Timeline

The Pioneer Courthouse rises

Portland's first federal building — courthouse, post office, and customs offices in one — is built at Fifth and Morrison. It will house Oregon's federal courts for more than half a century, and the city will outgrow it.

Congress funds a new courthouse

Congress allocates $500,000 to buy a site and begin a new U.S. Courthouse for Portland, with construction estimated at $1.5 million — on the condition that the old Pioneer Courthouse be sold for at least $1.75 million. That December the estimate is raised to $1.95 million; the press will call it Portland's "two million dollar Federal Building."

Assembling Block 183

The government buys the full block bounded by SW Main, Madison, Sixth, and Broadway — partly by purchase, partly by condemnation. Sellers include the Ladd Estate Company and the estate of pioneer developer John Yeon; the parcels together cost over $660,000.

Morris H. Whitehouse chosen as architect

The Oregonian's Washington correspondent breaks the news that Portland's Morris H. Whitehouse — MIT-trained, a Rome scholarship winner, designer of Temple Beth Israel and the University Club — will design the courthouse, with associates A. Glenn Stanton and Walter E. Church. Fellow Portland architects greet the choice with widespread approval.

A judge helps design his courtroom

Writing on U.S. District Court letterhead, Judge Robert S. Bean sends Whitehouse detailed suggestions for the new building: put the judges' chambers and library to the north, the courtrooms to the south "for sunshine," and a door from the corridor into each courtroom for attorneys. Whitehouse writes back four days later agreeing to study the ideas — a rare glimpse of the bench shaping its own building.

Source: Bean–Whitehouse correspondence, OHS (Whitehouse & Associates records)

The design unveiled

Whitehouse shows the Oregonian a rendering of the approved design — a dignified classical block developed with consulting architect Jules Henri de Sibour of Washington, D.C., under the Treasury's Acting Supervising Architect, James A. Wetmore.

"Save the elms"

Major J. D. Guthrie writes Whitehouse urging him to preserve the elm trees on the block — an early plea for the mature trees that would nonetheless be felled before a crowd of onlookers when excavation began the next winter.

Source: Guthrie letter, OHS (Whitehouse & Associates records)

Landmarks fall on the federal building site

The Muckle Wrecking Company clears Block 183, demolishing the old Whitehall Hotel — once one of the city's finer small hostelries — and two garages to make way for the courthouse.

The wood-versus-steel window fight is settled

Oregon's lumber interests, hungry for Depression-era orders, pressed the architects and the Treasury to specify wood window sash instead of steel. The Treasury's compromise, issued this day: metal sash on the exterior elevations, wood sash on the interior light courts. The controversy would flare again in Congress the next summer.

Source: Treasury decision letter, OHS (Whitehouse & Associates records)

An all-sandstone building for $1,156,000

Murch Construction Company of St. Louis wins the contract, its all-sandstone bid beating cheaper options that would have switched to terra cotta on the upper floors. The grey Wilkeson sandstone comes from the Walker Cut Stone Company of Tacoma, putting 150 quarry workers on the job; 92 percent of contract money goes to Portland- and Seattle-area firms.

Excavation begins — and draws a crowd

With commercial construction nearly dead in Depression-era Portland, a large crowd of onlookers gathers just to watch the site's elm trees toppled and excavation begin.

A proposal for murals — politely declined

Consultant Carl Arthur Beck writes Whitehouse pitching a program of murals for the new building, enclosing a roster of muralists to choose from. The architects reply a week later that the decoration allowance is already spent — which is why the finished courthouse leans on marble, bronze, and carved stone rather than painted walls.

Source: Beck–Whitehouse correspondence, OHS (Whitehouse & Associates records)

The cornerstone — and a swimming photo — laid

Architect Whitehouse and U.S. Attorney George Neuner lay the cornerstone at 10 a.m. Sealed inside: five Portland daily newspapers, historic documents, and a snapshot of architects Whitehouse, Stanton, and Church swimming in Oswego Lake.

Ninety percent done — and out of money

With the building nearly complete, Representative Charles H. Martin reports that the Treasury's budget has been cut "away below the water line," and Acting Supervising Architect James A. Wetmore wires that the courthouse is "ninety percent completed." The architects rally Oregon's congressional delegation to fund the finishing work — a vivid snapshot of building through the Depression's depths.

