Historic building might become history

Brandon Spencer-Hartle first noticed the old building at 1633 Southwest 11th while a student at Portland State. Though he graduated in 2009, Hartle still thinks about the building as a grad student at the University of Oregon, where he is in the Historic Preservation Program.

Portland State has been thinking about the building, too—it wants to get rid of it.

The building was first built in the 1880s, meaning it was built more than 60 years before PSU was founded in 1946. However, it has stood empty for years due to asbestos and other issues that make it unsafe for use, according to Scott Gallagher, director of communications for PSU.

There was an offer to give the house to any prospective buyer for only $1, as long as they were able to move the structure by June 30, according to an article in the Daily Journal of Commerce. 

However, bids for the house haven’t come in because of the expense required to move the building. Moving it could cost anywhere between an estimated $30,000-50,000, according to Keith Settle, President of Northwest Structural Moving Company.  The estimation does not include moving power lines or streetcar lines.

As of now, there is no clear proposal for any development to replace the building. According to Spencer-Hartle, the assumption is that there will be a new housing building or a mixed-use building.

“One of the issues is that you would likely have to cross the streetcar line. And if you cross the streetcar line, you have to cut the streetcar wire, and that’s a big financial hurdle just to move it across the street,” Spencer-Hartle said.

Proposals for moving the house are over and questions of tearing the building down have begun.

“Even if we don’t find an owner, we will recycle the building after we abate it,” Gallagher said in the Daily Journal of Commerce. “We’d work with the Rebuilding Center so nothing goes to waste.”

Spencer-Hartle started a Facebook group called “Don’t Just Demolish Portland State’s Past” in order to bring attention to the historic building after he heard that proposals to move the building were not going well. 

“I’m not fighting a crusade to see the demolition stopped, I’d just like to have the conversation.  I’d like to make sure students are getting their money’s worth,” Spencer Hartle said. “It is going to cost money to tear down the building, and if there’s no need to tear it down and there’s no immediate proposal to build something on the site, is it really worth spending the money on the demolition?” 

Spencer-Hartle has been infatuated with the building and has done some research into the history of it.

“There have been changes to the exterior but generally the house that is there is the house that was there in the mid-1890s,” Spencer-Harlte said. “It’s likely the oldest building on campus—the only other one that could be older is the immediate neighbor where the honor’s school is.”

The research that Spencer-Hartle has done suggests that an earlier version of the house dates back to the mid 1880s. He has determined that at some point in the early 1890s there was a remodel, because records indicate that there was a smaller house on the same footprint about 1885.

“It wouldn’t be uncommon to have a homeowner build a house and then like a decade later, if their economic situation was going well, to have them add a second story or a kitchen onto the house, which is what I think is what happened with this house,” Spencer-Hartle said.

“But what I think is important about it is that the house is able to tell a story about the people who lived in the PSU area before it was a university. To tell the story of the average Portlander at the time that it was built.  Because it wasn’t a mansion, it wasn’t owned by a significant lumber baron or banker or mayor, it was the average person’s house,” Spencer-Hartle said.

Spencer-Harlte believes that PSU should express an interest in the building because it is “representative of what came before the university and representative of Portland’s history”.

It is not only a question of preserving history for Spencer-Hartle.

“It is also, in my mind, a question of sustainability. To take that building down and build something new…there is quite a bit of research to suggest that it is a less sustainable option than to do a remodel or rehabilitation,” Spencer-Hartle said. “I think that if PSU has a desire to be a magnet for sustainability, [they could] look at issues like this and ask, ‘What is really the most sustainable thing [we can] do?'”