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And What About the Rose Friend Apartments? Everyone watching the Ladd Carriage House move doubtless also noticed the
former site of the Rose Friend Apartments and the remnants of that once gorgeous
building. The Rose Friend was built in 1909 to designs by architect David
Williams and was high-end rental housing in its day. In recent years it had
served as an affordable housing option in central Portland after a rather
unfortunate remodel in the 1970’s which stripped it of nearly all of its fine
interior finishes. Many of us in the preservation community mourn the loss of
the Rose Friend
In answer to that, it needs to be said that there were three historic buildings on that block. One of them, the First Christian Church (owners of the entire block) was threatened by declining attendance and a congregation that had largely moved to the suburbs. For the members to continue to attend "their" church, better parking needed to be provided – especially in light of the frequent down-town events that often made the church practically inaccessible. There is an unfortunate parallel to the north, where today the surviving parts of Seattle’s now-demolished First Christian Church are being sold off by salvage companies -- including the magnificent Povey stained glass windows produced here in Portland. The Portland congregation is said to have seriously considered the option of selling off their church building (virtually ensuring its demolition) and moving to the suburbs. Their decision to stay meant that at least the church edifice would be preserved. The solution they hit upon for saving their church where it is -- construction of a condo building plus church offices plus underground parking -- required that at least one and probably both of the other two historic structures on the block had to be removed. There was much discussion of which one should be sacrificed (and reportedly some in the church congregation argued for immediate demolition of both), but the ad-hoc group that assembled to sort this out and lobby for a preservation solution came down strongly on the side of preserving the Carriage House. Note that we were never given an option for preserving both buildings, nor was there ever an option offered either by the Church or by Opus Northwest for such a solution. Anyone who might have liked to put forth another solution was welcome to come up with the $25 million or so to make it happen... In the contest between the Rose Friends and the Carriage House, there was really only one answer: the Carriage House had to be saved. While there are a number of 1900-1910 era apartments in the central city, including some designed by such notables as Emil Schacht (the Wheeldon Apartments at 910 SW Park), there is only one surviving relic of the Ladd Estate and a reminder of a day when successful capitalists actually cared for the city where they made their money and aspired to leave beautiful buildings and strong cultural institutions behind as their legacy. We will never again see the day when the owners of Portland's largest banks, like William S. Ladd in his day, live within a mile of their main bank, but when we did, those owners cared for the city and its citizens and led by example... and built "out buildings" that were an ornament to the city. To further clinch the deal, it was practical to contemplate moving the Ladd Carriage House. At first we worked with a developer who offered to take it to the Lair Hill area. This was not an ideal solution, but it did mean that the Carriage House might be saved. Later, with urging from co-developer John Carroll, Opus Northwest and the architects crafted a solution that permitted the Carriage House to stay on its site after a short stay a few blocks away while the underground parking garage was dug. From our point of view, this was a nearly ideal solution, as it allowed the Carriage House to continue to mark the history of its site. On the other hand everyone we consulted made it clear that the Rose Friend could not be moved. Those who watched the demolition of the Rose Friend may have noticed that the walls crumbled at the slightest pressure from the demolition machinery. The building was an un-reinforced masonry structure, held together with poorly formulated mortar. Any attempt to move it would have set up an enormous risk that it would simply have fallen to pieces -- assuming that a move route could have been found and a site for its considerably larger footprint could have been located. The point of all this is that the earlier arguments against moving the Rose Friend or of somehow incorporating it into a differently configured development on the site were accurate. While its ornament was delightful and a credit to architect David William's creativity, the original contractor skimped on materials, making the potential costs of preservation prohibitive -- not to mention the cost of seismic upgrades. Frankly, this issue would soon have surfaced, regardless of the development plans for the block. (Incidentally, during the demolition it was discovered that some of the beautiful "original" cornice detail was actually fiberglass reproduction from a recent remodel.) Ultimately, the Friends of the Ladd Carriage House, working with virtually no budget and only the power of publicity and community feeling on their side, faced the reality that not only was the Carriage House the more important historically, but also the more practical building to save. The larger lesson for those of us who grieve over the destruction of the Rose Friend (and who were angered by the destruction of St. Agatha's School, of the Car Barns in Southeast Portland, and other recent losses) is that Portland has an urgent need to inventory its historic buildings and establish clear guidelines for protecting the most important ones. The existing "Historic Resources Inventory" is hopelessly out of date and was incomplete from the moment it was published some 25 years ago... the Rose Friend Apartment House is nowhere to be found in it, for example. It will take political will and public pressure to move the city government to fund the completion of that inventory and designate the buildings that are deserving of protection. That way we can have the debates of which buildings are more or less worthy while they are still standing rather than running from one demolition site to another deploring our losses. |
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jsheuer@mpss-pdx.com with
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Apartments… why wasn’t it saved also?