Hidden in the Past

Most of the time, it’s about buildings and buildings are, generally, pretty easy.  They are there, their pieces are either intact or missing, or sometimes hidden, but you can look at them.  And poke around, and if you know what you are looking for, you can usually figure out what you need to know.

But sometimes, before you get to the poking around part you have to understand the history of the thing, too.  History isn’t quite as obvious as four walls and roof and sometimes, when you least expect it, it's dang near hair-pullingly obscure.

I am currently trying to unravel what the heck Horace Knight (or Knights), Marshall Short and Ferdinand Grisez were doing in Siskiyou County between, 1850 and 1852.  And more specifically whether any of it involved building.  Somewhere during that time period these three guys showed up, like so many others, looking for gold.  Short, born in Ohio, came over the Isthmus of Panama.  I don’t now what brought Mr. Knight here from his ancestral home in Vermont and know even less about Grisez.  

One way or the other the three of them, or at least Knights, ended up at a property SW of Yreka that is still known as the Forest House, the gem I wrote about a month or so ago.   By 1853 Knight had leased a sawmill from a millwright named D. P. Sanborn, the guy who has been credited with operating the “first” sawmill in Siskiyou County, and milling the lumber for the Forest House.  The thing is, I don't know if the "Forest House" was standing when Knight and Sanborn signed the lease.

Knight, and Marshall didn't actually get their patents on the land claims until 1881 and 1882.  On the other hand the Forest House was certainly in place by 1853, when the County dedicated the road between Yreka and Fort Jones, by way of the Forest House Road…And Knight was soon hosting "gala" dances at a fine dwelling with a large auditorium, clearly the building that is still on the property.

I am just stymied that what was obviously an early and important structure receives such scant reference in most of the early histories.  I am currently operating under the assumption that Harry L. Wells, who wrote the 1881 “History of Siskiyou County” had, um "issues" with Knight and Short or vice versa.  Best take care when tangling with a historian. Whatever the reason, if there is one, Wells, and others, report pretty much nothing to clarify what Knight, Short and Grisez were actually doing in the early 1850s.  There's a nice piece in the local paper, published in 1901, and then, after the current owner's family purchased the property in 1909, a host of stories, all from the same source, that are generally consistent in character but vary somewhat in the early particulars.

Some have claimed that the Forest House was built as early as 1850, which seems unlikely to me, but it could have been.  And the current structure could have been built as late as 1865 on the site of an earlier on at the same location, and of the same name.  There is no evidence of that, by the way, but then there’s not much direct evidence of the house that is there now having being built earlier either.  At least not yet.

Back to the microfilms.

Gold Ray Dam update

There isn’t much left of the Gold Ray Dam, on the Rogue River, near Tolo, downstream from Gold Hill, Oregon.  The 1941 concrete dam has been entirely removed, along with the 1904 log crib dam that had been buried underwater, just upstream.  Turns out, unbeknownst to anybody involved with the project, that sometime after November 1941 (when they tried to burn the old dam) they went ahead and covered the face of it with about 12” of concrete or gunite.  This made removal much harder and, unfortunately, meant that we couldn’t save a small section of the log dam for the proposed interpretative displays.

The powerhouse, along with its early 1905-era equipment, is also being removed.  Jackson County, which owns the property, and Slayden Construction, which is contracted to remove the in-stream features (I am under contract to Slayden), have done an incredible job of developing the interpretative kiosk that is to be located up the hill, overlooking the dam site, as part of our Section 106 mitigation plan.    

One entire generation unit, the turbines, the wicket gate controls, the lower and upper pulleys (those that were rope driven), plus the 750kW General Electric generator and the exciter will be removed from the powerhouse and relocated to the old Clubhouse pad. (That's one of the 42" diameter turbines, above, freed of the muck for the first time in four decades).  Interpretative panels will explain what these features are, how they worked, and the history of the Gold Ray site. Should be a pretty effective display.

The Bridges of Multnomah County

Back to working on Portland bridges again. There are lots of bridges there, across the Willamette, in downtown and after having drafted a context statement, a Multiple Property Submittal that covers ten of them, I am now nibbling away at the formal nomination of four spans owned by Multnomah County; the Hawthorne, Broadway, Burnside and Morrison.

