Why did they do that?

Sometimes it seems to me that as a preservation consultant, particularly working in some communities, my job involves planning for what to do after we “take that garbage off” of the building façade. Of course that begs the question of “what were they thinking?” when they put it up. Most times de-garbagifcation is pretty easy, and there is occasionally the fine surprise (like leaded glass windows below a sheet metal façade on one project) that makes everyone one the project scurry and regroup to redesign. Most of the time, however, on the day of the big "unveiling," you just discover an ugly hole, or a shoddy patch-job where the windows (doors, whatever) used to be. It really seems sometimes that earlier owners and the contractors were bound and determined to remove any vestige of grace or character from their building as quickly, and completely, as possible.

In downtown Medford, a successful community for many years where merchants and property owners serially renovated their building facades to keep up with the times, there are plenty of great buildings hidden by plenty of garbage. In years past, when I was the design consultant for the Medford Urban Renewal Agency (MURA), I got pretty good and removing the 1960s (or 1980s) from a façade and finding some way to reinterpret (or rediscover) the 1920s (or 1930s) underneath. For the past few days I’ve been staring at current and historic images of the 1911 Crater Lake Garage building, one of the few surviving brick auto-garages along what southern Oregon fancied as Medford’s “Auto Row.” The poor building has been hidden behind really terrible 1980s wooden screens that cover the (unfortunately) long-lost windows. Whomever put these up, made as they are of exposed end-grain Fir, must not have realized that this is Oregon, western Oregon in particular, where we are know to get the occasional rainstorm.

Originally the Crater Lake Garage had large service doors, modified after 1922 to create typical storefronts. While the building has been modified, and while the front entry to the proposed restaurant use will actually be on what was historically the rear (facing a large public parking lot), we’ll come up with something to make this elevation more attractive. New owners, new paint, and half a dozen windows in what are now blocked in openings will return life to this building and once again get natural daylight to the interior. A modest change, but one that should have big impact on downtown Medford.

Don't Shoot the Resources!

Shortly after the turn of the century (the last century, in 1900) the City of Ashland purchased a piece of property along Emigrant Creek and began the development of "Lithia Water," a highly-mineralized stuff that was supposed to spark huge resort development in town ("Ashland Grows when Lithia Flows," as the jingle went). A number of interesting buildings were constructed in concrete and stucco, all designed around the Lithia Water that was piped to several locations around town. The water locations included the Depot, the Library and most prominently, Lithia Park, which was named during this same period. You can still get Lithia Water in the park, at the wooden kiosk next to the Band Shell.

Anyway, Lithia Water, um, fizzled, a bit and eventually the Springs site become home to a CO2 plant. Periodic efforts to bottle and market the water itself invariably failed when people realized they had actually been drinking all that mineralized goo that settled to the bottom of the clear containers. Ashland still has Lithia Water in three spots (including the new Civic Center) and just recently we had great fun designing the restoration of the 1927 Lithia Fountain, front and center on the Plaza.


Meanwhile, after WWII, the Lithia Spring site itself, out by the Ashland Airport, saw little use after the bottling plant closed. The property was eventually leased to the Ashland Gun Club, a group of private and law enforcement users that set up targets and ranges, where they can practice and learn new skills. It's a pretty active community, and it gives them and most of the police departments south of Medford a safe place to shoot. Ashland's Public Works Department has in the past used the site for dumping fill (a practice now ended) and between that and the gun club's penchant for berms its not much of an overstatement to say the landscape as been serially, and severely, modified since the 1960s.


But there are still buildings, and walls, and of course wells, out there... all in increasingly poor condition. Four years ago we evaluated the property for its NR potential. Given the fact that the Lithia Water development was a major part of Ashland's history, and that Lithia Water itself remains a somewhat iconic part of Ashland, it wasn't too hard to find the Springs site to be potentially significant under Criterion A. One of the recommendations was that the City and the Gun Club develop a management plan that would better protect these fragile resources against the day that they have some more public use (the gun club, for obvious reasons, isn't too keen on tourists wandering around the property). Ashland, a Certified Local Government, received a small grant from Oregon SHPO to fund the documentation.

Ashland hired us to develop the management plan and so last week I again went to the Lithia Springs site, poked through the brambles (and shell casings) took a bunch of pictures, and began to think how to protect these remaining elements of Ashland's Lithia Springs era. At the moment my "three commandments" for appropriate action are boiling down to;

"Keep Them Dry,
Keep Them Clean,
Don't Shoot at Them."

I will probably have to flesh that out a bit, but I think the basic tenets will remain.

The Oregon Caves Chateau turns 75

Yesterday we were at an Ice Cream social to commemorate the 75th birthday of the Oregon Caves Chateau, an NHL located in the Oregon Caves Monument, at the end of the road south of Cave Junction, Oregon. It was neat event, buoyed by the presence of Oregon's Governor Ted Kulongoski, the First Lady (and Oregon Trust Advisor) Mary Oberst, Representatives from the Congressional Delegation, the State Legislature, County Board of Commissioners and the National Parks Service, among many others that included the Friends of the Oregon Caves, former residents and workers. The Caves, and the Chateau, have an ever-growing fan base, to be sure.


