N a T Space, Style and Structure i o A Look Back at Oregon’s n a l Future with

H i Space, Style and Structure s t o r REVIEW ESSAY i c by Christine Curran P r e s e I THINK A LOT about Space, Style which tend to be narrow in focus and r and Structure. Not about the words outdated almost as soon as they are v completed. Space, Style and Struc- a themselves, but about the two- PUBLISHED IN 1974, Space, Style and Structure: Building in Northwest America t volume study published by the Oregon ture’s enduring relevance stems in i featured over one thousand images, many of which came from the Oregon Historical o Historical Society (OHS) in 1974 as a part from its extraordinarily extensive Society’s photo and manuscript archives. Illustrations document the history of the region n bicentennial commemorative project. survey period. The geographic scope from Native peoples and structures to the contemporary post-World War II landscape. Co-edited by the society’s Executive is also ambitious — it spans from the This sketch of a Tillamook house of coastal Oregon by Inaky San Martin is based on a A Director Thomas Vaughan and archi- Siskiyou Mountains to Vancouver three-quarter scale reconstruction at the Oregon Historical Society. c t tect Virginia Guest Ferriday, its full title Island. The regional approach of is Space, Style and Structure: Building the scholarship is unique as well. in Northwest America. Over one thou- The essays extend across the entire sand images, many from the OHS col- Pacific Northwest and are organized When we commemorate this year state and local — not just national — lections, are reproduced within its 750 by era, categories, building types, and the fiftieth anniversary of the National significance, creating the National Reg- pages, illustrating the development architects, providing a framework that Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), we ister of Historic Places. In Oregon, Gov. of the built environment in the Pacific helps readers recognize patterns of are also commemorating the nascent Tom McCall was writing his “Oregon NHPA 50 Northwest, including British Columbia, significance. And here is what is brave concepts in Vaughan’s mind that would Story,” establishing a comprehensive 1966–2016 from pre-contact to 1975. This book of about the authors of Space, Style and become Space, Style and Structure. statewide planning program that was essays written by thirteen of the fore- Structure: they tackled present experi- Both are products of an era when the to prove truly ground-breaking. In most practitioners in the field of archi- ence as well as the past. When they government, at all levels, first took a fact, the same year Space, Style and tecture is as important a source today were finished considering the built comprehensive look at preservation Structure was published, the newly as it was when it was published. As a environment from the perspective policy. The NHPA helped level the created Land Conservation and Devel- work that is fundamentally constructed that distance provides, they pressed playing field for the built environment opment Commission (LCDC) adopted around the concept that history is a on. They provided contemporary in the face of indiscriminate post-war its first set of planning goals; Goal 5 I n moving window, it stands still in its contexts, even examining plans and development and the establishment addressed the preservation of historic excellence and ability to educate and models for buildings that had not yet of the interstate highway system. It sites and cultural areas. O inspire anybody interested in Oregon’s been constructed. They took a lot of authorized grants to states so they The years between the conception r built environment. chances, hoping that their decisions could establish preservation offices, of Space, Style and Structure as an e g The book defies the usual trajec- about what to include and what to omit and it expanded the nation’s historic idea and its publication, 1969 to 1974, o tory of most architectural surveys, would stand the test of time. landmark list to include properties of mirrored the years of the Nixon admin- n

434 OHQ vol. 117, no. 3 © 2016 Oregon Historical Society Curran, A Look Back at Oregon’s Future with Space, Style and Structure 435 istration. The era was marked by the ing five archaeological sites and six to the “age of limits” — a term that graph collections, furniture, recipes, passage of a flurry of environmental National Historic Landmarks.2 came to characterize the social and money, property — things we pass laws and the establishment of new Into this timely collision of leader- political trends of the late 1960s and down, linking and binding families agencies, including the Clean Air Act, ship, policy, and programming came 1970s. The authors spread their survey together through time. It is our built the Clean Water Act, the Endangered the publication of Space, Style and across five temporal divisions and environment, however, that provides Species Act, and the Environmental Structure. It truly was a product of its used as connecting threads regional that link at a macro, or collective, level Protection Agency. While President time. Vaughan first imagined the study characteristics such as Native Ameri- in a singularly tangible way. Lyndon Johnson had signed the in 1969, after witnessing twenty years can settlement, natural resources, As much as Space, Style and Struc- National Historic Preservation Act a of dramatic environmental change industry, railroad, highway systems, ture was conceived as a dispassionate few years before, Nixon