Tag Archives: national register of historic places

Clark County Poor Farm Historic District

Peter Meijer Architect, PC (PMA) was retained by the Clark County Community Planning Department to write and submit a National Register nomination for the Clark County Poor Farm Historic District. PMA consulted with the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation regarding the National Register eligibility of the Clark County Poor farm and worked with Clark County staff to prepare a National Register of Historic Places District nomination for the Clark County Poor Farm Site. The nomination involved a district boundary evaluation and explanation, along with a thoroughly researched and detailed description of the district and its resources, the historic context and the overall historic significance the district.

PMA conducted on-site fieldwork to gather physical data to describe the district and its character-defining resources and features. The nomination addressed the 7 aspects of historic integrity: location, setting, design, materials, workmanship, association and feeling and how these aspects highlight and impact the significance of the district.

PMA supplemented the physical descriptions with research that supports the historic context and will develop a narrative that describes the district’s significant history and National Register eligibility. Research included local sources such as newspapers and the Historical Society, state records on poor farms, and the development history of the surrounding area. PMA’s research combined past studies to develop a thorough and effective district nomination. Clark County Poor Farm was added to the National Register on January 7th, 2013.

Portland Public Service Building National Register Nomination

Peter Meijer Architect, PC (PMA) nominated the iconic Portland Public Services building to the National Register of Historic Places. Known universally as the Portland Building, it is one of the most notable works by internationally-known master architect Michael Graves and is widely credited as the design that established Graves’s preeminence in the field.

The Portland Building is significant as one of a handful of high-profile building designs that defined the aesthetic of Post-Modern Classicism in the United States between the mid-1960s and the 1980s. Constructed in 1982, the structure is ground-breaking for its rejection of “universal” Modernist principles in favor of the bold and symbolic color, well-defined volumes, and stylized- and reinterpreted-classical elements such as pilasters, garlands, and keystones.

The building is notable for its regular geometry and fenestration as well as the architect’s use of over-scaled and highly-stylized classical decorative features on the building including a copper statue mounted above the entry, garlands on the north and south facades, and the giant pilasters and keystone elements on the east and west facades. Whether or not one judges the building to be beautiful or even to have fulfilled Graves’s ideas about being humanist in nature, it is undeniably important in the history of American architecture. The building is inextricably linked to the rise of the Post-Modern movement.

Memorial Coliseum National Register Nomination

Peter Meijer Architect, PC (PMA) conducted historic research and prepared the National Register nomination for Memorial Coliseum in Portland, Oregon. In 2011, the building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural significance.

PMA’s advocacy for the preservation of Memorial Coliseum earned the firm a role on the building’s 2011 rehabilitation design team. PMA provided drawings of the building overlaid with “preservation zones” highlighting historic character-defining features with low, medium, and high priority for preservation to guide the design team. PMA’s research and nomination enabled the City to take advantage of significant tax credits in the rehabilitation of the public structure. The Memorial Gardens and Timber Industry conference rooms features were included in the building’s interpretation and marketing plans.

When completed in 1960, Memorial Coliseum was a technological feat of engineering and operation unrivaled by any other large civic structure, and a fully-articulated example of International-Style Modernism. In addition to the glass curtain wall, Memorial Coliseum’s other features, such as the undulating concrete seating bowl, contribute to the significant social history of the building. The building is the only large-scale public arena glass-walled structure of the mid-century retaining its original design, materials, workmanship, highly urban context, and original relationship to nearby geographic features such as the Willamette River.