Pietro Belluschi Portland Art Museum 1219 Sw Park Ave 1932 Early Modern Style

Portland Art Museum, Belluschi Building (photo by Brian Libby)

This Wednesday (Baronial xi) at 12:30, I will be giving a talk in the outdoor courtyard of the Portland Fine art Museum (between the two buildings) equally part of the "Midday Art & Cart" serial. The talk will be devoted to the compages of the two buildings and local nutrient cart Koi Fusion (whose Korean tacos I dear) will be serving dejeuner. The Art Museum is located on the South Park Blocks at 1219 SW Park Ave.

For those of yous who can't make it to the talk, I wanted to pass on what to me is ane of the most interesting and personal narratives of the two buildings comprising the museum and the men who designed them. Both were talented, but one got famous while the other died tragically young.

Pietro Belluschi, the Italian native-turned Portlander who designed the master PAM building (now renamed the Belluschi Building in his honor), is the famous proper name remembered today. After the Art Museum was congenital in 1932, it helped launch Belluschi to a historic career. His portfolio would come up to include the Equitable Building, also in downtown Portland (known today as the Commonwealth), which is credited as the world'south beginning glass curtain walled office building, the forerunner of thousands of time to come glass and metal façades. Belluschi also gained fame for many midcentury modern house and church designs as well as the Pan Am Building (with Walter Gropius) and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Middle in New York.

The Mark Building, which sits next door to the Belluschi Building, was originally built in 1924, just 8 years earlier. Designed by native Portlander Frederick Fritsch who learned his trade at the historic firm Whidden & Lewis, information technology is everything its adjacent door neighbour is non. And Fritsch unfortunately had a future afterward that was as short lived and tragic equally Belluschi'south was long and successful.

Pietro Belluschi, 1958 (image courtesy Life magazine)

Fritsch, a Portland native, was just eight years older than Belluschi and had been a Earth State of war I veteran. Fritch also married Oregon'southward first licensed architect female person, Mary Goodin, in 1928. Merely unfortunately his life ended tragically early. He suffered from a painful disease that forced him to retire at the age of 38, in 1931. Which, ironically, was right nearly the time Belluschi'south building was being constructed. Fritsch wound up committing suicide five years afterwards, although his wife lived to be 93.

Belluschi said in 1931 of the modern mode he was fighting for the right to meet built as the Portland Art Museum's home that the "…standard mask called 'style', whether Georgian, Italian, or English, is simply a bad formula, and only our lack of imagination has tolerated its application on buildings where a new set of ideas had to exist given a new form....Permit us not try to twist the trunk to fit the suit but let us build a new suit consistent with the body."

The Masonic Temple didn't just cover a pre-existing historical manner, but a whole array of them. The building itself may take been based partially on one of the Seven Wonders of the Aboriginal Earth, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. It'due south also got Greek influences in the stone colonnade and Western farsi influences in the window grilles. And then within there were rooms with Moorish, Norman, and Louis the 16th styles.

Portland Fine art Museum, Mark Building (photograph by Brian Libby)

Belluschi was clearly making a statement with his building that he'd wanted to become in a different direction than this design by Frederick Fritsch. Information technology took an intervention from Frank Lloyd Wright on Pietro Belluschi's behalf to convince the Fine art Museum's board of trustees to corroborate what was and so a boldly clean-lined and functional space. Merely more than than 80 years later, the 2 architects' work is yet leap together. And since the Art Museum purchased the Masonic Temple in the 1990s and transformed it into the Mark Building in 2005, they share exhibit space and fifty-fifty an clandestine tunnel for a connectedness.

Although I believe the 2005 renovation and expansion by Ann Beha Architects could have been more of an interesting hybrid of quondam and new edifice,  information technology was probably the right affair to do for the building to retain the Masonic Temple rather than tearing the building downward to build an entirely new exhibit and gathering space, especially given that the latter building's original ballrooms remain often used by the museum and the community. And ane must not forget the applied fact that the expansion added several floors of natural light-filled space for viewing mod and contemporary art. Plus, the more you larn virtually the curious connection and divergent fates of Belluschi and Fritsch, the more the two buildings seem siblings.

It also goes to bear witness that whatever the creative discipline, be it architecture, music or painting, while there are always a few iconic names who produce something lasting at a young historic period and are never heard from again, generally success is dependent on survival, and having the opportunity to put in years and years of work to brand yourself a success. It wasn't a coincidence that Pietro Belluschi got that Art Museum commission. He'd been a museum member for years before his edifice was completed. He'd besides left Italy for America at a immature age and, despite his old-world personal elegance, worked his way up the ranks equally a student at Cornell and so a immature immigrant in Portland. Belluschi earned everything he got equally a legendary architect, just unlike Frederick Fritsch, fate also gave him the opportunity.

The comments to this entry are closed.

grantmempling.blogspot.com

Source: https://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/2010/08/two-portland-art-museum-architects-two-divergent-fates.html

Share this post