The latest stage in the journey of the Eric Ladd Cast-Iron Collection might soon conclude.

Preservationists are hopeful that new design guidelines for the Skidmore/Old Town Historic District will encourage reuse of these artifacts, now stacked like cordwood in an open-air lot under an overpass of Interstate 5.

The 110 or so innocuous-looking columns and grates, bearing the deleterious effects of corrosion and relocation, have been owned by the city (as the Portland Development Commission) since 2006. At present, it’s unclear who exactly wants to use them, but advocates are optimistic they’ll be part of the building boom moving forward.

Architects and developers don’t always go into business to preserve the past, and it’s thought by some that it’s telling there’s been so little interest so far.

A ‘wonderful moment’

Over the years, William A. “Bill” Hawkins Jr. moved from discouragement to acceptance that the Eric Ladd collection would never be fully utilized. But lately, he’s “hopeful.”

“I’ve had this wonderful moment in the last month,” said the architect and historian.

Hawkins is regarded as the cast-iron authority in Portland. His book, “The Grand Era of Cast-Iron Architecture in Portland,” documents the role the one-time innovative building style played in shaping modern architecture, as well as the Rose City.

Cast iron was a national movement during the latter half the 19th century. Common to Italianate architecture, it was a new structural way to build using large, prefabricated, often ornate, iron pieces affixed to building fronts. They communicated owners’ wealth and status, and were cheaper to build and install than the stone masonry of the day. The style became the norm in Portland starting in the 1860s, when the area’s first iron foundries were established.

Coincidentally, that was also when much of old Portland was built. So instead of a cast-iron building here and there, as in previously-established urban areas like New York City and Paris, there was a whole section of Portland emblematic of the cast-iron aesthetic.

But time moves fast, and other voguish building trends came and went. The cast-iron came down nearly as fast as it went up. Fires ravished the growing city, and the heart of commerce shifted away from the waterfront. Later, in the 1950s, a man named Eric Ladd, fascinated with Portland’s past, worked to set aside and salvage cast-iron elements from approximately 12 demolished storefronts.

His collection was first stored at the Jacob Kamm House before being relocated to a farm along the Sandy River, where it sat for decades. The PDC purchased the pieces in 2006, but an effort to streamline design guidelines to encourage reuse of the artifacts was stalled when the discussion turned to other matters, notably zoning and building height. As staff and committee membership turned over, hope held by preservationists including Hawkins faded. Until this month.

A mixed-use project planned for Pine Street and Oak Street was at first rejected by the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission because of a design “unsympathetic” to surrounding architecture. But after returning from the drawing board with plans calling for cast iron, and other historically-appropriate considerations, the project team gained the commission’s support.

Unlike the previous guidelines, the new ones are concerned more with the “cast iron” than the “Italianate,” so new buildings look less like they’re mimicking a historical style. A companion resolution to the guidelines pressed city bureaus to make “reasonable efforts” to use the cast-iron elements in development and renovation efforts.

Another project offering hope for cast iron is the future home of Ankrom Moisan Architects. Though cast iron won’t be incorporated in the new building, the firm will display artifacts from the Eric Ladd Collection in a grove of freestanding elements along the building’s Naito Parkway frontage.

“We wanted to ensure the story of cast iron is told in our development,” Executive Vice President Murray Jenkins said.

Most of the interest in using the Ladd pieces in recent years has come from developers who have sought to use them as decorative art pieces and not as building exteriors or entryways, said Val Ballestrem, educational director at the Architectural Heritage Center.

As for why the Ladd iron is in limbo, Ballestrem has several theories. First, modern architects “can’t seem to fathom putting this old material on a new building.”

“I think that would be the ultimate statement of recycling and reuse – something that Portland used to be very proud of, but now I’m not so sure,” he said.

Second, the National Park Service, which oversees the Skidmore/Old Town Historic District, traditionally doesn’t like buildings that are reconstructed.

Lots of parking

No doubt, the Skidmore/Old Town Historic District has a different feel than the rest of the Central City, and part of it has to do with the parking lots. Portland effectively banned surface parking in the Central City in its 1972 Downtown Plan, though existing ones were grandfathered in. Today there are more than a dozen surface parking lots in the 17-block district, and most are owned by the Goodman family.

The rule discouraging parking lots led to an unintended consequence – as parking lots are superseded, remaining ones become more valuable.

Parking is now such a valuable commodity in downtown that observers believe a developer can achieve more profits with a parking lot, especially where building heights are limited to 75 feet.

“The economics are such that if you have a choice between running a parking lot and building a 75-foot building, you run a parking lot,” developer John Russell said. “It’s just bad public policy.”

