Yin and Yang in Portland, The Good Life and Urban Existentialism

I am living the New Urbanist dream. I do not have a car and I rent my parking space for $200 a month. Half the money pays for a monthly transit pass (streetcar, rail, and bus); the rest covers utilities, a gym membership, and internet access. My residence has a 96 walk score, so I favor walking. I top 12,000 steps a day and my belt has a new notch. Powell’s Bookstore is my favorite destination, and I am exploring a slew of cafes, theaters, and restaurants. 

Walking, I have learned, is conducive to the good life. Without fear of a DUI, I am becoming a connoisseur of craft cocktails, a nuanced art flourishing in Portland. For my daily needs, a hardware store, two markets, two drug stores, three grocery stores, and four parks are nearby. When crossing the river to east Portland, I favor a bicycle network that offers safe passage to a slate of vibrant pedestrian scaled neighborhoods and historic parks.

The La Fortezzea, Cibo on Division Street

I have also given up television. Netflix and the PBS News Hour are available on my computer, but the city is more entertaining. With the automobile held at bay, the sidewalks and public realm are alive broadcasting a shifting blend of comedy, tragedy, and the quirky and mundane. People entertain themselves and each other. I realize I have traded the automobile and television for authenticity. I now pray to God that I will never see another car commercial, the American equivalent of Stalinist propaganda. In fact, when one appeared in a movie preview I blurted out “I’ve paid to see a movie not to be brainwashed by corporate hype." Humanity is rife here, and my outburst was just a minor note in the urban cacophony.

Urban Minstrel 

Although Portlanders are exceedingly polite, most evenings are broken by the discordant cries of the homeless, a reminder that a welcoming public realm is shared. I’ve learned to inure myself from the dispossessed, but not their lament. Their chords are so grating and visceral I have taken to reading Jean Paul Sartre. In a cold dark universe that is indifferent to humanity, anxiety is pervasive and only overcome, Sartre reasoned, by individuals taking action and creating meaning in their lives. “For the existentialist,” Sartre wrote, “there is no love other than that which is built.” There are 4,000 homeless in Portland losing the struggle to build love. Three in four suffer from mental illness and their cries express the anxiety we mask. http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/07/portland_homeless_crisis_easie.html

The city is a last refuge. This is why urban life has an edge. Helping the homeless is a test of our humanity, a challenge to bridge the abyss we wish to ignore.

Homeless in North Park Block

Most nights I am delivered from feelings of existential dread. Watching the sun fade over the western hills and twilight slowly envelop the city in a hazy purple gray, peace envelops my thoughts. Often, I saunter to Tanner Springs and enjoy a spot of repose. On occasion I make a pilgrimage to Laurelhurst Park. There the interplay of shadow and light at evening’s end mimics a William Turner painting. It’s not a coincidence.

John Charles Olmsted, the noted landscape architect who proposed establishing Laurelhurst Park, studied Turner. Watching shifting shades of green play across a glen I revel in a transcendent moment. I well with gratitude, thankful that an earlier generation labored to lessen our anxiety. I am reminded of the words of John Ruskin, the polymath who championed Turner and urban reform, “the activity of our hope and labor will mark the time generations of men shall be confirmed for foundations of the gates of the city of God.” Hallelujah!

Laurelhurst Park at Twilight

The Crowning Jewel, A Campus for the Pearl District

Portland is a model of sustainability and the Pearl District is its jewel, the flashpoint of the city’s renaissance. Having given new life to a desolate industrial area, the New Urbanist neighborhood literally defines renaissance: taken from the Old French word “renaistre” to be born again.  At the same time, the Pearl is a work in progress, a place struggling to create a civic identity.  Its landmarks and architecture pay homage to the past, but that is not enough. A renaissance celebrates history to illuminate a common destiny that elevate the public realm.

