Anybody know anything about this one?

Willamette Falls Past and Future

A few days ago I had the experience of touring the former Blue Heron Paper Plant, at Oregon City, with members of the media, to discuss this history of this incredible site at the Willamette Falls on the eastern shore of the river.  This is the place, in the 1820s, where Dr. John McLaughlin established what would become the capital of the Oregon Territory.  The Falls have been a draw since prehistoric times and as the second largest waterfall, by volume, in the United States (after Niagara), they quickly became the focus of a variety of Oregon’s earliest industries.  McLaughlin himself had a small race cut out of the bedrock to power a sawmill and by 1865 what became the Oregon Woolen Mills was located here.  In 1908, having left his position at what is now the West Linn Paper Company, across the river, W. P. Hawley established his own firm, the Hawley Pulp and Paper Company, on McLaughlin’s old claim and soon was producing 200,000 tons of paper products on a daily basis.

Willamette Falls, from the old Hawley Powerhouse site, June 2012

Hawley built a booming business, based on his own decades of expertise, a ready supply of timber, and the abundant power of the Willamette Falls.  He rented PGE’s old “Station A” out at the head of the falls, built his own buildings for paper machines and mills, and the business spread out along Oregon’s Main Street, sharing the block with a hotel, a laundry and McLaughlin’s decrepit house.  As he grew the business (and gave the house to the city, which moved it up the hill), Hawley’s structures became larger, more sturdy (concrete, not wood) and slowly took over the entire block.  In the late 1920s Hawley built two new massive, concrete and glass buildings on the east side of the street  (known as Mill B and Paper Machine No. 4), creating a clean streetscape of multi-story industral buildings.  Eventually Hawley's paper company took over the old Woolen Mill property too, occupying over twenty acres lining everything on both sides of Main Street between the railroad line and the river.

Hawley sold the business to Publisher’s Paper in the 1940s and then a series of ownership changes in the 1980s and 90s culminated with the formation of employee-owned Blue Heron Paper Company, which sadly closed its doors about a year ago.  The future of the site is unclear, though Metro has expressed interest in providing the public better access to “Niagara of the Pacific.”  That is why the media was interested and that is why there is a lot of discussion on-going about the opportunities, and the liabilities, that result from over 180 years of industrial uses.  Last week, on Wednesday, it was a beautiful day at the Willamette Falls.  A lot of people are working to try figure out to create a situation where more Oregonians can enjoy the view McLaughlin did.

One (?) Step Backward in Medford

I have avoided writing of the multi-faceted disaster that is surrounding the JPR Foundation projects in Medford because, frankly, I can’t believe the lack of vision of the State Board of Higher Education and keep hoping that saner minds will prevail.  This is beginning to look doubtful.  In short, SOU and the Chancellor’s office, despite having reviewed and approved JPR’s purchase of the Holly (and their acceptance of a local businessman’s generous donation of a second structure to solve their decades-long studio needs) has now launched what appears to be something of a vendetta against JPR, Medford and my eldest brother.  You can read the latest here: MT June 14

It may be a long time before there is any more progress like this at Medford's Holly Theater

 

Basically, SOU and the Chancellor have determined that JPR, despite its nearly 10 years of successful operation of Redding’s Cascade Theatre (a structure that was actually purchased with Higher Education bonds) shouldn’t operate anything other than radio stations and shouldn’t be in the business of renovating theatres (like the Holly) or donated buildings (like the Medford Grocery Warehouse).   That JPR has been doing exactly that, with Higher Ed’s agreement, for some time, hasn’t stopped SOU from terminating JPR’s longtime director, threatening to personally sue the entire JPR Foundation Board of Directors, and undermining the future of the Holly and its potential to help revitalize downtown Medford.

For those of you in southern Oregon, you will not be remiss in thinking this looks like narrow-minded, parochial Ashlanders trying to quash good things in Medford.  From my vantage point I wonder why the Chancellor’s office suddenly became so opposed to JPR’s plans for the Holly and I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to connect the dots to the only entity in southern Oregon that has ever voiced opposition to the Holly Theatre.  Holly Position Statement There seems to be no shortage of shortsightedness in some quarters.

There is, however, vision in southern Oregon. Mayor Gary Wheeler and the City of Medford have been incredibly supportive of the Holly (and so, in truth, has the City of Ashland and most of Ashland and other southern Oregon residents).  Only SOU President Mary Cullinan (who originally congratulated JPR on the Holly and the Jefferson Square project) and the Chancellor’s office (generously) appear to be hell-bent on keeping JPR on campus or at least keep it out of Medford.  Not so generously they appear to be set on wrecking one of our region’s most important, and most successful, cultural institutions.  You have to wonder why.

If this mess is allowed to continue there is, I fear, a very good chance that not only will Medford lose the Holly and the Jefferson Square projects, but that southern Oregon and northern California will lose the quality public radio system that it has come to enjoy and expect.

The Holly, something of a dump before JPR, could remain shuttered for years under SOU

Just two months ago more than 1000 people assembled in downtown Medford and cheered the re-lighting of the Holly's brilliant neon signs and the completion of its beautiful façade renovation. Sometime next week we’ll remove the scaffolding and the truss repairs will be complete, returning occupancy to the Holly auditorium for the first time a decade.  If the Chancellor’s small-minded, short-sighted, unwarranted, and nasty attacks on Medford and the JPR Foundation Board of Directors stand, it will almost certainly be a very long time before anything else good happens at the Holly Theatre.  That would be just one of the serious results of this curious and unfortunate situation.