 One could tell a story the tale of Portland's pioneer courthouse would start here, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, long before Oregon became a state. For centuries, Native Americans inhabited this area full of nature's bounty. Then in the early years of the 19th century, Easterners dreamed of riches in the west and of a nation that stretched from sea to shining city to explore the promise of westward expansion, President Thomas Jefferson launched a journey of discovery. In the spring of 1804, Maryweather Lewis and William Clark departed St. Louis, heading for the Pacific Coast. Clark comes up the Willamette River in the spring of 1806, looking for a route actually into California and doesn't find it, but determines that this is an area that has the potential for a great port city. Settlers in the 19th century came here over the Oregon Trail and settled in the Willamette Valley just south of Portland, in Portland because it was a place that you could get to on the rivers and became the port for the entire Oregon country. The city of Portland was founded in 1843 on the claim of Asa Lovejoy of Boston and Francis Pettigrove of Portland, Maine, but there was a hitch. They both owned equal shares of the town and couldn't come up with a name. Each wanted to name it after his own hometown, so they tossed a coin and the man from Maine won the coin toss. Portland soon earned the nickname Stumptown. It was a lager's paradise, literally carved out of primeval forest. By 1846, Portland had grown to 16 small blocks, packed into a compact grid along the river. In 1859, of course, Oregon became a state and at that point Judge Deedy, who had been on the Territorial Court, became the first federal judge as he went back to Washington D.C. to urge that a courthouse be established in Portland. With immigrants streaming in, business booming in the newfound mantle of statehood, Portland was growing from Frontier Town to Western City. In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant signed legislation for construction of a U.S. post-office courthouse and customs house in Portland. Alfred B. Mullet, then supervising architect of the U.S. Treasury Department, headed the design team. Portland is quite well known for designing some of the most architecturally significant federal buildings. For Portland, it was quite a spectacular building. It was a combination of Greek revival and Palladian, so it had some really interesting architectural details. Although in comparison to other buildings built by Mullet, at about the same time, such as in San Francisco and Washington D.C., it was much simpler. Topping the three-story sandstone structure was an octagonal wooden cupola that offered a panoramic view of the city. The distinctive feature was not merely decorative. Like Portland, it had a practical side. That was the principal way the customs inspectors found out which ships were coming in and out of the port of Portland. The courthouse was completed on October 1, 1875, the oldest surviving federal building in the Pacific Northwest. But this historic achievement had its detractors. The greatest criticism of the Pioneer Courthouse was its distance from downtown Portland. In the late 1860s, when the courthouse site was purchased by the federal government, the main part of the city was about four blocks to the east and near the river. The location was no accident. In the mid-1800s, fires were devastating America's cities. Mullet sighted the building away from the densely populated downtown for safety's sake. By the 1880s, the federal building once called remote was becoming the center of the city. As Portland entered the 20th century, it was time to celebrate both a pioneering past and a promising future. In 1905, Portland revealed its wonders to the world at the Lewis and Clark Centennial and American Pacific Exposition and Oriental Fair. The hope was to captivate visitors with this paradise on the Pacific so they would settle and invest here. Apparently, it worked. From 1900 to 1910, Portland more than doubled in size. But as early as 1889, postmaster C.W. Roby had complained that the post office was too small and needed a radical renovation. In 1902, Congress approved the remodeling. New wings spread to the west and the size of the basement and first floor were doubled. The room was completed in 1904. Just as Judge Charles Bellinger began to hear one of Oregon's most notorious cases, land fraud trials involving U.S. Senator John Mitchell and Representative John Williams. Portland's construction boom continued through the 1920s. The city's growth overtook the post office and courthouse again. Less than a quarter century after its expansion, a 1927 newspaper article described the courthouse as outworn and outgrown. In 1929, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression ensued. The federal building's fate remained as uncertain as that of many Portland residents. Like the Columbia River, Portland managed to keep rolling on through the Depression. In 1938, construction of the Bonneville Dam, the first of the Great Columbia River water projects, was completed. Woody Guthrie's folk songs heralded the cheap power from new dams that now lit up the rural northwest. But for Portland's federal building, the lights were off and the doors closed. In 1933, a new U.S. courthouse and post office had been built, now called the Gus Solomon Courthouse. In 1939, Congress authorized the old building's demolition. Only World War II saved it from the records wall. The government needed space. But by the early 1960s, the reprieve was over. The General Services Administration planned a new federal office building on the site. Federal agencies had pretty well come to the conclusion that we should destroy this post office or this courthouse and post office because it was too expensive to restore it. At that time, urban renewal was really big. Incentives for demolition of historic buildings were there, and so essentially large parts of urban environments simply disappeared, including in Portland. Free leading citizens took the fate of the courthouse into their own hands. GSA began a feasibility study to determine whether the building, which at that point had really been abandoned, could be used for another purpose. The courthouse that stood virtually vacant for years had been rediscovered. As the oldest surviving federal building in the region, and perhaps the most important in the Pacific Northwest, it was a perfect candidate for preservation. The project was completed in 1973, and the