Fortunately, Portland’s civic foundation is rooted in the American Renaissance, the early 20th century movement that ordered the industrial city on classical lines and around nature.  The North Park Blocks, the Pearl District’s only historic public space, were established in this era.  In 1906 Portland’s first playground was placed here, providing an enlivening experience in a heavily populated area.  Between 1920 and 1940 industry displaced residential uses and, with a dwindling population, the North Park Blocks fell into decline.  By 1990 they were forlorn and forgotten, used primarily by transients and plagued by crime.

North Park Blocks, ca 1906

At the same time, the downtown’s revival spurred interest in the linear greens.  A 1988 plan envisioned extending the North Park Blocks to a new riverfront park. The decision to create an open space system (Jamison Square, Tanner Springs Park, and Fields Park) in the Pearl District put this idea to rest.  Today the North Park Blocks remain underutilized, the unknown variable on the edge of a real estate juggernaut.  The redevelopment plans for the Post Office site has changed the equation, as the parking lot west of Pacific Northwest College of Art will become an extension of the North Park Blocks.

North Park Blocks Extension, 1988 Central City Plan

Establishing such spaces is rooted in Portland’s history.  It is “particularly desirable,” the Olmsted Brothers noted in the 1903 Report to the Portland Park Board, “that a city should have several of its principle public buildings facing upon a large public square.”  Ideally, urban squares would terminate a system of linear greens to highlight public buildings that, in turn, exerted an “ennobling influence” to generate “action for the public good.”  The prototype was Thomas Jefferson’s masterpiece, the University of Virginia.  The library, a half-size adaptation of the Pantheon, centered the campus.  Jefferson had it overlook a linear green to symbolize the flow of knowledge from the university into the wider community.

University of Virginia, library overlooking linear green

Classical values, nature, and crisp geometry energized Jefferson and the American Renaissance: can they do the same in the Pearl District? The North Park Blocks offer the ideal setting to update history. A “campus” centered on a public square terminating the North Park Blocks would give the Pearl district a distinct civic identity.  The North Park Blocks might once again be a focus of civic life in Portland.  Then, the Pearl District would truly experience a renaissance.

Interested in Jefferson's influence on the American Renaissance? Consult John Nolen: Landscape Architect and City Planner http://lalh.org/john-nolen-landscape-architect/

Gods and Heroes, The Civic Art of Portland's Park Blocks

“Gods and Heroes,” the masterpieces from the École des Beaux-Arts on display at the Portland Art Museum, offers a serendipitous insight into the origins of the heroic statues adorning the nearby Park Blocks. http://portlandartmuseum.org/godsandheroes/ The leading school of the fine arts for two centuries, the École des Beaux-Arts informed the civic art of the American Renaissance, the artistic response to the nation's rapid urbanization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Like their Florentine forbearers, Americans crafted an aesthetic drawn from classical forms to celebrate and order the city. Many studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and their efforts marked, Henry Hope Reed writes, "the last full flourish of the Renaissance that began in Italy in the 15th century."

Chicago World's Fair, Celebration of the American Renaissance

The 1893 Chicago World's Fair unveiled the American Renaissance to the world. The influence of the École des Beaux-Arts was apparent,  as monumental statues mixed with formal groupings of classical revival buildings. Yet, it was uniquely American.  Frederick Law Olmsted designed the Wooded Isle to grace the serpentine lagoon running from Lake Michigan to the center of the fairgrounds, which  was, in essence, a sacred grove that testified to the Arcadian strain of the American design tradition.  The École des Beaux-Arts undoubtedly influenced the project, but Olmsted presented a vision of a city that integrated classical principles, romantic yearning, and pagan beauty. 

Remnant of Wooded Isle from 1893 Chicago World's Fair 

The Chicago World's Fair drew over 12 million visitors, and it inspired local governments to invest in civic art. In 1903, John Charles Olmsted designed one of the nation’s first park systems for Portland.  It set the foundation for the Edward Bennett, a École des Beaux-Arts graduate, who designed a far-reaching city plan in 1912.  Grand Parisian style boulevards centered a future metropolis with a new downtown, set at the intersection of Burnside and the Park Blocks. Widening the North Park Blocks was to provide a formal entrance to the city at a repositioned Union Terminal.  Acclaim greeted Bennet's grand vision, but recession and war dampened enthusiasm to implement it. 