Source: May 1933 telegrams, OHS (Whitehouse & Associates records)

The new federal courtrooms open

Federal judges John H. McNary and James Alger Fee preside over the opening. McNary, admiring the rich surroundings, jokes that no one should expect "the standard of judicial utterances to improve proportionately."

"Most handsome of all"

Surveying Portland's five federal buildings, the Oregonian declares the new courthouse the most handsome of them — vindication for a building whose marble halls, a Treasury engineer confirmed, literally contain unextractable gold.

A federal city under one roof

The original roster fills every floor: the U.S. Post Office on the first floor, military recruiters and the Secret Service on the second, the IRS and immigration offices on the third, the Forest Service on the fourth, the U.S. Marshal and prosecutors on the fifth, the District Court on the sixth, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the seventh.

The Minoru Yasui curfew trial

Portland attorney Minoru Yasui, who deliberately violated the WWII curfew imposed on Japanese Americans to create a test case, stands trial before Judge James Alger Fee — the first judicial test of the wartime orders, and arguably the most historically significant case ever heard in the building. Yasui's conviction, affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1943, was finally vacated in 1986.

Gus J. Solomon joins the bench

President Truman gives Portland lawyer Gus J. Solomon a recess appointment to the U.S. District Court. A bruising confirmation fight follows — opponents red-baited Solomon and openly argued that Oregonians didn't want a Jewish federal judge — before the Senate confirms him on June 27, 1950.

Chief Judge Solomon

As chief judge, Solomon becomes famous for speeding up the docket and modernizing the district's practice — and, off the bench, for pressuring Portland's law firms and private clubs to end discrimination against Jews and women.

A "fair share" for Columbia River tribes

In Sohappy v. Smith, Judge Robert C. Belloni rules that Oregon violated the treaty fishing rights of Columbia River tribes and orders the state to guarantee them a fair share of the harvest — a foundation for the landmark Boldt decision and one of the longest-running federal cases in American history.

The Ninth Circuit moves out

After forty years on the seventh floor, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit relocates to the newly restored Pioneer Courthouse — the building its predecessors had abandoned in 1933.

The post office departs

After a half-century, the Post Office leaves the first floor; extensive renovations convert the postal spaces for the growing District Court. (A retail branch would return from 2004 to 2011.)

The Bhagwan pleads guilty

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh pleads guilty in Portland's federal court to two felony immigration-fraud charges stemming from the Rajneeshee commune scandal, pays a $400,000 penalty, and leaves the United States that same night.

Judge Solomon dies

Solomon dies in Portland after 37 years on the federal bench — still hearing cases in senior status, in the building that would soon carry his name.

Listed in the National Register

The building enters the National Register of Historic Places (reference no. 79002142) under its historic name, "United States Court House (New)" — recognized for its eclectic Renaissance Revival, Neo-Classical, and Art Deco design.

Renamed for Gus J. Solomon

Public Law 100-543 designates the building the Gus J. Solomon United States Courthouse. The dedication ceremony followed in 1989 — the same year Manuel Neri's Carrara marble sculpture Ventana al Pacifico was installed beside the main entrance.

The district court moves out

The U.S. District Court leaves for the new Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse after 64 years, ending the building's run as Oregon's federal judicial center. Federal agencies — the Forest Service among them, back where it started in 1933 — remain as tenants.

A Hollywood turn

The courthouse appears in William Friedkin's thriller The Hunted, with Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro — one of several films to use its marble lobby and courtrooms.

GSA puts the courthouse up for sale

With all federal tenants relocated and more than $76 million in deferred modernization looming, the General Services Administration announces the building's public sale — with a historic preservation covenant to be written into the deed.

A new owner, a new chapter

Portland real-estate firm ScanlanKemperBard (SKB) acquires the courthouse, announcing plans to rehabilitate, restore, and adaptively reuse it. The preservation covenant protects the building — and Neri's sculpture stays.

The first tenant arrives

Portland Civic Lab — a Portland organization that builds free public dashboards and tools to help residents make sense of the city's housing, budgets, and civic life — becomes the first tenant to move into the courthouse under its new ownership. It is the beginning of the building's next chapter of active use, after years standing vacant since its federal tenants departed.

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