Oregon City-Planning a Future at Willamette Falls

The Blue Heron Paper Plant, a successor to Smurfit Paper, which replaced James River Paper, which replaced Publishers Paper, who bought the Hawley Pulp and Paper Company was the last in a long line of paper companies in Oregon City, at the Willamette Falls.  (There is an entirely separate, if somewhat related, series of paper companies across the river, at West Linn, where the West Linn Paper Company still operates).  When Blue Heron went into bankruptcy, their plant, and a huge segment of Oregon City’s economy were thrown into a questionable future.

Last year I was part of a huge collection of professionals that participated in what became known as the BAT, the “Building Assessment Team,” looking at what of future value remained among the 60+ structures on the property, what challenges existed to reusing or re-purposing the site for something other than paper making, and what opportunities were available considering this phenomenal location overlooking the Willamette and the second largest waterfall (by volume) in the US.  There are lots of challenges, but there are lots more opportunities if you can just manage to get a grip on all of the many many moving parts on this site, from history, to natural resources, to water quality, to cultural concerns (the Falls are a key site for several Oregon tribes), to the economy and recreation.

The BAT finished its work earlier this year and while we answered lots of unknowns, many more remained.  METRO, along with Oregon City and the bankruptcy trustee that is responsible for the future of the property, recently issued an RFP for a multidisciplinary landscape/planning/economic approach to help the community figure out a viable future for the former Blue Heron Paper mill.  That Willamette Legacy Project garnered national interest, attracting more than dozen highly qualified teams of professionals, each looking to help the community craft a blueprint for the next century of the site’s development.  It’s a question that hasn’t really be asked since 1908, when papermaker Willard P. Hawley began purchasing water rights (including what would have been Dr. John McLaughlin’s) on the south side of the river.  These former gridded blocks of downtown Oregon City will, in one way or another, soon be re-integrated in the downtown, likely to include improved public access along the river for the first time in over a century, and likely to include at least some re-use of the amazing industrial structures such as Paper Machine No. 4, below. 

We were pleased to be asked to provide historic preservation expertise to three of the teams that responded to Oregon City's RFP.   And last week we were thrilled to learn that one of them, a team led by Walker-Macy, a landscape firm in Portland, was selected.  I have worked on documenting the history of the Willamette Falls Industrial for almost two decades.  It will be exciting to have a role in helping to planning its future (and we won’t forget its history while doing so).

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.

Penstocks of the Past, and Future

Having spent most of mid-April dealing with the high style design issues of the Holly Theatre, this past week has seen a return to the more typical aspects of report writing, including covered bridges and compliance documentation.  Staring back at me from my computer screen at the moment is PGE’s Faraday Powerhouse, on the Clackamas River.  

“Penstocks” are the feeder tubes that connect a reservoir to the turbines that spin a generator to create electricity.  They are usually large concrete or steel pipes that drop significantly in elevation to create “head,” increasing the force of the water and spinning the turbines efficiently.  In more recent projects (post-WWII) penstocks are typically underwater, at the bottom of a dam, and so unseen.  But in an early hydro project, like that at Faraday (which was built in 1907-1909), the penstocks are exposed and become highly visible features, dropping from the crest of the dam, down an embankment, to the powerhouse.  Faraday's penstocks are typical, in that these early powerhouses tend to have multiple, smaller, generation units rather than one or two large ones, and so the penstock lines can be pretty dramatic through repetition. At Faraday there are six penstocks, five built by 1909 and one, Unit No. 6 (the larger one, at the extreme right above), that was added in 1956. 

Faraday’s original penstocks are of riveted steel, between eight and nine feet in diameter, and are supported by multiple concrete piers with small semi-circular “saddles” where they meet the steel penstock itself.  This has worked well for over a century, but where the concrete and the steel meet, water is trapped.  Steel and water are a bad mix, and one thing you surely do not want is a weak, rusted, spot in steel tube carrying 1/6 of the Clackamas River at high pressure.

PGE has creatively developed a solution to repair the damaged spots and then modify the top of the concrete piers to re-seat the penstocks with a steel-to-steel connection.  This will reduce the potential for damage and allow the Faraday penstocks to continue to operate into their second century. 

People tend to glaze over when I talk about my interest in hydroelectric generation, penstocks, flow lines and the like and many of these early projects are criticized as unnecessary and un-green.  That's another rant.  Last night I was amused, while watching NBC's filmed-in-Portland fantasy-drama show Grimm, to see that PGE's now-decommissioned Bull Run Powerhouse (built prior to WWI) played a major role.  It’s a shame, and an interesting comment on how our society has changed, that only few people still see the postcard potential in engineering marvels like these early, small scale, powerhouse projects.  Think about that during the next power outage, or when you drive through a sea of wind turbines.

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.