Portland Building- America's Ugliest & Most Hated Building? (Portland, OR)

I found out about the existence of the Portland Building when I saw the statue of Portlandia at the Wells Fargo Museum in downtown Portland when I sought a quick shelter to avoid a rain shower.

For those who wonder about the Portlandia statue, I already introduced the interesting story about it in a previous post: 
- Portlandia- the Second-Largest Copper Repoussé Statue in the US

Before I talk about the Portland Building, here’s a short introduction about it for those who did not know anything about it like me.

The Portland Municipal Services Building (commonly known as just "Portland Building") is a 15-story municipal office building in downtown Portland. Located next to City Hall, it houses offices of the City of Portland. When the building opened in 1982, it was considered architecturally groundbreaking, and in 2011 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

When I self-toured the 1st and 2nd floors of the public area of the Portland Building, I knew pretty much nothing about the building other than the plaque on the inside of the building entrance that said it was an award-winning building.

Other than the Portlandia statue on the front of the building, the outside look of the building did not excite me at all. It was hard for me to believe that the Portland Building is an icon of postmodern architecture and that it won an American Institute of Architects honor award in May 1983.

I later found that the importance of the Portland Building is because of its distinctive look, with a variety of surface materials and colors, small windows, and projecting decorative flourishes. These design elements deeply contrasted with the architectural styles commonly used for large office buildings at the time it was built.

Anyway, even if the architectural style of the Portland Building was not a big thing for me, I decided to go inside to check out for myself what it was all about.  

As soon as I entered the building, I actually felt very afraid that I was getting into somewhere like a heavily protected secret government building with a dark inside, high security, and an overall stark atmosphere. So I actually went in and out several times until I gathered enough courage to ask the security guard for permission to look around inside the building. He gladly granted me permission to look around the 1st and 2nd floor public area. If I’d known…I had regret that I should’ve just asked in the beginning…;)
 

Anyway, there was a large sculpture next to the stairs to go up to the 2nd floor. The front part of the second floor is an exhibition area for the public to come to see arts from throughout the Portland area exhibited.

While I was looking around in and out of the Portland Building I could not help but wonder how the Portland Building became an award-winning building. I just thought that I had different taste than others and professionals. 

But interestingly, I found that I was not the only one who did not like the Portland Building!

Travel & Leisure magazine picked Portland Building on their list of the ugliest and hated buildings in America! Among other things, the magazine described it as "an off-putting hodgepodge of faux classical columns, strange and useless decorative elements, and penitentiary-like small windows…" It also described the interior as being claustrophobic.

I think this is the first time for me to introduce something ugly rather than beautiful. But that doesn’t mean it is not worth to take a look at it. Even though it is not beautiful (to me), the Portland Building can be interesting to take a look around and compare, especially with Portland City Hall very close by. A little further away is the free Wells Fargo Museum and Ira Keller Fountain. Together they can be a good city travel route for city tour spots on that side of downtown Portland.