A Growing City, an Overcrowded Courthouse
Before there was a courthouse on Main Street, there was a half-century of federal life squeezed into the Pioneer Courthouse — and a two-million-dollar act of Congress to replace it.
Federal justice arrived in Portland long before the building that now carries Gus Solomon's name. From the 1870s, the Pioneer Courthouse at Fifth and Morrison — courthouse, post office, and customs offices in one — was the federal government's home in Oregon.
By the 1920s the arrangement had become untenable. Portland had grown into the commercial capital of the Pacific Northwest, and with it grew the federal presence: courts, prosecutors, marshals, tax collectors, immigration examiners, foresters, and recruiters, spilling out of the old building and into leased offices across downtown.
Two million dollars from Congress
The answer came on March 5, 1928, when Congress allocated $500,000 to acquire a site and begin work on a new United States Courthouse for Portland, with construction pegged at $1.5 million — on the condition that the Pioneer Courthouse be sold for no less than $1.75 million. By December the estimate had grown to $1.95 million, and the newspapers settled on a rounder figure: Portland's "two million dollar Federal Building." (The Pioneer Courthouse, as it happened, was never sold — a stroke of luck that preserved both buildings.)
Through 1929 the government assembled Block 183, one block south of the Pioneer Courthouse — bounded by SW Main, Madison, Sixth, and Broadway. Some owners sold willingly; others, including the estate of pioneer developer John Yeon, settled through condemnation. The parcels together cost more than $660,000.
Choosing an architect
On June 5, 1930, the Oregonian's Washington correspondent broke the news: the design would go to Morris H. Whitehouse, Portland's most decorated architect — MIT-trained, winner of an early traveling scholarship to the American Academy in Rome, and designer of Temple Beth Israel, the University Club, and the Multnomah Amateur Athletic Club. His associates A. Glenn Stanton and Walter E. Church shared the commission. The selection, made without political sponsorship from Oregon's senators, met with widespread approval from the city's architects.