NEWS ARCHIVE
Daily Journal of Commerce, November 2000
EXPOSING A BRIGHT SOLUTION
Making the courtyard will require removing nine posts and their associated beams in the center of the building.
"We are able to do that by putting in four massive concrete walls from the ground floor of the building to the roof, and these will provide the sheer strength for the building," he said.
The building will also be strengthened another way. Three inches of concrete—reinforced with rebar—will be poured onto the existing floors and attached to the exterior walls of the building with steel dowels.
Those measures will enable the building to meet seismic requirements.
And they will make possible the courtyard.
"This system will enable us to open up the center of the building and let light into the interior condominiums," the architect said.
Heater noted that the Marshall Wells building was one of the first concrete buildings in Portland with steel reinforcement. He said the small bars used were nothing like the rebar of today, but he said that concept was just beginning when the structure was built.
Though not a building that may attract much notice from a passerby, it has historic significance. It was designed by Chicago Architect Daniel Burnham of the firm of Burnham & Root, chief of construction for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and designer of what is considered the oldest skyscraper in New York City, the Flatiron Building. Burnham also is responsible for many features of Chicago that remain today.
The Marshall Wells warehouse is the only building in Portland designed by him.
Originally, the building had four floors; the top three were added in 1915.
Marshall Wells Hardware Co. built it as their first wholesale distributorship on the West Coast, and the location was important: its west border was along 15th Avenue, where the railroad tracks were, making for easy shipping and receiving.
Heater said that during the past five or six years, he has looked at the property with different developers. But until now, things haven't clicked.
"This is the right time, and Robert Ball is the right person to develop the potential of the building." Heater said.
Construction is scheduled to begin around next February or March and conclude in spring, 2002.