I want to get inside more buildings and take photos from a higher plane.

March 4, 2013, I took off from work and attended the tour attached to the Benson Hotel's 100th anniversary. The best part, being able to go into empty hotel rooms, look around a bit, then take some photos through the windows. I'm looking northeast here. Notice on the skyline the rounded top of Mount St. Helens, still covered with snow? See the black, open-work towers of the Steel Bridge sticking up above that red brick building?

Best of all, this view of the Big Pink. I know, I know. It doesn't look pink this time--it's more a taupe color, in my opinion. I like that you can see that the corner is not a 90 degree angle. (Read more about both in the next paragraph.) Fun fact: My two sons Lamont and Leland used to prep and cook at the Portland City Grill which takes up the entire 30th floor of the Big Pink. When Mama and I visited Portland for the first time in the summer of 2004, we stayed at the Benson Hotel and got to tour the Portland City Grill in the morning before it opened. I think it was July 4, but I cannot remember for sure. I love that places and sights I remember from that first visit are in my life, almost daily in some instances--my work commute involves the Big Pink, morning and afternoon. Sweet.

Here's more about the Big Pink's design, including the glass and the granite. Perhaps the most unusual features of the U.S. Bancorp Tower are its shape and color. Pietro Belluschi, consultant on the building, was most concerned about the play of light and shadows on its surface; meanwhile, the designers, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), had to work with a uniquely shaped lot due to the street grid. Because of the street grid, the tower features no right angles in its parallelogram footprint. This, in turn, makes it look either extremely slender or wide depending upon one's viewing angle. Belluschi carefully selected the glass and granite for the exterior facing. The pink granite covering the building was quarried in Spain. The Pittsburgh Plate Glass used for the windows is also pink, an effect caused by its being "glazed in a semitransparent coating of copper and silver that looks pink from the outside." The windows can absorb or reflect light depending upon how much light is upon them, while the surrounding granite may appear darker or lighter than the window panes, depending upon the time of day. The unusual color earned the building the nickname "Big Pink."

Rediscovering why I was out and about, thanks to several photos that I took.

Paul Mitchell School, downtown Portland, seen when I was out and about on November, 19, 2010. Wonder what I was doing downtown after dark? I remember walking along, seeing this through the window and taking photos, but I don't know why I was out and about.



Looking at the other photos that I took that evening, I remembered why I was out and about. I had read about The Original Dinerant in the paper, decided to check it out. The food was good, especially for a happy hour menu, and priced right. However, I've not been back but a few times since then, mainly because I now live within walking distance of my local bar The Blue Diamond where the food is great and affordable, the service fantastic, all brought to you by real people who are great human beings. Nothing against anyone at The Original, but it's not within walking distance.



Here's the reason that I walked up SW Oak from The Original. I wanted to get a night photo of the Benson Hotel. On our first visit to Portland, summer 2004, Mama and I stayed here, so the place is special to me; my younger son Leland worked there as a line/prep cook which adds to my personal special factor. I got a great photo that night before walking on up SW Oak and catching a bus back home.

Here's what I found at the Oregon Encyclopedia about the hotel back in 2010 when I went online:

The Benson Hotel, built in Portland by pioneer lumberman Simon Benson in 1913, was constructed as an annex to the adjacent Oregon Hotel to the south. It was originally called the New Oregon Hotel. Soon after it opened, however, it became known as the Benson. The older hotel was demolished in 1959 to make way for a new addition.

Conceived as a high-end hotel in downtown Portland, the Benson was designed by architect A.E. Doyle, who modeled it after the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. Doyle's design used the elements of the Baroque Revival Style in a grand manner, sheathing the twelve-story building in red brick and cream-colored, glazed terra cotta.

The massive mansard roof is covered in copper and green terra cotta and pierced with pediment dormers. (My photo, taken August 5, 2010, during the Architectural Heritage Center Downtown Terra Cotta Walk. Near as I can tell, the golden sphere rests inside a vase-like depression and is held in place by a scroll-like shape. I was wishing for a gargoyle.)

The interior also displayed an opulent touch. The lobby featured rare Circassian walnut woodwork from Russia, Italian marble floors, and Austrian crystal chandeliers. The ceiling was punctuated with ornate plaster designs of acanthus, rosettes, egg-and-dart, and other classical motifs. Noted lighting designer Fred Baker created the lighting fixtures for the interior. The Benson Hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

The $1 million, 200-room hotel boasted the latest in modern conveniences, including private baths, automatic door switches, electric lights, and telephones in each room. The hotel has been well maintained over the years, receiving a thorough rehabilitation in 1991. The Benson Hotel has always sought to attract a high-end clientele, which included show business celebrities, business leaders, politicians, and many U.S. presidents.