Russell, owner of the Hallock-McMillan Building, has no love lost for parking lots.

“They’re about the worst neighbor you can have,” he said. “(They’re) dead. There’s no pedestrian delight about walking past a parking lot.”

But Hawkins and others think the status quo might change as land values keep rising. It’s thought that new construction could finally be more productive use of Old Town property. (The Goodmans recently unveiled expansive plans to redevelop a number of their properties.)

To renovate the Hallock-McMillan Building at Southwest Naito Parkway and Oak Street, Russell had cast-iron pieces forged – a painstaking six-month process. The building, designed by Absalom Hallock, among the first architects in Portland, was one of the first forays into cast-iron architecture in the city. Russell said he purchased it without understanding its significance in Portland architectural history.

Despite the hope surrounding new uses for cast iron, the state could do a better job incentivizing adaptive reuse of building materials, said Peggy Moretti of Restore Oregon.

Among the lessons of the cast-iron revival in Portland is the importance of effective urban planning, she said.

“First of all, don’t demolish something unless you have a plan for what to replace it with,” she said. “There were a lot of buildings that were torn down and just became empty lots. That was just awful. It just sucked the life right out of the district. Some of the ideas that we had about livable communities just didn’t exist back then. You know, we wouldn’t do that today.”

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In November, a small cross section of Portland’s building industry gathered in a dark, smoky foundry to witness a rare execution of modern cast-iron craftsmanship.

Workers at the Silverton Foundry recreated pieces of the cast-iron facade of Portland’s oldest building. According to several of the experts working on the restoration of the Hallock and McMillan Building, it was the first time in modern history that the process was used to cast large sections of a building’s facade entirely in iron. Though many preservationists consider the project an exciting step in the right direction, the restoration is stalled until the neighborhood is developed more fully.

At the foundry, cranes swooped overhead, bringing molten iron from a tall, cylindrical furnace to custom molds that were created based on historic photographs of the 155-year-old Hallock and McMillan Building. The firms carrying out the project – , and – all sent representatives to the Silverton Foundry to witness the unique recreation of the historic facade.

“It seemed ancient as all get-out,” said architect and cast-iron expert Bill Hawkins, who was a consultant for the project. “(The building) will once again look as it did when its architects designed and built it.”

After housing an electronics business for many years, the Hallock and McMillan Building was purchased in 2010 by John Russell, founder of He then assembled a group of experts to restore the building’s cast-iron facade with full-iron replicas.

“It’s a long process and you can’t hurry it,” Russell said. “You have to plan for six months of preparation work, but it’s absolutely worth it.”

Several experts needed nearly a year to design and prepare the molds. The Silverton Foundry then fashioned a series of cast-iron ornamental pieces and seven-foot columns to replace the originals, which were removed in the 1940s and then lost.

The casting process employed basically the same techniques that would have been used when the building was constructed in 1857, according to David Field, who owns the foundry with his brother George.

“It’s a craft that is pretty rare, and the knowledge of the foundry men is really, really critical,” said Dave Talbott, president of Architectural Castings Inc., a Portland firm that helped develop drawings and molds for the foundry. “It would be tough to do without the aggregate knowledge of these guys.”

Russell, who owns multiple cast-iron buildings in Portland’s Skidmore/Old Town Historic District, said he will not install the recently cast pieces on the Hallock and McMillan Building until the area is improved.

“The neighborhood is just not ready for it; there are too many empty parking lots,” he said.

However, this recent effort to restore the Hallock and McMillan Building, which is located at the corner of Southwest Naito Parkway and Oak Street, may influence future redevelopment of the area.

“We need to rehabilitate the resources we have left and infill the missing pieces (of the district) that right now are surface parking lots,” said Peggy Moretti, executive director of the . The HPLO recently listed the Skidmore/Old Town district on its 2012 list of Oregon’s most endangered places.

The Hallock and McMillan Building originally had the kind of showy, cast-iron frontage that defined Portland in its early days. But many of the building’s cast-iron neighbors have been torn down, and an unclear vision for the district has stalled redevelopment.

“The whole district is in a gridlock,” Moretti said. “Tackling that poor, pathetic-looking building represents what the district used to be and can be again.”

A new Skidmore/Old Town task force is gearing up to tackle some of the district’s ongoing development issues. But Hawkins and other preservationists have already made it clear that they hope that the city’s stockpile of salvaged cast iron will be used to rebuild the Skidmore/Old Town area. The same process used for the Hallock and McMillan project could be used to recast the missing pieces.

“I hope (the project) will trigger a little renaissance for our historic district,” Hawkins said. “If the area is going to be reborn, it should be done in iron.”

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