Willamette Industrial History Museum: Historic Preservation - Adaptive Reuse Project for the Portland Gas & Coke Building
| dc.contributor.author | Cole, Arthur J. | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2020-03-03T01:09:51Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2020-03-03T01:09:51Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 1997 | |
| dc.description | 116 pages | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | I had been living in Portland only a few weeks and was driving North on Highway 30 to look at the St. Johns Bridge; I was told it was the most beautiful of Portland's bridges. I could see the bridge in the distance but it was something else that suddenly caught my attention. Off to the right of the highway was what looked like an old schoolhouse. It was a two-story concrete building with a clock tower. I quickly pulled off the highway onto a driveway to take a closer look at the building. I wasn't able to get very close to it, but I knew I had found something special. The building, I later learned, was the old office and laboratory building of the Portland Gas & Coke Company, what it now the Northwest Natural Gas Company. The company still owns the building but has not occupied it for many years. The fifteen-acre plot of land around it is still used by the company and has several large natural gas storage tanks as well as one very large tank which holds liquefied natural gas. Portions of the land are currently leased to other companies. After learning more about the building, I decided to use the building as the topic for a research and design project to satisfy the Option II research requirement in the University of Oregon, Portland Urban Architecture Program. During Fall Quarter I obtained many of the original architectural drawings from the gas company and researched precedent studies using the highway, river, and industrial history of the Portland Gas & Coke Building as similarities. Many possible programs have been identified for the building and I have also tried to imagine other programs that may be viable alternatives for the building's re-use; unusual, unexpected, or unconventional uses that may successfully occur there in the future. During Winter Quarter I finalized the choice of program; I chose to combine two of the stated possible programs to proceed with for the remainder of the project. I believe the Portland Gas & Coke Building would have the best chance for a useful and successful future in the role as the Willamette Industrial History Museum. The museum would house exhibits of historical photographs, documents, and artifacts of the area's industrial past. The present river-side industrial fabric of Portland would be included as an exhibit and accessible via tour boats on the Willamette River. This document is the summary of research, programming, and design completed over the course of the three quarters of the 1996-97 school year. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/25302 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | en_US |
| dc.rights | Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-US | en_US |
| dc.title | Willamette Industrial History Museum: Historic Preservation - Adaptive Reuse Project for the Portland Gas & Coke Building | en_US |
| dc.type | Terminal Project | en_US |