As I've mentioned before, I've been working with the Friends to design and rehab a "Model Room" at the Caves, taking what was formerly the much-altered Manager's Suite and using it as an experiment to develop a viable alternative to the original (and hence historic) fiber-board/Celutex wall and ceiling coverings that were installed in 1934. These panels (in both 4x8 sheets and, in the hallways, about 18"x24" tiles) were installed directly over the studs, without any insulation, fire rating, or sound-proofing. You can see the "Before" picture above. And, if you have ever spend a night at the Chateau, I don't have to tell you how that lack of performance effects what the hospitality folks call "the visitor experience." The Manager's Suite had been modified (painted white, rather than the original brown/tan (turned orange by 1950s-era fire retardant) so working with NPS and Oregon SHPO we decided to remove it and explore a visually-compatible, more functional, alternative. In this case, after insulating the walls for both energy and acoustics, we took drywall with a chamfered bead and textured the finish. We're still messing with the paint scheme a bit and haven't quite perfected the "pickled" trim, but we're getting there. Refinished wood floors, historically-based lighting, and other details will, presumably, all improve the visitor experience. So will the revamped plumbing and electrical systems, but neither are as photogenic.


The Governor and First Lady cut a ribbon, to formally "open" access to the Model Room and the assembled crowd trekked up the stairs to see how we'd done. Afterwards everyone had Oregon150 Ice Cream (graciously served by the Governor), locally made cookies, and good conversation.


This project is the first step in what is a hoped for full systems and structural upgrade for the Chateau (Congress and Parks Service willing), to be paired with room-by-room restoration based on this model. New textiles and finishes (most from Oregon-based companies) will blend with the huge collection of historic Monterey Furniture that was part of the Chateau's original design. Stay tuned.

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?"

Wickiup Dam

Oregon, with all its streams and rivers, was a major focus for government investment during the 20th century. Hydroelectric dams, like Bonneville or John Day, get most of attention, but other major projects developed by the Army Corps of Engineers or the Bureau of Reclamation focused on flood control, recreation or irrigation. Given the typically effusive names of the era, the "Willamette Project" consists of a series of about 15 separate dams that were designed to control flow in that basin, mostly for flood control. The stories of the streams breaching their banks as late as the 1930s and 1940s are pretty amazing.


On the other side of the Cascades, storing water for irrigation offered the potential of huge agricultural development in an area that lacked an economy. The Wickiup Dam, one of the first elements of the "Deschutes Project" (there are those creative Feds again) was built west of La Pine beginning in the late 1930s by the men of the Civilian Conservation Corps. That's the water outlet construction, in a National Archives image (See, I told you can find all sorts of things on the Internet). When the irrigation canal was finally thrown open, in 1946, it was a cause for huge celebration. "The joyous welcome to the water, which theoretically came from the 180,000 acre foot Wickiup reservoir more than 100 south of Madras, opened at 11:00 am with a parade at the Madras airbase, where Queen Evelyn Kelley and her court served as royal hostesses" effused the Bend Bulletin. Jefferson County sure knew how to throw a party.

Today the Wickiup Dam is still operated on behalf of the US Government by the Bureau of Reclamation. As a part of a project that is considering the viability of a low-power, seasonal, generation facility that could be constructed at the Dam, we are evaluating whether or not the Wickiup Dam and Reservoir should be considered historically significant. Should be interesting to learn more about how this project developed, and how it changed Central Oregon.

The Wonders of the Internet....

Living where I live, a long way from any large university (apologies to SOU) or a really really great used bookstore (apologies to all the fine local used bookstores) I rely heavily on the Internet for research materials. Over the years this has gotten much easier to do, as more and more public entities at both the Federal and local levels put maps, assessor information, historic photographs and now even the entire texts of early reference material on the web. Google Scholar, if you have not yet discovered it, is like having the Bancroft Library at Cal Berkeley in your office. Really. OSU has digitized much of its fine photo collection and along with the Salem Public Library and the National Archives (which generously posts most its huge HABS photo collection) it is really incredible what you can find sitting barefoot at your office desk. Given the funding issues that are now impacting historical societies all over Oregon (something I really ought to write about in more detail), finding these always-open sources on the web is extremely helpful.


And that doesn't even start to touch the wonders of eBay and Bookfinder. Historic postcard images, so evocative of their period, are of great research value. Over the years I've found that if you are willing to search (and willing to pay) there are few books on Oregon's history (or on bridges, or dams, or roads, or neon signs, or early millwork, or....) that you can't find in some used bookstore that has kindly posted its entire catalog on a web search engine. I am now to the point and a new book almost assures that an existing book goes to the used book store, or more likely to storage. I wish my office was larger! (or at least that its WALLS were).