Simon Benson (1852-1942) gradually accumulated a fortune in the timber business, shipping large quantities of lumber to southern California to supply a building boom in the early years of the twentieth century. He sold his holdings in 1910, invested in real estate, and built the hotel that bears his name.

Written by William F. Willingham

And this is from Wikipedia:

The Benson Hotel is a 287 room historic hotel building in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. It is owned and operated by Coast Hotels & Resorts. It was originally known as the New Oregon Hotel, and is commonly known as "The Benson." It has a reputation as one of Portland's finest hotels. The hotel is named after notable businessman and philanthropist Simon Benson.

Simon Benson had wished to build a world-class hotel in Portland. During the population boom that occurred between the 1905 Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition and the Great Depression, Benson fulfilled his wish.

The firm of Doyle, Patterson, and Beach designed the main hotel building in French Second Empire style. The hotel opened 1912 and Chicago's Blackstone Hotel served as the inspiration of the building's overall design. The building was originally an annex to the Oregon Hotel, and was known as the New Oregon Hotel.

In 1959, the old Oregon Hotel next door was demolished to, ironically, make way for a 175 room annex to the 1912 building. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

Still dreaming about our wonderful blue sky days. The Mark O. Hatfield Building, downtown Portland.

I took this photo on June 16, 2012. Look at that glorious blue sky! The leafy, green trees! They highlight the renovated Mark. O. Hatfield Building very well. Wow! I can't help myself. I love downtown Portland, Oregon! And guess what? This triangle-looking building is not on a triangle corner. Know what I mean? The streets don't make a triangle for it to fit in. It was shaped differently, going out wider towards those green trees, when it was constructed in 1910 as the Lowengart Building. In 1933-34, West Burnside was widened. That's the street where the trees are in the median. Since 1994 it's been known as the Mark O. Hatfield Building. And see the buildings up SW Broadway, the brick one with the white on it and the other brick one right beside it? That's the Benson Hotel, where Mama and I stayed on our very first visit to Portland!

At one of my favorite blogs about Portland, Vintage Portland, I found two fabulous vintage photos to share with you, all about this intersection during and after the widening of West Burnside. Enjoy yourselves! You can click twice on the vintage photos, after you've opened a particular post, and really get to see all sorts of intriguing details.

The Lowengart Building, during the widening of West Burnside, 1933. On the left of this vintage photo, in the background you'll see a multi-story building with white-framed windows, arched tops on them. That building is right behind the Benson Hotel! Remember this recent post? I took the photo in the post from the Benson Hotel. It is of the intersection where the Mark O. Hatfield Building sits--the southwest corner of West Burnside and SW Broadway.

I love this next photo, too. The empty lot is a parking lot today. You can see just the corner of it in the photo I took from the Benson Hotel because the parking garage blocks the view. In the screen shot from Google Maps, there are lots of trees in the lot with cars parked among them. The Lowengart Building, after the widening of West Burnside, 1934.

I just found a great article online, dated June 14, 2012, all about the renovation of the Mark O. Hatfield Building. Neat-o!

Renovation of Mark O. Hatfield Building updates 106 low-income housing units
The Oregonian By Molly Hottle

From the time he was a child moving from one apartment to another, Nate McCoy knew he wanted to be an architect.

He and his family would often live in rundown apartments in Portland that were available to single-parent households, like his own, and low-income residents.

“I always wondered why we couldn’t live in nicer apartments,” said McCoy, now 30.

It was those experiences that spurred his desire to become an architect for the city of Portland and to help improve the housing options for the city’s low-income residents.

In that vein, McCoy recently finished working on the rehabilitation of the Mark O. Hatfield Building, a 106-unit structure on West Burnside Street owned by Central City Concern, a Northwest Portland nonprofit. A grand reopening event was held June 7 to celebrate the renovation of the once-crumbling building.

The more than $2.5 million renovation project restored the exterior of the building and updated the heating and cooling systems. The project was quick — it lasted about seven months — and Portland contributed $846,000 in federal grant funds to the project.

The project was also funded by Central City Concern, Multnomah County, Energy Trust of Oregon, Enterprise Community Partners and the Network for Oregon Affordable Housing.

McCoy served as a development manager on the project, ensuring that developers were being paid and dealing with other financial matters. He usually works with projects in the Lents neighborhood, but the renovation of this particular building had special meaning to him.

In 2003, McCoy was given the Mark O. Hatfield Architectural Award, which provided a scholarship for his education in the architecture school at the University of Oregon. He still remembers meeting Hatfield during the award ceremony.

“He was like, ‘I’m sure we’ll see each other again,’” McCoy said. “It’s crazy that after he said that, I’m working on a project with his name on it.”

Hatfield, a former Oregon governor and senator, died in August 2011 at the age of 89.

