91ÊÓƵ

I sometimes sit at my desk at the 91ÊÓƵ (when I should be working) and wonder what Henry Pittock would make of all this.

“Confound it!” he would no doubt bellow, as people in the 19th century often confounded and bellowed in fits of pique.

He would not like what has become of his neighborhood. The Daily Journal of Commerce’s office is in the Pittock Building, located appropriately enough on the Pittock Block – the land that Pittock bought in 1853 for the princely sum of $300.

This was the site of the first Pittock mansion, the home where he spent most of his career as publisher of The Oregonian before he moved to his more sprawling estate in Northwest Portland in 1914 – and died five years later.

If his spirit ever visits the old neighborhood, he must think the area is catawampusly chewed by Portlandia’s ever-so-hip and pierced dandy prats, soap locks and guttersnipes. Such hubble-bubble is enough to make a man want to sluice his gob.

The sight of a parking lot and food carts where fashionable homes of Portland’s codfish aristocracy once stood would be enough to put him off his chump.

And if you don’t understand 19th-century slang, then unlike Pittock (and me, apparently), you weren’t born in 1835.

It would be fun to see Pittock’s reaction to the modern world, both good and bad. While I often find myself uncomfortable in the 21st century, Pittock would have a conniption. He often was on the wrong side of history. He would be flummoxed by our advances in liberty and justice for all (something that, when Pittock lived on this block, meant only rich white guys).

Pittock opposed bringing slavery to Oregon, but he also opposed bringing black people to Oregon. He figured the best way to keep them out was for them to remain the property of Southern plantation owners. He also liked the idea of women being the property of their husbands, without the right to vote or own things.

He was a bit of a jerk, in other words. He deserved Harvey Scott.

Harvey and I have become acquainted through his sister, suffrage leader Abigail Scott Duniway. In researching Abby, I discovered her feud with Harvey – and his with Pittock.

Pittock allegedly offered Harvey half interest in The Oregonian in 1877 after Harvey became the editor of the paper – or so Harvey claimed. Half interest in the paper eventually went to U.S. Sen. Henry Winslow, a Republican from Corbett, in exchange for an infusion of much-needed capital.

The alleged betrayal stuck in Harvey’s craw for the rest of his days. While he and Pittock maintained a working relationship, Harvey hated him. Well, maybe not all of him – just his guts.

I mention all this because I work in the Pittock Building, and buildings are not made of brick and mortar. They are made of stories. Countless people walk in and out of this structure every day, oblivious to the fact that they are trodding the stage of amazing drama.

Forget Pittock. The Pittock Building itself has stories to tell. This eight-story edifice was a teeming skyscraper when it was completed 99 years ago. Before the building went up, however, it went down … way down.

The Pittock Building’s basement was the site of Portland’s first electrical substation. As such, it has the deepest basement in the city. Old newspaper clippings and girlie pictures left by workers throughout the 20th century still line the walls of the basement.

The building remains an infrastructure hub to this day. All the Internet cables that come together in the old basement make it one of the hottest Wi-Fi hotspots in Oregon. (Why I can’t access my email half the time remains a mystery.)

When Pittock decided that he needed bigger digs and built the Pittock mansion, he leased his old block to a California investor on the condition that any new building would be named after him.

The reinforced concrete building cost a whopping $700,000 to build when construction started in May 1913. Early tenants included the Columbia River Log Scaling & Grading Bureau, State Oil & Gas Co., Johnston & Brookman Architects, American Legion Portland Post No. 1, Stinson Lumber Co. and Union Pacific Railroad Co. Also, J.C. Penney had a distribution office inside.

More recent tenants include a certain business newspaper, founded in 1872, that “Old Man Pittock” would probably be aghast to find squatting on his home turf.

“Building Curiosity” investigates intriguing, historical and obscure tidbits of the built environment. Tom Henderson is a reporter for the Daily Journal of Commerce. Contact him at 503-802-7226 or [email protected].