In Search of Portland

For this second of our two-episode look at Portland's one-of-a-kind midcentury modern arena, we double down on the Coliseum's history as the original home of the Portland Trail Blazers, and explore the Coliseum's artistry. The first interview is with the MVP of Portland's 1977 NBA championship: Hall of Fame basketball player and veteran ESPN commentator Bill Walton. The second interview is with artist Avantika Bawa, whose 2019 solo show at the Portland Art Museum was devoted exclusively to paintings and drawings of the Coliseum.

It is one of America's only urban volcanoes, but Mt. Tabor park is all about greenery, water and respite. Opened in 1909, it's one of Portland's earliest examples of the City Beautiful movement and Olmsted-style park design, which in the early 20th century saw the sons of famed Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted take his vision across the nation. Mt. Tabor's open-air reservoirs are the lake-like vistas attracting hikers and picnickers, while at its top is not just a panoramic view of downtown and Mt. Hood but the site of a contemporary reckoning over just which statue should stand there. Historian and film producer Laurence Cotton joins us in the first interview to discuss the Olmsteds who helped birth Tabor's design. In the second, historian and speaker Sig Unander discusses Claire Phillips, a World War II hero from Portland who, before earning a Medal of Freedom for spying on the Japanese from her Manilla nightclub, as a teen used to climb Mt. Tabor, smoke cigarettes and dream.

It is known as the city's living room. Pioneer Courthouse Square is where Portlander's come to celebrate, to protest, to commemorate, and most of all to be together. The site's long history includes the city's first public building and, later, its first grand hotel. This episode features interviews with architect Mark Lakeman of Communitecture, musician Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini and University of California at Berkely historian Alex Craghead talking about the square's past, present, and what makes it the center of the city.

It is arguably the most architecturally unique arena in the United States, offering 360-degree views from its seats: a pioneeringly pristine midcentury-modern glass box born from the optimistic days of JFK and the NASA space program. It has hosted some of the city's most memorable cultural moments, including the Portland Trail Blazers' 1977 NBA championship and concerts by nearly every iconic 20th century rock and pop act, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Elvis Pressley, Bob Dylan, Queen, Fleetwood Mac and David Bowie, not to mention inspiring speeches by transcendent leaders like The Dalai Lama and Barack Obama. The arena has a dark side: many Black-owned homes were demolished to make way for it. But in the future, a restored Coliseum is poised to become the cultural centerpiece of a reborn Albina neighborhood.

For 120 years it stood downtown between two park blocks. In 1991 it made a cameo in one of the most acclaimed films by Portland's favorite-son movie director, Gus Van Sant. In 2020, it was removed from its base and stored in a warehouse. Though it's just a tiny little statue on a traffic median, the "Elk" statue may be the city's most beloved public artwork. And whenever it returns, this circa-1900 statue by the internationally renowned sculptor Roland Hinton Perry, a French-trained classicist called upon to evoke Native American symbolism, shows us a way to move beyond the divisive hero-worship of human statuary.

This long-deserted flour mill complex along the Willamette River was once Portland's biggest economic engine, producing enough wheat to make Oregon one of America's biggest producers. For the past 20 years, it has stood empty, even as the Pearl District exploded around it. Can it be preserved, should it be torn down for affordable housing, or could Centennial Mills continue as an industrial ruin and park? This episode features interviews with historian Chet Orloff, who worked at the mills as a young man, and Prosper Portland development director Lisa Abuaf, who is leading the city's effort to transform Centennial Mills equitably.

Situated prominently on Broadway, the Ladd Carriage House is an anachronism standing next to two glass towers: a 19th century outbuilding that was once part of founding father William Ladd's mansion. Today home to the Raven & Rose restaurant, the Carriage House was nearly demolished just over a decade ago by the church that owned it — until a grassroots effort found a better way. In this episode, we talk with Friends of Ladd Carriage House founder and architect Paul Falsetto about the building's unique charms, and with interior designer Tracy Simpson about building perhaps the city's coziest dining spot, with hopes for its swift post-pandemic return.

Over the past 125 years the city block at 10th Avenue and Alder Street has symbolized a changing city. Modest yet handsome early 20th century commercial and theater buildings gave way to midcentury parking lots. Then the block became an epicenter of Portland's street-food renaissance. Soon it will be one of Portland's tallest towers. In this episode, we talk with Food Carts Portland writer Brett Burmeister about the rise and fall of the 10th & Alder food cart pod, and Architectural Heritage Center historian Val Ballestrem about the block's 19th century beginnings.

One of the most recognizable buildings on Portland's skyline, the KOIN Center helped revitalize downtown in the 1980s, but only after its South Auditorium District wiped out a neighborhood. In the basement is the TV station the building's name, where for decades some of the city's most venerable newscasters have sat at the anchor desk. And long before the KOIN Center, Oregon's greatest women's suffrage leader, Abigail Scott Duniway, lived in a house here just over a century ago. Our first interview features Jan Willemse of architecture firm ZGF, who discusses the KOIN Center's architectural beginnings. In second interview, longtime KOIN anchor Jeff Gianola reflects on his career. And in a special third interview, historian Jennifer Chambers discusses Abigail Scott Duniway's continuing legacy.

