Terminal Sales Building

Terminal Sales Building
  1. About the Terminal Sales Building in Portland
    1. Building Catalogations
  2. Architect and team
  3. Architectural style
  4. Spaces and uses
  5. Structure and materials

The Terminal Sales Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by A.E.Doyle, and built between 1926 and 1927 in Portland, OR.

Its precise street address is 1220 SW Morrison Street, Portland, OR. You can also find it on the map here.

The Terminal Sales Building is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Portland and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Art Deco style. Because of that, the Terminal Sales Building was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on July 17th 1991.

Building's timeline

Construction begins
1926
98
Construction completed
1927
97
Added to the NRHP
1991
33
years ago
2024

Architect and team

A.E.Doyle was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design. But there was also one other architect involved, as far as we know. We are talking about Wilfred Frank Higgins.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was L. Hawley Hoffman as the Main Contractor.

Architectural Style

The Terminal Sales Building can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it's widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.

Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.

The Terminal Sales Building was completed in 1927, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

Spaces & Uses

The Terminal Sales Building reaches an architectural height of 154ft (47m). It has a total of 14 floors, 13 above ground and 1 basements.

Ever since opening its doors to the public in 1927, the Terminal Sales Building has mainly been used as Commercial space.

154ft (47m)
1 basements

Materials & Structure

The Terminal Sales Building uses a frame structure made of concrete columns and beams.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade of the building however, is load bearing. This doesn't imply that it is a traditional load-bearing wall. Rather, it means that the structure's exterior pillars have been pushed to the very edges, becoming integrated with the facade, and therefore, technically, a part of it.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features offset columns rising uninterrupted to the roof line and a 7m arched entrance clad in travertine and terracotta. Above the second floor, the spandrels are coffered. The facade was painted with terraconine, a new material in the West at the time, which is a combination of waterproofing and paint that was applied with a pressure gun.

Sources

  • npgallery.nps.gov