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Oregon Architecture

A few examples of Oregon architecture to see and enjoy while you're here:

Wayne Morse Federal Courthouse in downtown Eugene. This fabulous new building by Morphosis architect Thom Mayne opened in November 2006.

Timberline Lodge, Mount Hood. By A.E. Doyle, 1936-1938. A WPA masterpiece in Oregon, the lodge is also the home of significant collection of arts and crafts, from paintings by C.S. Price and Charles Heaney to iron work by O.B. Dawson. (The building also appeared as the snowbound, haunted hotel in Stanley Kubrick's movie of Stephen King's "The Shining.")

The Portland Building, downtown Portland. By Michael Graves, 1980. An icon of postmodernism, with its strong visual whimsy, this downtown Portland office building can be found in just about any primer on contemporary art and architecture as an example of postmodern architecture.

The library at Mount Angel Abbey. By Alvar Aalto, 1970. Aalto, who died in 1976, is one of the big names in modern architecture; his library for the monks of Mount Angel is modest on the outside, a delightful and luminous surprise within.

The Hult Center, Eugene. By Hardy, Holzman & Pfeiffer, 1982. From the blackberry curtain in the Silva Concert Hall to the tree-like lobby timbers and the angled mountain-like peaks of its main structure, this building is Western Oregon in microcosm.

Heceta Head lighthouse, on the coast north of Florence. By H.M. Montgomery & Co., 1893. A postcard lighthouse, classically situated on a rock promontory above the Pacific.

Pete French Round Barn, in the desert about 40 miles southeast of Burns. Late 19th century. This stolid, squat building was designed to give cattle baron Pete French's buckaroos a place to work horses in the Eastern Oregon winter. Just getting there - the barn sits by itself in one of the wildest parts of the state - will show you a lot about Oregon.

First Presbyterian Church, 216 S. Third St., Cottage Grove. By Pietro Belluschi, 1951. The internationally known Belluschi, who was dean of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1951 to 1965, got his start in Oregon and did several buildings around the state, including Eugene's Central Lutheran Church and the Equitable Building in Portland. The Cottage Grove church is right in Belluschi's tradition of using native materials, with board and bat exterior and a curving roof line as well as large windows that bring the world into the church sanctuary.

The McCullough Bridges, along the Oregon coast and elsewhere. Conde McCullough was an engineer with the Oregon State Highway Commission from 1919 to 1932; his graceful steel and concrete bridges are as much a part of the coast as rain, fog and Mo's Seafood. He also built bridges in Panama, Guatemala and Honduras.

all text and images © 2005-06 by Bob Keefer
no reproduction allowed in any form without written permission