Writing about these spans it is a struggle to avoid the use of superlatives. It’s an amazing collection Portland has put together, including works by some of America’s most renowned bridge engineers such as Gustav Lindenthal, Ralph Modjeski, David Steinman, Waddell and Harrington and Joseph Strauss. In Portland, between the upstream Sellwood and the downstream Fremont bridges one can find the oldest vertical lift span bridge in the United States (the Hawthorne), the ONLY double-vertical lift span in the world (the Steel Bridge), and the largest Rall Bascule bridge ever built (the Broadway). The St. Johns Bridge was the longest suspension span in the world when it was completed and, until very recently, the Fremont Bridge was the longest orthotropic tied-arch span in the world too. Each one of these bridges, aside from the incredible functional value that they bring to Portland, is in its own way something of a masterpiece, an amazing piece of engineering whether it’s the longest, oldest, first, or whatever other superlative that can be layered atop the simple fact that this is a great set of bridges. The fact that you can stand on one and, in most cases, see almost all the others, is just stunning.

We preservationists can be fairly cutting when the mood strikes. Efforts to save historic structures by relocating them in packs to safer, less pressured ground, are almost universally dismissed as “preservation round-ups.” In Portland, over the period of 1910 to 1973, the City, the County and the State of Oregon have effectively created what amounts to a “Bridge Round-Up.” And it’s a pretty spectacular assemblage.

An Unexpected Gem

When people call me about the possibility of getting their house on the National Register I am frequently uninterested. Not that they aren't nice people, or nice houses, but usually it's a fully restored "Victorian" or a bungalow in some older part of town. While such places are lovely, they only rarely have the qualities to make them more than a contributing property in a historic district, one that the community hasn't gotten around to pursuing as it should. So, when the party on the other end of the phone has a different tale, it gets my attention.

Last week I was in northern California, looking at a house that has been owned by the current family for over a century.  In 1909 the family had purchased it from the people that had built it in 1851-52. Two owners, essentially, in 158 years gets my attention. So did the property, the Forest House, built on what became the Shasta-Scott Valley Turnpike, a toll road west of Yreka, that became Highway 3. The toll road was built by (wait for it) Horace Knight and Marshall Short, the first owners of the Forest House. This imposing two-story structure, with a full double porch, is almost entirely intact. Most of the original furnishings remain, along with everything else.  It even has the ledgers from the various 19th century enterprises that were focused on this outpost of civilization: a hotel, a distillery, a fruit orchard, an ice plant, a sawmill, and most anything else that would make a fella a buck at the side of the road.

So, over the next months, we'll work to get the Forest House on the NR as the first step in an effort to find some funding to make sure it survives. Unfortunately Messrs. Knight and Short built the structure with what was on-hand, in this case full 12" round log floor joists, all with the bark in place. Beetles, and perhaps termites, have found that old growth just irresistible with the result that the building is slowly compacting the powdery wood. Some rooms, like the upstairs ball room that occupies an entire side of the house (there are dance programs for its events in the lobby) now has a floor that looks like a wooden ocean wave. The current generation, who have inherited responsibility for this amazing piece of California's pioneer history, take that responsibility seriously. We're looking forward to helping them help the Forest House.

Umpqua River CAP Project

Last week I had the pleasure of spending two and half days on the beautiful Oregon Coast. The fact that it was in the mid-60s (instead of 90 and triple digit weather at home) was an extra bonus.

I was over there doing fieldwork for a “CAP Project” on the Umpqua River Lighthouse Museum, owned and operated by the Douglas County Museum of History and Natural History, in Roseburg. CAPs, The “Conservation Assessment Program” is funded by Heritage Preservation, in Washington, D.C., to help museums assess their collection storage processes. Typically two “assessors,” one a collections curator and one an architectural curator (in this case, me) spend a few days on the site, evaluating policies and exploring the facility, then write up a detailed report that points out success and room for improvement to guide the museum program into the future. In a perfect situation, everything is, well, perfect and there’s not much to write about but in an older building there are almost always concerns related to systems; water, HVAC, power, security and the like.

The Umpqua River Lighthouse Museum is located in a nifty  FDR-era building that was constructed by the US Coast Guard and used as the Station House in connection with Umpqua River Lighthouse, an 1894 structure located nearby. In the 1970s the Coast Guard “gave” the station house to the county for public use (gave is in quotation marks because there is some confusion about how that worked…suffice to say that Douglas County is in charge of operation and maintenance of the Station House and the boat house next door, which their parks department uses as a shop). The lighthouse, which is open for tours (even up to the light) is still operated by the Coast Guard and still shines its signature, rotating, red and white beacon through the original Fresnel lens, just like it has for the past 116 years.