During the reopening celebration, Ed Blackburn, Central City Concern executive director, talked about Hatfield and his efforts to help the nonprofit meet paperwork and application deadlines to ensure the building could be used for low-income housing.

“That’s why it was named after” Hatfield, Blackburn said.

Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish also spoke at the ceremony about how the building gives more than just shelter for its residents. Central City Concern also provides addiction help and job services there.

“In other cities, a building like this at the intersection of Burnside and Broadway would probably either be high-end condos or the most desirable office space in the city,” Fish said. “But here in Portland, this building is home to 106 formerly homeless individuals, seeking a hand up. I think that speaks loud and clear about our values as a community.”

Upgrades made to the building include the installation of three-paned, energy-efficient windows that block noise; the implementation of a new heating system that automatically turns off when windows are opened; and the removal of a 30-year-old steam boiler and outdated electric radiators.

“If you look at it now, it really looks like South Waterfront lofts,” McCoy said.

One day, he hopes to work as a developer, creating housing for Portland’s low-income residents, and he also looks forward to helping his mother, who still lives in low-income housing, move to one of the updated buildings.

“I know people who live in these places still today, so to be able to work in the projects that help the community, to me, have so much more value than working on projects with people with deep pockets,” he said. “It all comes back to the same goal of just giving those in need most an opportunity.” 

-- Molly Hottle; Twitter: @nwpdxreporter

Almost a year ago . . . and a tidbit about our approaching spring.

I took this photo on March 4, 2013, just over a year ago, at 2:37 p.m. I took off work early to go on a tour, part of the Benson Hotel's 100th Birthday Celebration. The entire thing turned out very well, but it was super neat to me to also get a chance to look out the windows of the rooms we toured. This view is looking north and slightly west of the hotel. My favorite Portland architect is A. E. Doyle. His firm designed the hotel.

Were you confused at first, seeing those two white vehicles seeming as if they were parked down among the leafless trees on West Burnside? Actually, they're parked on the roof of a parking garage. Info about the parking garage: The historic Corbett Brothers Auto Storage Garage (built 1926) is also known as Broadway Garage and is located 630 SW Pine in Portland, Oregon, United States, is listed on the US National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). That same Portland architect, A. E. Doyle, designed the parking garage, too.



This screen shot has my photo beside a Google Map of the intersection. See where I added West Burnside on each of them? The text is just about in the same place on each photo. Anyway, most every workday, I'm on a bus that turns right onto the wide open street before turning right onto West Burnside. The wide open street is Broadway. You can see the street the bus is on before it turns right, there beside the north side of the parking garage. And in the Google Map, you can see that the trees have their leaves on! Right now the trees look just about the same as in my photograph, although I did notice a few along the homeward commute Thursday after work, some with enough leaf buds large enough to give a hint of color to the tree. Spring's comin', y'all!

Downtown Portland's Benson Hotel, one of A. E. Doyle's buildings

Mama's doing OK, not great, but OK. Thanks to everyone for the prayers.


On our first visit to Portland, summer 2006, Mama and I stayed here. We loved every second of it. I took this photo the evening of November 19, 2010.

Here's what I found at the Oregon Encyclopedia about the hotel:

The Benson Hotel, built in Portland by pioneer lumberman Simon Benson in 1913, was constructed as an annex to the adjacent Oregon Hotel to the south. It was originally called the New Oregon Hotel. Soon after it opened, however, it became known as the Benson. The older hotel was demolished in 1959 to make way for a new addition.

Conceived as a high-end hotel in downtown Portland, the Benson was designed by architect A.E. Doyle, who modeled it after the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. Doyle's design used the elements of the Baroque Revival Style in a grand manner, sheathing the twelve-story building in red brick and cream-colored, glazed terra cotta.


The massive mansard roof is covered in copper and green terra cotta and pierced with pediment dormers. (My photo, taken August 5, 2010, during the Architectural Heritage Center Downtown Terra Cotta Walk. Near as I can tell, the golden sphere rests inside a vase-like depression and is held in place by a scroll-like shape. I was wishing for a gargoyle.)

The interior also displayed an opulent touch. The lobby featured rare Circassian walnut woodwork from Russia, Italian marble floors, and Austrian crystal chandeliers. The ceiling was punctuated with ornate plaster designs of acanthus, rosettes, egg-and-dart, and other classical motifs. Noted lighting designer Fred Baker created the lighting fixtures for the interior. The Benson Hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

The $1 million, 200-room hotel boasted the latest in modern conveniences, including private baths, automatic door switches, electric lights, and telephones in each room. The hotel has been well maintained over the years, receiving a thorough rehabilitation in 1991. The Benson Hotel has always sought to attract a high-end clientele, which included show business celebrities, business leaders, politicians, and many U.S. presidents.

