EXTRA EFFORT GOES TO THE TOP

With a little extra effort, an image of the Fox Theater in Portland, Oregon could be an entire universe.

I’ve heard stories, read interviews, of famous directors who said movie theaters were their whole world growing up. I saw a movie about a kid whose whole world was the village theater.

With a little extra effort the Fox, in all of its incarnations, could have been a civic statement about not tearing down and rebuilding in an urban core.

But history wasn’t so kind this time around. I like thinking smart cities learn faster, and Portland is a smart one by any calculations.

The lessons of the Portland Hotel weren’t enough?

Taken with a long lens of history, the Fox story began with live performances:

The Heilig auditorium was designed by E. W. Houghton and opened on July 22, 1910. The theatre was initially used as an opera house.

Then it adapted for movies:

The Mayfair closed in October 1953 to undergo a nine-month restoration, becoming part of Fox West Coast Theatre’s CinemaScope line of movie theaters. The local architectural firm Dougan and Heims oversaw the building’s conversion.

Then it was all over:

The Fox stopped screening films regularly in September 1990, then hosted occasional special events before the venue was demolished in 1997. 

Before the walls came down, history sleuths and other scavengers were allowed in to remove things of interest. The Fox had Jim Crow-era artifacts, and this Oregon history hound had his permission slip signed.

But I got there too late for the water fountain for white only plaque, as well as others bearing the same message.

Instead of moving on, I did what I call a ‘collection inventory’ where I’d bring a list of materials I’d like for the permanent museum collection, then add to it.

What I discovered in the Fox Theater, with a little extra effort, was a building that had been destabilized after it had been retrofitted for air conditioning. Holes were blasted through walls and ductwork pushed air delivered by huge fans in the basement.

One uneasy moment came in the basement where I tried to make sense of things. Two stories up a sliver of light jumped, casting a jagged knife in the darkness. I put it together later: the jagged knife of light was the gap in the cover for one of those sidewalk elevators, except this one was a two story drop straight down if the cover doors failed.

Another part of restoring the Fox for modern days in the 1950’s was hanging a false ceiling to block the third tier of seating. That’s when I hit the Jim Crow jackpot.

The auditorium seats were red velvet. Beautiful stuff. The balcony was the same, if I remember. But the third balcony had wooden bench seats with a center strip of straw covered by canvas.

With an assistant helping, or me helping the assistant since he was a qualified historical material guy like me, the benches made it to the permanent collection, along with the spacey looking ticket booth out front.

The Extra In Extra Effort

Take another look at the top image. Notice how the FOX sign is attached to the roof? Way the hell up there.

So, on a cold weekend morning I met with the crew taking the sign off the building before it all came down. The streets were blocked, the crane was there. I was there because the Oregon Historical Society was going to get as much of the sign as I could get for them. Which I told the crew.

If you’re not a museum person, then you probably have an idea of what a museum person is. Probably more like a librarian than Indiana Jones?

I’m out there in the rain with a pretty manly bunch, when one of the manly men asked if I’d like to climb the ladder to the top of the building and check their rigging before they lifted the sign.

Maybe they didn’t wink and nod, or make bets on whether I’d do it or not, but I sensed a challenge. Besides, my wife was there, too.

Picture a small dot on a small vertical line against the huge white expanse of the Fox front and you see me climbing all the way up one white knuckle after another, calculating each step with my boots too big for the rungs.

I didn’t look down. Guys on the roof talked and pointed to the cable and hooks when I got there, and asked if I’d like to climb over the front of the building for a better look.

“You can see the connections better from the roof,” the guy with the radio said.

“Got a great view from here. I’m heading back down,” I said.

“We weren’t sure you’d make it up.”

“Neither was I, but what else is there to do?”

“That’s what we say. Be careful, going down is the dangerous part,” he said.

Try and make an extra effort for something, or someone.