Thankfully, Douglas County did a major renovation of the building in the mid-1980s and with the exception of an apparently compulsive drive to remove the wood panel doors, managed to do a fine job maintaining the original character while entirely shifting the use. They did an incredible job fabricating new iron railings to provide an access ramp to the basement (now the gift shop) and to the new grade entry to the Main Floor exhibit area. New fire sprinklers, new AC, a new boiler, and all new copper plumbing all make my job as an “assessor” pretty easy. But, of course, there is always something needing doing on an historic property, and one that gets 100s of visitors a day and contains irreplaceable artifacts documenting the history of the US Coast Guard on the southern Oregon coast is no exception.

Infill

I am occasionally asked for design input on entirely new projects that are located in sensitive, historic, portions of a community.  Often this is work on vacant land but sometimes it involves the demolition of a structure, usually one that isn’t historic.

There are three ways to approach “infill” as this sort of work is termed.  The first is a knee-jerk reaction is to build something that is visually similar (or identical) to the existing historic character, matching the volume, materials, and exterior treatments.  These imitative buildings “fit in,”.  At their worst, such projects try copy history and, of course, they fail in most ways.  More frequently they are designed so that they don’t draw much attention one way or the other.  We call such structures “background buildings,” since the whole point is that they won’t compete or overshadow the historic structures.  That is fine, and often appropriate, but isn’t exactly an opportunity to make a statement or explore exciting design.

A better approach to an infill project is a hybrid, perhaps matching the historic scale, rhythm and mass of the historic character, but utilizing new materials that clearly differentiate it from its surroundings.  This approach can be lots of fun, visually, but there is a fine line between cloying imitation and creative expression and it hard to do well so only a few try.

And finally, because the site is perhaps discrete though adjacent to the historic core, there is an opportunity to truly be creative and create what might well become a future landmark.  Good design is timeless, of course, and adds significantly to the character of a city.  When you get the opportunity to work on what could be a future landmark, and you have a client and team that approaches the project from the standpoint, you get to take a risk.  When the risk pays off, everyone wins but, since it’s a risk, everyone (usually the regulators) get really nervous, which is why most clients end up in less visionary scenarios.

For the past year or so I have been working on what could be a future landmark, to be built near but not entirely within the core of a historic business district.  Stay tuned!

Let's Mitigate

When a project, under the Section 106 evaluation process, results in a loss of historic character, it is termed Adverse.  An adverse effect can occur when otherwise well-intentioned actions such as changing out windows to increase energy efficiency changes the window type, or it can be the result of some other agency goal, such as the need for a larger or different building on the site, or it can be simply silly, as in an agency that just doesn't want an old building because it wants a new one instead.  All such actions are "Adverse" and "adverse," like significance (or pregnancy) either is or it isn't.  There is not really any standard for "more adverse" and when that is the Finding (a process term) you have to "mitigate."  Think of mitigation as Section 106 penance for damaging our collective heritage.

While every adverse effect has to be mitigated, there is no hard and fast rule as to what sort of mitigation is required, or how extensive it has to be, or even if it has to be directly related to the project. “Off-site” mitigation, meaning something that isn’t actually part of the project, is the new vogue and oft-times it makes sense. The Portland Bridge MPS project that I am working is such an “off-site” form of mitigation, for while it 's certainly related to the adverse effect of pending work on the Morrison Bridge, it’s not like we’re just putting up a plaque or taking some pictures (both of which, BTW, are pretty typical mitigation responses).

I’ve done mitigation that added to the scholarly record, writing a history of a project or the forces that created it, as a form of penance for the fact that it will no longer survive. I like to think that might make it easier to save some similar resource down the road, which I suppose is the point. Sometimes mitigation is HABS/HAER documentation, elaborate graphic and written studies of a resource that is going to change or disappear. HABS/HAER can be quite useful, if you are working on something similar too. But while documentation is beneficial, I try to find a public avenue for mitigation, something people can see, and hopefully appreciate.

While every situation is different, and not all options ever exist or even make sense for all projects, my personal favorite is to somehow tie the loss of a resource or historic character to an improvement in what replaces it, either through restoration of some other part of the project that can be accomplished or, more simply, through insisting that the new work, the one that necessitated the Adverse Effect, is something that people like me will find significant fifty years from now. Losing a historic resource is never fun. Losing it for a parking lot, or something hideous and without soul, is outright painful.