enacted the characterized largely, in his view, by power grids, climate, and building planning tool, it is unapologetic about National Environmental Policy Act ignorance and thoughtlessness.3 His materials. An extraordinary collection its preservation bias. And it offers that (NEPA), which reiterated the call to principal associate in the project was of historic and current photographs, bias without resorting to pleading or preserve important historic and cul- his eventual co-editor, Ferriday. While maps, and illustrations animates forty- self-indulgent nostalgia. It lets the his- tural sites. Nixon followed that in 1971 originally conceived as a regional four essays that trace development toric resources speak for themselves. with Executive Order 11593, directing survey, the depth of content increased from Native American longhouses in Flip through either volume and you federal agencies to set the example by gradually, as did the number of project British Columbia, natatoriums in Idaho, are in a time machine — no longer creating an inventory of their proper- participants. As the scope expanded, and fence building in eastern Oregon “imprisoned in the present.”6 Today it ties and listing the appropriate ones in so did the team’s realization that its to sewage treatment plants in the Wil- is tempting, and often necessary, to the National Register. work was destined to be a resource lamette Valley and an aluminum rolling cast the value of preservation in eco- By the time the thirteen authors of singular value. Vaughan and his mill in Washington State — encom- nomic or sustainability terms in order were engaged in the Space, Style and colleagues were intentionally building passing residential, commercial, and to appeal to the broadest audience. Structure project in the early 1970s, the on the momentum of legislative activity industrial buildings, rural landscapes, But it remains important to recognize development of the state’s first historic and increased awareness to provide urban renewal, gardens and parks its intrinsic value to the human mind. preservation office, the SHPO, was a body of work that would have the “from 1840 back 10,000 years, and As Vaughan asks: “Can it be that we well underway under the leadership depth and breadth of information to brashly into the 1970s.” 5 This is Space, have at last begun to see that we are of David G. Talbot and Elisabeth Potter, be truly useful as a future planning Style and Structure. not creatures of time but humans liv- then the state parks superintendent tool. Vaughan as much as says so, The authors were not preservation- ing in time, with deep responsibilities and historian, respectively, for the in the book’s introduction: “But now ists by trade. Certainly, there were sev- to those who come after us in the State Parks and Recreation Division, a we are experiencing new changes. eral scholars in the group, but by and adamantine golden chain?”7 And, I branch of the Highway Division of the Hence this book. After 350 years of large, they were working architects, would add, to those who came before Oregon Department of Transportation. exploitation, building, destruction landscape architects, administrators, us. Politics and economics aside, The Oregon SHPO was authorized and building again like there was no designers, and planners. The group we all benefit when we understand by the NHPA to, among other things, tomorrow, new ideas and tempers is a perfect example of the notion I what makes our societies tick, when administer the National Register pro- have emerged. They are urban as firmly believe in after twenty-five years we understand other cultures bet- gram, convene a governor-appointed well as rural, and rational in their basic in the preservation business: every- ter, when we can identify patterns of advisory committee to recommend concerns about our magnificent but body, deep down, understands the behavior that we do or do not want to properties for designation, and cre- diminishing national architectural heri- concept that traces of evidence from perpetuate. This is the wisdom that ate an inventory of historic places.1 tage . . . .Those of us who have worked the past provide continuity between studying the evidence of the past McCall’s State Advisory Committee on in the field of useful preservation and generations, which, in turn, builds provides. Historic Preservation met for the first conservation for years are excited by strong communities. We are preserv- The evidence I am thinking about time in 1971. By the end of that year, this solid, practical response.”4 ing those traces of evidence whether is not the kind long relied on by aca- fourteen properties in Oregon were Space, Style and Structure was we realize it or not. We transmit this demic historians: documents subject listed in the National Register, includ- itself a “solid, practical response” evidence through genetics, photo- to editing by time or intention — the