Bennett Plan, 1912 

In 1918 Charles Cheney, who studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, was hired to implement a more practical conception of the city.  After an initial setback, the City Council adopted a zoning code in 1924.  Social science and statistics, not artistic blueprints would guide decision-makers.  By the Great Depression the civic art of the American Renaissance was passé, but Portland had the means to manage the city as part of the political bargaining process.  

The Park Blocks perhaps best document the American Renaissance in Portland.  In 1852 Daniel H. Lownsdale allocated eleven blocks of public space on the western edge of town, but it took until 1885 to formalize the Park Blocks.  For the next 40 years, it offered a landscape of cathedral trees and grass.  During the 1920s, the apogee of the American Renaissance, a city devoted to industry made a bold humanist statement.  The South Park Blocks became a setting for heroes based on the dictums of the École des Beaux-Arts.

South Park Blocks 

Alexander Phimister Proctor, the sculptor of Theodore Roosevelt, Roughrider, was trained at the École des Beaux-Arts. He gained his initial experience at the Chicago World's Fair, where his work was paired with figures created by Daniel French Smith, who lated designed the Abraham Lincoln statue for the Lincoln Memorial.  In 1896, Proctor won the Rinehart Scholarship which sent him to  study at the École des Beaux-Arts and practice in Paris for four years.  He returned to the United States well versed in the Beaux-Arts tradition and, in Portland, he crafted a heroic figure, evoking determination, success, and strength.  

Today, the classical style the École des Beaux-Arts championed is a memory, but it still inspires.  In an age where celebrity trumps heroes, the South Park Blocks can still stir the spirit.  After decades of neglect, the North Park Blocks are making a comeback.  With the the redevelopment of the post office site, there is an opportunity to enliven the Pearl District's eastern edge. It demands a civic art that befits a free people: one that enlightens the spirit, celebrates the past, and illuminates the future.  

North Park Blocks

For an in-depth analysis of the American Renaissance, consult my new book, John Nolen: Landscape Architect and City Planner http://lalh.org/john-nolen-landscape-architect/

A Little Chaos, Why Portland is a Green City

The new film, "A Little Chaos," depicts how Andre Le Notre, Louis XIV's famed landscape gardener, allows a fountain of free flowing nature in the manicured grounds of Versailles.  It was a daring act in a time when "order over landscape" was the rule.  The garden's strict geometry demonstrated the power of the Sun King, a divine ruler who controlled nature, his subjects, and the destiny of France.  Unfortunately, the film strays into a mishmash of fictional romantic meanderings but its central tenet--landscape design reflects cultural values--is essential to understanding Portland.  In the early 20th century "a little chaos" was injected into the Rose City, and it has never been the same.

The Fountain of Apollo, celebration of the Sun King at Versailles

An era ended in 1903 when the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted died. "The park planner of the people," stood in stark contrast to Le Notre, "the gardener of the king," a contemporary noted.  Central Park, Boston's Emerald Necklace, and Brooklyn's Prospect Park were public works of art that redefined the urban landscape. With their father's passing, John Charles and Frederick Law Jr. were determined to extend his legacy.

The celebration of re-creation at Central Park

The senior Olmsted believed cities were "artificial" places where obsessive commercialism produced "un-natural men."  Thus, he designed idyllic landscapes where citizens could ponder nature and "re-create" themselves.  In effect, Central Park offered an escape to Walden Pond.  Influenced by Darwin, his sons did not view the city as artificial creation.  Rather, it was a living organism and its growth could be directed on beneficial lines.  They envisioned an "organic city" built in conjunction with a park system, which ordered development and placed nature and new more active forms of recreation close at hand.