This four-story brick former hotel building in downtown Portland's West End dates to 1910, but the restaurant on its ground floor, Jake's Famous Crawfish, goes all the way back to 1892. Its fresh-caught seafood as well as its wood-and-polished-brass environs have attracted not just a who's who of locals but movie stars like Humphrey Bogart and his Portland-raised wife of the 1930s and '40s, actress Mayo Methot. In our first interview, film historian Laura Wagner discusses the rocky Methot-Bogart marriage and its Portland ties. The second interview features Jake's general manager Brian McConnell as well as Missy Maki, who oversees sales for the restaurant’s parent company, McCormick & Schmick’s restaurants, as we discuss this landmark eatery's present and future.

Completed in 1928 as a church annex, this Jacobethan-style building in Southeast Portland near Sandy Boulevard went on to host to some of the great names in music history during the 1980s and '90s, including Nirvana, Elliott Smith, Radiohead, Sleater-Kinney, The Replacements George Clinton and Ornette Coleman. Our first interview features local musician Sean Croghan, a singer-songrwiter who graced the Pine Street/La Luna stage with acclaimed bands like Crackerbash. The second interview features restaurateur Ben Dyer, co-founder of the La Luna Cafe, one of many acclaimed food and drink tenants there today.

Poet Hazel Hall was once called the Emily Dickinson of the West, and her acclaimed poetry of the 1920s was written from a house in Northwest Portland near 22nd and Burnside that even inspired many of her poems. In our first interview, we'll talk with University of Oregon emeritus professor John Witte, who edited a collection of Hall's poems published in 2000. In our second interview, we talk with the husband-and-wife team of textile designers living in the Hazel Hall House today and carrying on its spirit of creativity, Trish and Neale Langman.

Arguably Portland’s most acclaimed work of 21st century architecture, in 2000 the Wieden + Kennedy Agency World Headquarters transformed a century-old former cold-storage warehouse in the Pearl District and made its architect, Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works, the city’s most celebrated. Our first interview features Cloepfil reflecting on the building’s design process and his early career. In the second interview, longtime W+K veteran Danny Sheniak discusses the evolution of one of America’s top advertising agencies.

Demolished in 2001 but living on in celluloid, the St. Francis Hotel at 11th and Main downtown began its life in the 1920s as lodging for business travelers, then for decades was a single-room-occupancy destination for the down and out. But the building is probably best known as a location for key scenes in Drugstore Cowboy, the movie that launched the career of internationally-renowned Portland filmmaker Gus Van Sant. Our first interview features film critic Marc Mohan, who discusses Drugstore and Van Sant's continuing movie career. Then our second interview features affordable-housing advocates Bobby Weinstock of the Northwest Pilot Project and Merrell Baker of Home Forward, in an effort to better understand Portland's struggle to house its most vulnerable citizens.

Perhaps the city's most beloved building, Multnomah County Central Library is not only a gorgeous work of early 20th century Georgian style by Portland's most acclaimed architect of the time but also a vital resource for a cross-section of citizens today. Our first interview features Philip Niles, author of Beauty of the City, the definitive biography of Central Library architect A.E. Doyle, who also designed a host of Portland landmarks. The second interview features Central Library manager Angela Weyrens, whose team serves hundreds of patrons every day.

Dating to 1891, over its history the First Regiment Armory Annex (better known as simply The Armory) was been a place for military marching drills and target practice, a concert hall, and a beer-brewery warehouse. A 2006 renovation of The Armory gave birth to the Gerding Theater inside, headquarters for the city's leading theater company: Portland Center Stage. We talk with architects Stepen Domreis and Craig Mendenhall of GBD Architects about balancing historic preservation with ambitious sustainability goals, and with Portland Center Stage artistic director Marissa Wolf about the upcoming 2019-2020 season and how great theater is a melting pot of stories and ideas.

With its massive Portlandia statue and wild Postmodernist architectural style — resembling a wrapped birthday present or a Rubik's Cube — the Portland Building is our most famous building as well as our most infamous. Architect Carla Weinheimer discusses her firm's transformative yet controversial renovation of this 1980s landmark. And author Bob Dietche tells us about the jazz club that once existed on this site, featuring legends like Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.

Episode 3: Mercy CorpsOn Portland's downtown riverfront sits the headquarters for one of the world's leading humanitarian organizations, Mercy Corps. We talk with Hacker Architects' partner David Keltner of Hacker and Mercy Corps CEO Neal Keny-Guyer about how the building fuses 19th and 21st century architecture, and how to meet humanitarian and social-justice challenges in Portland, across America or around the world.

Episode 2: Lincoln HallToday it's one of the city's most important performing-arts venues and part of the Portland State University campus, but this early 20th Century gem was once the high school attended by three legendary Portlanders: artist Mark Rothko, voice artist Mel Blanc, and poet Gary Snyder. We talk with art critic Jeff Jahn of PORT and Bora Architects' Michael Tingley about Lincoln Hall's past, present and future.

Episode 1: Portland Art MuseumAn architectural landmark and art Mecca born in the Great Depression and continuing to expand, the Portland Art Museum was a make-or-break moment for the city's greatest architect, Pietro Belluschi. We talk withhis son, architect Anthony Belluschi, about this modest masterwork's timeless design. We also talk with the Portland Art Museum's curator of Northwest Art, Grace Kook-Anderson, about curating for Belluschi's museum and Northwest art means today.