Simon Benson (1852-1942) gradually accumulated a fortune in the timber business, shipping large quantities of lumber to southern California to supply a building boom in the early years of the twentieth century. He sold his holdings in 1910, invested in real estate, and built the hotel that bears his name.

Written by William F. Willingham

And this is from Wikipedia:

The Benson Hotel is a 287 room historic hotel building in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. It is owned and operated by Coast Hotels & Resorts. It was originally known as the New Oregon Hotel, and is commonly known as "The Benson." It has a reputation as one of Portland's finest hotels. The hotel is named after notable businessman and philanthropist Simon Benson.

Simon Benson had wished to build a world-class hotel in Portland. During the population boom that occurred between the 1905 Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition and the Great Depression, Benson fulfilled his wish.

The firm of Doyle, Patterson, and Beach designed the main hotel building in French Second Empire style. The hotel opened 1912 and Chicago's Blackstone Hotel served as the inspiration of the building's overall design. The building was originally an annex to the Oregon Hotel, and was known as the New Oregon Hotel.

In 1959, the old Oregon Hotel next door was demolished to, ironically, make way for a 175 room annex to the 1912 building. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

Sunday evening, corner of SW Broadway and SW Washington, waiting for the 15

After an excellent, exciting, wonderful SYTYCD live show, we rode the MAX from the Rose Garden into downtown. Leslie got off at the Big Pink--her significant other works on the 30th floor at the Portland City Grill; we enjoyed Happy Hour there before we rode the MAX to the show--and I continued on to Pioneer Courthouse Square where I got off and walked to this corner. I can't count the number of times that I've waited here for the last bus home, the 15, after work, after volunteering, after watching the lighting of Portland's Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving, after walking downtown streets looking for those special sights to photograph.


Looking north at the same intersection. Where I wait is beside Pazzo Ristorante which you can see there on the right corner of the photo. Just out of sight to the right and around the corner on SW Washington, I wait in front of two huge windows which are in the bar section of the restaurant. There's an awning and lots of light at that particular spot, a perfect place to wait for a bus in the evening. The irony of how often I wait here rests on the 11th floor of the white and brick building on the left side of the photo--the one with the well-lighted exterior stairwell. That's the Benson Hotel, the place where Mama and I stayed for our first visit to Portland in 2004, from June 30 through July 9. We never had to turn on the air conditioner, never had to shut the windows AND there were not any screens. No bugs, no mosquitoes, no humidity. I mean I knew I wanted to move to Portland when we got off the airplane and onto the MAX for the ride to the Benson, but the fact that we didn't have to turn on the AC, that we didn't have screens, that we never saw a bug--wow! Totally sold me and planted the seed of moving here firmly in Mama's mind.

The Marquee Says It All

I bought my first books at Powell's in June, 2004, when Mama and I first came to visit my sons, Lamont and Leland. I rode the No. 20 bus after walking over to Burnside from the Benson Hotel, my rolling suitcase in hand. Those books about Eudora Welty and Willie Morris flew home to Mississippi with me on Southwest Airlines. In June, 2006, they rode 2,500 miles back to Portland, in the back of the UHaul truck Leland drove. Right now they're on my 85x32-inch, three-shelf, unfinished pine bookcase in our top floor apartment in Portland's Alphabet District, eleven blocks from where I found them in 2004. About the bookcase, Mama just asked me, "Is that your library?" Brilliant lady.

At www.powells.com, you can find out all sorts of info about Powell's, including the store in the photograph, the City of Books. It takes up the entire city block, bordered by NW 10th and 11th Avenues to the east and west, W. Burnside and NW Couch Streets on the south and north. You're looking at the corner of 10th and Burnside here in the photo I took after work yesterday.

I can't resist giving you a few tidbits of information:

Powell's City of Books is a book lover's paradise, the largest used and new bookstore in the world. Located in downtown Portland, Oregon and occupying an entire city block, the City stocks more than a million new and used books. Nine color coded rooms house over 3,500 different sections, offering something for every interest, including an incredible selection of out-of-print and hard-to-find titles. ... Every day at our buyers' counter in the Orange Room, we purchase thousands of used books from the public. Powell's purchases special collections, libraries, and bookstore inventories as well.

A few facts about the City of Books:

68,000 square feet packed with books
we buy 3,000 used books over the counter every day
approximately 3,000 people walk in and buy something every day
another 3,000 people just browse and drink coffee
our parking garage provides space for 40 cars (ok, so there are bigger parking garages)
we stock 122 major subject areas and more than 3,500 subsections
you'll find more than 1,000,000 volumes on our shelves
approximately 80,000 book lovers browse the City's shelves every day, in Portland and via the Internet. So is our mother ship the world's largest bookstore? Heck, it may be bigger than your whole town.