CATEGORY: UNIVERSITY YEARS

In 1968, my last year of architecture school, The University of Oregon School of Architecture was allotted funds by the State of Oregon Institute for Community Studies to do student team studies on three towns in Oregon for a winter term project. One of these was on the coast, one in the Willamette Valley and one east of the mountains.  Each student was to make an architectural proposal for the town and develop it as their design project for the term.  The town east of the mountains was Bend.  I chose to be on the Bend team since I had been a Bend rural resident and it remained my favorite place in Oregon.

For my project, I chose to work with the old Pilot Butte Inn, which was then empty and boarded up.  My proposal was not just for the Inn.  At that time there were 14 acres of sage brush belonging to the city of Bend that lay between the Inn and the Deschutes River, and stretched north along the river between the Inn and Portland Avenue.  besides the Inn and the 14 acres there was nothing on the whole block except an Elks Club, a garage and auto parts place and a water pumping station. So, in conjunction with the Inn, I proposed to use the 14 acres as a convention center.  This imaginary center contained an auditorium that could also be used as a theater for Central Oregon College which was becoming well known for its yearly musicals.  Thus The Pilot Butte Inn was to be the historic focal point for a much larger development.  I did not design the convention center in any detail.  Instead I showed basic forms of buildings to symbolically define the functions for the various areas I imagined it would contain.

I made a model showing a general remodeling of the Inn that actually changed only the back side: the front being restored to its original form.  I made a model of the whole Central Business District of Bend showing the proposed center.  I had read that the City of Portland had paid something like $30,000.00 for a model of Portland in which the city blocks lifted out so that whole sections could be temporarily replaced by models of proposed developments for evaluation by planners.  I decided to make my model in the same way so I could donate it to the City of Bend for future use.  I procured a tax map of the city and went down each street estimating or actually measuring the height of the buildings and sketching in the shapes if they were other than simple cubic forms.  A friend loaned me shop space and I cut all the parts out of wood and glued the buildings to the lift-out blocks.  The whole of the convention center, including the Inn, I made of cardboard so it would stand out as a separate feature.  It also lifted out so it could be easily changed.

The final presentation of our projects was done in Bend at a public meeting which was well attended.  Afterward some of the city fathers informed my professor that they wanted to investigate the possibility of raising the money to accomplish my proposal.  On this basis my design professor, Bill Kleinsasser, advised me to carry the design of the Pilot Butte Inn over into the next term and use it as my terminal project, my last at the University.

Ten citizens of Bend formed a corporation and raised $30,000.00, a large sum at that time.  They hired feasibility experts and economists and the studies were favorable, both for the convention center and saving the Inn.  The City of Bend even gave the Corporation the 14 acres for one dollar!  But although the ten men all agreed that a convention center would be a profitable enterprise for Bend, they could not agree that the Pilot Butte Inn should be part of it.  They were split down the middle, five for and five against saving the building.  The five against said that the Inn was a barrier between the town and the convention center.

Kleinsasser told me it was my job to see if I could remodel the building so it might be an entrance instead of a barrier to the proposed convention center.  I actually succeeded in doing this.  I did plans and built another large-scale model of the main corner to show how anyone approaching the building could see right through it and out the other side.  I chose to floor the lobby, which was the passageway through the building, with slate so it would seem as if it were an extension of the sidewalk.  The feeling of the public spaces played to the skiing and recreation amenities of the surrounding area.  It was like having a ski and vacation lodge in down town Bend.  A part of my proposal was to sell the individual rooms using a condominium format.  These would be rented when the owners were not present and the owners would get a percentage of the profit.  I did an interior scheme to show how the rooms could be turned into both living and sleeping spaces.

My design did not convince the nay-sayers.

I should explain that these were the years of Urban Renewal when the hue and cry was to tear down old buildings and replace them with new, modern  urban developments.  Although Bend at that time was just becoming a popular ski resort, with a rumor of what was to become Sun River, it was still basically a mill town of 12,000 not very sophisticated people.

So, since the corporation members could not agree on this one issue, they spent all their money on more studies.  To avoid re-hashing the messy details, the end result was that one of the greatest buildings in the State of Oregon was destroyed–a building of heavy timbers and lava rock that was structurally perfect, with an aluminum roof that had never leaked.  It would be worth millions if it were still there today.  I continued my work on the Inn for my graduation thesis project, and for two years afterwards, working on every aspect of saving the building.  It was not to be.  Although it was on the National Historic Register, this did not prevent an owner from tearing it down.  Those who wanted it saved were happy and optimistic when a new buyer appeared on the scene in 1970.  To our dismay, within a month he had it demolished.

My heart remains heavy over the loss of this building, especially when I drive through Bend today and am forced to look at the ugly building with which it was replaced.

I still have the 2” thick book that contains all the material on the Pilot Butte Inn and my proposal for it including photographs and drawings.  It also contains all the economic reports and records of decisions made by the corporation.  I had it bound into a hard cover book by a Trappist Monastery near McMinnville where the monks do book binding.  I plan on donating it to the Deschutes County Museum.