Portland was the Olmsted Brothers test case.   In 1903, John Charles Olmsted came west.  After meeting with civic leaders and Park Board members, he analyzed the topography, natural features, and soil composition in producing a basic but effective environmental analysis.  His Report to the Portland Parks Board proposed setting aside lands unsuitable for urban uses (e.g. floodplains, steep slopes) as  preserves, exemplified by Forest Park, Mt. Tabor, and Swan Island.  He was also an artist, and crafted singular components--nature preserves, neighborhood parks, playgrounds, scenic reservations, parkways and boulevards--into a comprehensive system. Olmsted's genius was to offer citizens immediate and visceral contact with nature.

The neighborhood park keyed the enterprise.  It ensured nature was close at hand, and Olmsted wanted to minimize flowery ornamentation.  Native vegetation and "small scale naturalistic scenery is the first consideration," he wrote.   Given that neighborhoods parks would be heavily utilized, investing in "adequately wide and numerous walks" was a necessity.  A little chaos was also required: "these walks must especially provide for short-cutting since local parks are directly in the way of many pedestrians." The call to ensure short-cuts to nature was a delightful new maxim for landscape architects, and the citizens of Portland were the beneficiaries.

The Olmsted Brothers plan experienced modest success.  Laurelhurst Park and Terwlliger Boulevard were established before World War I, and Forest Park took form after World War II.  By then, however, the Olmsted Brothers vision of an organic city had given way to the Modernist architect's concept of the "city as a machine." Modernists advocated an International Style of architecture, with buildings of a mechanical purity that were adaptable to any environment.  The International Style had a deleterious effect on landscape architecture, producing sterile plazas better suited to the Nazi defenders of Normandy, as witnessed by the fortifications at O'Bryant Plaza.

O'Bryant Plaza

Normandy

Mike Houck, Audubon's indefatigable urban naturalist, resurrected the Olmsted Plan in the 1980s. It provided a precedent for establishing a system of natural lands and trails within the Urban Growth Boundary.  In 1992 Houck teamed with METRO, Portland's regional governing agency, to draft a Regional Greenspace Plan.  By 2006, $363 million had been invested in acquiring 16,000 acres of natural areas and expanding the regional trail network.  Today the Intertwine Alliance, with over 100 partners, is creating "a world class interconnected system of parks, trails and natural areas. It is John Charles Olmsted's vision for a comprehensive expanding," Houck writes, "John Charles Olmsted's vision for a comprehensive, interconnected park system writ large." https://www.planning.org/store/product/?ProductCode=BOOK_A01283 

In the quest to green Portland, a little chaos is being added in ways the Olmsteds could never have imagined. The Pearl District is a laboratory for restoring the human and natural habitat, and Tanner Springs Park is a prototype of ecological restoration. The wetland and small stream that once flowed through the site were lost to development over a century ago.  The park, designed to recapture a sense of the past, has a recreated wetland with flowing runnels that reveal natural processes at work.  Old railroad ties border the wetland, while birds flitting through native grasses and trees supply the tunes. Most important, children can examine nature and stoke their imagination.  Tanner Springs is an antidote to what Richard Louv, author of the best-seller Last Child in the Woods, calls "Nature Deficit Disorder."

Louv wants a little chaos in our cities.  He believes we must know the animals and plants in our immediate surroundings as well as the televised Amazon rainforest.  Yards and public spaces should be alive with native plants. Then establishing links, natural corridors, could aid species migration and inject "life and meaning" into a desensitized environment. Ultimately, Louv envisions a system of "homegrown national parks" that will turn cities  into "incubators of biodiverity." http://richardlouv.com/books/nature-principle/

Portland modeled the Olmsted Brothers vision of a green city, will it lay claim to the first urban national park? Mike Houck is laying the groundwork.  He directs the Portland Urban Greenspace Institute, which is dedicated to integrating the built and natural environment. http://www.urbangreenspaces.org  Henry David Thoreau's adage "in wildness is the preservation of the world," inspired earlier generations, but Houck tweaked it to address Portland's future: "In livable cities is the preservation of the wild." With a little chaos, perhaps this vision will also come to pass.

What to learn more on how the Modernists supplanted the Olmsteds?  Read my new book, John Nolen, Landscape Architect and City Planner http://lalh.org/john-nolen-landscape-architect/

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