Landmark, Sale, and the Next Chapter
National Register listing, the courts' departure, a Hollywood cameo — and, in 2025, the end of ninety-two years of federal ownership.
The courthouse entered the National Register of Historic Places on April 30, 1979, under its historic name, "United States Court House (New)." The nomination struggled charmingly with what to call its architecture — Renaissance Revival in its massing, Neo-Classical in its sandstone surfaces and Doric pilasters, Art Deco in its ornament and interiors — and settled on calling it eclectic, like the government that built it.
After the district court left for the Hatfield Courthouse in 1997, the building carried on as ordinary federal office space — Forest Service, Small Business Administration, Federal Protective Service, and a rotating cast of agencies. A postal branch returned to the old lobby from 2004 to 2011. In 2003 the building played a supporting role in William Friedkin's thriller The Hunted, its marble lobby and courtrooms standing in for themselves.
Sold after 92 years
On May 15, 2025, the General Services Administration announced the building's public sale — its federal tenants relocated, its deferred modernization bill estimated at more than $76 million. In December 2025, Portland real-estate firm ScanlanKemperBard (SKB) acquired the courthouse, pledging to rehabilitate, restore, and adaptively reuse it. A historic preservation covenant in the deed protects the building, and Manuel Neri's marble Ventana al Pacifico remains beside the entrance, protected by covenants of its own.
The building stood vacant into 2026, its windows boarded, while its new owners planned its future. Then, on August 10, 2026, Portland Civic Lab moved in as the first tenant under the new ownership — the courthouse's return to active life, and the newest chapter in the story this site exists to tell.