436 OHQ vol. 117, no. 3 Curran, A Look Back at Oregon’s Future with Space, Style and Structure 437 way Alexander Hamilton’s wife Eliza, of this most evocative reflection of the Portland General Electric headquarters Structure as we seek to understand after his death, destroyed all the letters past — the kind that possesses the would have a half century into the “recent past” resources. Space, Style she wrote to her husband but retained easy authenticity of the tangible. The future. Perhaps they were inspired by and Structure gives us the backstories those he wrote to her.8 This kind of kind that stands in perpetual defiance the visionary consideration evidenced that justify our arguments and the cour- circumstantial editing, which happened of the impermanence that torments the in several of the state’s early National age to follow our instincts. It helps us all the time, reduces our ability to human condition. Register listings. Some were buildings understand that the past is a moving know the whole story, creating gaps While there seems to be enough less than forty years’ old at the time, target, and as Vaughan put it in 1975, in the historical record that are left to space in the world for generations of including Pietro Belluschi’s Equitable “the visions we need for our regional future generations to fill with specula- art and music, the same is not true Building (1948) and John Yeon’s Aubrey future, depend on group planning and tion based on the limited, temporally for the built environment. Its three- Watzek House (1937). This trend contin- assessments sometimes unselfish and imprisoned perspective of the present. dimensional character requires sub- ues with the recent listing of Memorial necessarily inspired.”9 Straight talk The evidence I am referring to is the stantial space, and its inherent value Coliseum (1960) and the Portland Pub- from the 1970s. And a compelling call kind of unconscious pattern-making renders it vulnerable to the variability of lic Services Building (1982), thanks to for a third volume of Space, Style and our ancestors were engaged in, the the real estate market. And, let’s face it, the significant advantage given to the Structure that penetrates the twenty- impacts of which are intelligible only in not everything is important. We have to Pacific Northwest bySpace, Style and first century. Anybody? retrospect. I am talking about creations conserve selectively so the things that such as art, architecture, music, and matter most can be recognized. When technology, where tangible, unself- we encounter such unfiltered evidence conscious responses to an immediate as the tangible traces of past building circumstance filled an emotional or trends — the Historic Columbia River NOTES physical requirement. The results — a Highway, settlement patterns, a Tribal steam locomotive, a portrait by Ver- village site — it puts a deep responsi- meer, or an eighteenth-century sonnet bility on us to select thoughtfully. If we 1. Elisabeth Walton Potter, “A Past For Our Fort Rock Cave (NHL), Fort Rock vic.; Capt. — are so clearly products of their time. are listening, the wisdom we gain by Future” (remarks delivered at the Governor’s John A. Brown House, Portland (gone); Fort So, when we look at a storefront sorting it all out results in increased Conference on Historic Preservation, Yamhill Site, Polk Co.; Nez Perce Traditional built in 1910, we see elongated win- open-mindedness, empathy, and good Jacksonville, Ore., October 4, 1997, reprinted Site (NHL), Joseph; and Fort Dalles Surgeon’s dows with transoms, because electric decision-making — as individuals, as January 2012), 6; National Historic Preservation Quarters, The Dalles. National Register of Act, U.S. Code, vol. 54, secs. 300101 et seq. Historic Places, permanent files and online light was not reliable yet. When we communities, as a nation. (1966); National Register of Historic Places, database (oregonheritage.org), State Historic Space, Style and Struc- see the rambling plans of mid-century Thanks to State Historic Preservation Office, Salem, Preservation Office, Salem, Ore. houses, we know that central air had ture, we have contexts to help us Ore., permanent files and online database, 3. Thomas Vaughan, introduction to been invented and that the placement selectively conserve the region’s built 1971–current. The Oregon SHPO remains Space, Style and Structure, vol. 1, ed., Thomas of rooms was no longer constrained environment, at least through 1975. The under the umbrella of the Oregon Parks and Vaughan and Virginia Ferriday (Portland: by the need to cluster them around National Register of Historic Places, Recreation Department, which became an Oregon Historical Society, 1974). independent state department in 1990. 4. Ibid. the heating source. When we run our the best tool we have to help us fil- 2. Sumpter Valley Gold Dredge, Sumpter; 5. Ibid. hands over the carved newel posts at ter the chaff from the wheat, advises Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan, 6. Wallace Stegner and Richard W. Etulain, Timberline Lodge, we understand why against evaluating properties for his- Corvallis; Fort Astoria Site (NHL), Astoria; Stegner: Conversations on History and federal investment in time-consuming, toric significance younger than forty or Samuel Elmore “Bumble Bee” Cannery Literature (Las Vegas: University of Nevada labor-intensive hand craftsmanship fifty years old. Vaughan, Ferriday, and (NHL), Astoria (gone); Fort Stevens Military Press, 1996), 88. Reservation, Hammond; Pete French Round 7. Vaughn, introduction to Space, Style made complete sense in a public their team tossed that out the window, Barn, Diamond vic.; Jacksonville Historic and Structure, vol. 1. commission during the depth of the taking the long view and a stab at District (NHL), Jacksonville; Fort Klamath Site, 8. Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New Depression. The pages of Space, Style speculating on the staying power that Fort Klamath vic.; Lower Klamath National York: Penguin Books, 2011), 814. and Structure are filled with examples places such as Mountain Park or the Wildlife Refuge (NHL), Klamath Falls vic.; 9. Ibid.

438 OHQ vol. 117, no. 3 Curran, A Look Back at Oregon’s Future with Space, Style and Structure 439