To spot the Meier & Frank Building, look up at the large, gleaming white, fifteen-story building with ornate details and rows of tall windows-stretching an entire city block just across from the northeast corner of Pioneer Courthouse Square.
Alright, let’s step into a little time machine right here! You stand before one of Portland’s giants-the Meier & Frank Building. It’s not just big… it’s full-block-big, with handsomely glazed terra cotta wrapping every corner, a crown of windows gleaming against the sky. If you ever wondered where Portlanders went for everything from wedding dresses to parakeets, this was once the heart of it all.
Picture it-back in 1909, the street bustled beneath horse-drawn wagons and skipping children. The building sprang up with grand ambitions, thanks to architect A. E. Doyle. But it nearly took a wild Chicago twist! Doyle and the store’s co-founder, Sigmund Frank, trekked over to Chicago to see the latest in department store dazzle. Sigmund was thrilled, plotting a grandiose new palace of shopping. Sadly, Sigmund’s passing meant the dream was built in chunks, which led to a slightly quirky setup-some elevators reached certain floors, others didn’t, and I imagine many confused shoppers searching for that one missing escalator.
By the 1920s, Meier & Frank was so much more than a store: it was a city within a city. At its peak, you could find a pharmacy, a pet shop (yes, really!), delis, and even a suit-wearing Clark Gable working the tie counter in 1922. You might’ve even stumbled upon the company’s own radio station, KFEC, humming out from the 5th floor, its transmitter towers sparking above. Imagine the crackle of radio static and employees bustling through the halls, sending messages zooming through pneumatic tubes-think: an old-school version of texting, but with little metal canisters rocketing through the walls!
If you’d come at Christmas, you couldn’t miss a family tradition: Santaland on the 10th floor. It was a magical holiday kingdom, unchanged for decades. Kids’ laughter, parents snapping photos, the smell of pine and peppermint, all beneath a ceiling-sized “kiddie monorail” that zipped around the room since 1959. I have to tell you-more than a few Portland kids dreamed of riding that monorail one day.
The place was so itself that when Portland got its very first escalator, it was here! If you grew up in the city, riding that moving staircase was a rite of passage. Still, behind the scenes, not everything was so modern. The old hand-operated elevators kept carrying boxes and mannequins in secret, while the main crowd swept upstairs on swanky new lifts.
But even pillars of retail face storms. Downtown competition and new shopping trends turned the tide: by the 1980s, the building shifted its focus to clothes and housewares, slowly closing off unused floors-sometimes turning them into chilly storage.
The Meier & Frank store-eventually scooped up by Macy’s in 2006-got a $100 million makeover. In a city as rainy as Portland, that’s a lot of umbrellas! The bottom five floors hosted Macy’s. Then came a twist: the top floors transformed into the luxury hotel, The Nines. Imagine: from bargain hunting to breakfast in bed, all in the same spot. Macy’s finally closed up shop in 2017, and the lower levels were reborn as office space. Oh, and the latest newcomer: a big, beautiful Muji store, serving minimalist style right in the heart of classic Portland.
This building has seen over a century of holidays, innovations, strange coincidences, and new beginnings. It’s a place that wears its age with style, and if you listen closely, you might hear echoes of elevator chimes, a monorail above, or a distant “Ho-ho-ho!” in the corridors. Here’s to the Meier & Frank Building-where Portland’s past meets its future, one story (and floor) at a time.