building dedicated the Pioneer Courthouse. Four years later, the courthouse was designated a national historic landmark. The impact of the renovation reverberated into the next decade, with Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square project just beyond the building's wall. Pioneer Courthouse Square was created in 1980 out of an international design competition to create a space in the heart of downtown that was open and active and vital. The square is the heart of downtown Portland, and it's frequently called Portland's living room. Our courthouse is one wall of that living room. With its prominent location, the courthouse was about to find itself on the frontier of historic preservation once again. In 2002, almost thirty years after the previous renovation, the courthouse was to be upgraded again. Parts of the building were now over a hundred years old, so there were certain aspects of, for example, the stone that was deteriorating on the exterior and on the interior. There were some plaster ornaments that had been deteriorating as well and wood, so there were items like that that needed attention. It was quite dreary. Many offices of the federal government had placed a lot of false partitioning and cubbyhole arrangements all through the building with all of the translucent and artificial lighting. No one had any pride in the interior, so it looked at best ordinary. But there would be more to this renovation than cosmetics. It would be retrofitted for protection from seismic events with the base isolation system. This new seismic structure is an interesting tie between historic preservation and modern engineering. Seismic isolation is a relatively new technology for protecting buildings from earthquakes, and we use it when we want to protect the building from damage. So probably there are in the order of 50 buildings in the world that are using these friction pendulum seismic isolators, and they're all special buildings in some way, like the Pioneer Courthouse. When we put seismic isolators under a building, we transform how the building responds during an earthquake. So all of a sudden, instead of shaking violently, the building will sway gently back and forth, as if it were a pendulum. We installed 70 of these friction pendulum isolators, installing one under each column in the building. So here we have one of those friction pendulum seismic isolators, and we have the concave portion sitting on the foundation element, and then we have the housing portion sitting under the column, which is being supported by this bearing. And this bearing here weighs about 9,000 pounds, and will support about 3 million pounds of building load. As for other aspects of the renovation, some parts of the building would be as new as the seismic isolators, and others would be restorations of the original. The main lobby is a totally new space, but the rich warm colors recall the 1875 Italian Renaissance tones discovered in a plaster survey of the original building. The former postal workspace is now an accessible law library. A new alternate dispute resolution room responds to 21st century court functions. Skilled artisans preserved wood wainscoting and trim, plaster ceilings and stone, using techniques that might have been familiar to the original builders. They even renovated the historic Otis elevator installed in 1905. But like the original courthouse, the project had its critics. Some Portlanders were concerned about a new secure vehicular access. People believed we were doing the project because of the parking, rather than we were having to do and protect the building by doing a base isolation, which lowered the building by 10 feet, which allowed for the secure parking, which is now required under the court's guidelines. Another concern touched Portlanders more. As a result of having to close the building for two and a half years, the post office made a decision that it would leave the building and relocate in the Solomon courthouse building, which is about three or four blocks down the street. Once the customers were aware that we were going to have a presence in the Solomon facility, it mitigated many of the complaints and the most harsh critics that we had. There were many customers who said, at least we have a beautiful facility we can be served at and it is close to where I work. But the loss of the post office raised another issue for a public who clearly loved this building. You know, one of the things about this project that alarmed the public was it was going to be completely shut away because the post office was gone and that people wouldn't be able to get in. So the project team devised a way to keep Portlanders involved. The CAP, or the Citizens Advisory Panel, was made up of a variety of representatives from different organizations and that was actually something very unique that hasn't been done before in a public project like this. The creation of the CAP has allowed us to establish a dialogue with the community, open up paths of communication to be able to invite in citizens, visitors, to be able to enjoy the building, learn about its history and relevance within the Pacific Northwest. With the renovation complete, the historic courthouse is once again open to the public and proves it is both a survivor and a pioneer like the first residents of Portland, the early preservationists and the current city planners. The courthouse celebrates a remarkable history and a future that builds upon the past while also exploring new frontiers. I think it really anchors the city. You know, it really gives a historical texture. You know, in the West there aren't a lot of old, old buildings. So to have this one thing that's been there almost since the city began and to have the city grow up around it, it really is very meaningful and something that we really do cherish. Everything that happens in Portland happens right around this building. It's become a beloved landmark for its architectural presence as well as for its history. These people that you knew or I knew who had been in the law, who had been judges, were part of the personality of that building. So I just didn't see it as stone that had been upgraded or painted or whatever. And I think that's the value of a building like the Postal, like the courthouse. How can you not be passionate about this wonderful place It has survived all of this time. It is the centerpiece for our community. We have something special, the chance to be in this architectural and historical gem. So it's something we all really have a passion about.