To spot the Commonwealth Building, look for the sleek, sea-green glass tower with silvery aluminum frames-a shiny, distinctly modern rectangle rising fourteen stories above the corner of SW 6th Avenue, right between Washington and Harvey Milk Streets.
Alright, superhero-pause right here and stretch your neck upwards, because you’re about to meet a true pioneer of Portland! This isn’t just any shiny office tower; back in 1948, the Commonwealth Building (known at birth as the Equitable Building) dazzled the city in a way that made nearby brick buildings do a double-take. Imagine it’s the late 1940s: jazz is bouncing out of radios, hats and overcoats rule the sidewalks, and suddenly-bam!-this glass-and-aluminum structure shoots up out of the ground like something from a future nobody’s even dreamed up yet. Even the clouds must have gathered to gossip, reflected in those new shining panes.
Designed by the legendary Pietro Belluschi, this glass box kicked off a revolution-think of it as Portland’s version of breaking the internet. Instead of bricks and heavy concrete, Belluschi chose shimmering sea-green glass and aluminum for the exterior, and double-glazed windows that made it feel like you were working inside a cool, sealed spaceship rather than a stuffy old office. And get this: it was the very first tall commercial building in America with a fully air-conditioned, sealed system. Imagine the surprise of anyone poking inside on a humid summer day, expecting stuffy air, and instead getting a whoosh of coolness-people probably considered moving in just for the climate control.
It was intended to stop at twelve stories, but ambition had other ideas, so it grew to fourteen stories tall. The innovations didn’t stop at the glass-this building was the first in the country to use heat pumps for heating and cooling, an invention so clever it made engineers everywhere want to give it a standing ovation (and they did-eventually, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers gave it a landmark award).
The Commonwealth Building changed hands a few times over the years, its price tag shooting up faster than a Portland rainstorm-from $1.9 million in 1993 to $69 million in 2016! As you stand next to those reflective panels, think about all the eyes that once gawked up in awe, the engineers who peered curiously at the pipes and pumps, and the office workers who got to brag, “Yep, my building’s famous!” Not bad for a place that started as a headquarters for a savings and loan association!
So before you stroll on, maybe wink at the windows-the Commonwealth Building still loves showing off its pioneering spirit. On to our next stop-the Bank of California Building!
