PORTLAND BUILDING UP, BUILDING DOWN

Portland Hotel via ohs.org

The difference between building up and tearing something down looks the same at some point in the project.

Taking a building down leaves a trail of crap all over the place; prepping a site to start building does the same thing except with more organization.

Walk past any fenced off block in a growing city like Portland and that’s what you’ll see.

I’ve seen the city evolve since the early 1980’s and couldn’t tell you what used to be where some new building stands.

What stood in the space the Portland Building took?

What did Pioneer Courthouse Square used to be? I know the answer to this one: it was a parking lot after the Portland Hotel bit the dirt.

What did the Fox Tower used to be? This blogger is dialed in today: Fox Tower used to be Fox Theater. Before the theater came down I went in as the history guy to find artifacts to tell the Portland story.

Before the sign came off the Broadway side I climbed a ladder from the sidewalk to the top of the building on a cold, wet day to take a look around. It was a Portland day.

What used to be where the Koin Tower stands? Speaking for anyone who drove east through the Vista Ridge Tunnels before the Koin Tower, Mt. Hood was the first thing we looked for and it was beautiful. Getting the full load of Hood made more than one day. You might see it, you might not, but now it’s Koin.

To ease the regret, getting Hood out of the way probably saved people from crashing. It was a stunning view out of the tunnel.

The towers all over town lift Portland toward a certain future, but is it still important to give history a tip of the hat?

Where is that happening?