Walking tour in Portland's Pearl District spotlights the past

To some Portland residents who've witnessed the Northwest Industrial Triangle's progression over the past 20 years, the area has lost much of its former feel.

But to Thomas Augustine, the art director who gave the area its present name of the Pearl District, nothing could be further from the truth.

It hasn't lost its soul, Augustine says. As long as the romantic philosophy is kept alive, they will never be able to overbuild it, as a place for thinkers and as an arts district.

The romantic philosophy Augustine refers to is one originally championed by the late Pearl Marie Amhara, an Ethiopian-born social worker for whom Augustine named the district in 1986. Amhara adored the district and felt it mirrored New York's SoHo neighborhood 30 years prior to its bloom.

Augustine originally told people he chose the district's name because its art galleries and lofts were pearls inside a crusty industrial oyster. In 2002, however, he admitted that he actually chose the name for Amhara, but waited until after her death in 1996 so as not to draw attention to her social work.

Their relationship and the district's history and architecture will be explored in a new Mother of Pearl District walking tour. Portland Walking Tours will guide visitors through the district at 6:30 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month.

Augustine's original explanation for the Pearl District's name and his later recognition of Amhara are two different stories and they're both beautiful, says David Schargel, who will conduct tonight's Mother of Pearl District tour, which is sold out. Whichever you run with, they're both valid.

Schargel shares Augustine's faith in the Pearl District's soul but fears that children and Portland newcomers will see the district's new lofts and restaurants and miss out on its history. As a historian, he says, the district appeals to him because despite its many changes, new details of its past emerge regularly. I walk by these places, and I find new stories all the time, he says.

While buildings like the Gregory Lofts and Hoyt Street Properties' myriad Pearl District properties incorporate a variety of modern elements, Schargel says the district's history is obvious in numerous buildings that may have changed hands over the years but look much as they did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Schargel's tour weaves past the one-story Otis Elevator building on Northwest 10th Avenue - it writes its own jokes, he says - and the Wieden+Kennedy building along those (railroad) spur lines that went right down to 13th Street. It was an old cold-storage building; its elevated sidewalks are where trains pulled up.

Augustine, who now works in the Pearl District as the director of Janice Griffin Gallery, is thrilled Schargel is helping district newcomers discover the area's past. He's happy the tour explores several old buildings under renovation, like the Portland Armory, where developers have gone way out of their way to protect that building. I just wanted them to keep that building's shell, Augustine says. They didn't just go for maximum return on the dollar.

Schargel's tour will also take visitors to the U.S. Custom House at 220 N.W. 8th Ave., which picked out its location to be three blocks from Union Station but ended up seven blocks away. They blew it, Schargel says.

He loves that the rooms still have their original safes. If you couldn't pay your customs, he says, you had to leave your goods there.

Later, visitors will see the U.S. Post Office at 511 N.W. Broadway, which was designed as the first building in the United States to serve exclusively as a post office. Schargel marvels that the building was constructed for about $1 million from 1911 to 1918, considering its size and elegance.

Look at the marble and bronze ceiling, he says. And the window frames are all cast iron. You can't do facades like this anymore because they rusted so badly. And you can't sand or blast it off because it uses lead-based paint.

While Augustine is grateful that many of the buildings on Schargel's tour haven't changed much over the years, he's just as pleased to see new construction in the Pearl District. He thinks most new projects capture the district's spirit well and feature architecture that has a validity and authenticity like rap music. He says change in the district is inevitable; after all, we don't want brick buildings that can't be brought up to code.

New construction doesn't have to be sterile, Augustine says, pointing to the Gregory Lofts building, with its Gotham City look and imagination, volume and size as an example. He says most of the credit for the district's revitalization should go to developers like Al Solheim and Robert Ball, who can take an old building and imagine it into a new life. (They've) rebuilt the old and made it something the young can embrace.

Despite rising property costs and wealthier tenants, Augustine feels Pearl Amhara's values are well reflected in the Pearl District today.

Pearl, she wanted a place where people are not critical of each other and a place for creativity and constructive free thinking, he says. She believed in safety, trust and freedom, the foundation for people like Janice Griffin to come in. Janice doesn't have to hide a great education and a great ability here.

Griffin, whose gallery at 1301 N.W. 12th Ave. opens to the public at 5:30 p.m. today as part of First Thursday festivities, adores the district's older buildings - hers is a stark, white, one-story concrete building that in some ways, she says, influences her paintings. There's a wonderful authenticity to the building, she says, and there's a sense of the warehouse in my work.

Schargel's tour is expected to last between two-and-a-half and three hours; if anything, Augustine believes, it will only get longer as the district continues to spread.

The Pearl District is like a tsunami, he says. The boundaries are diffuse. Because the inspiration is so powerful, people will keep coming. They'll just have to change the maps.

Copyright 2004 Dolan Media Newswires
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