At the corner of 6th and Harvey Milk (nee Stark), two buildings epitomize the extremes of architecture in the 20th century.
The first is this 1917 neoclassical banking temple by A.E. Doyle, a prominent Portland architect. The bank has a name as aspirational (or pretentious) as its architecture: The United States National Bank of Portland. Even the Corinthian columns look like they’re done to excess, and that’s not easy.
The second example, immediately across Harvey Milk, is truly significant: the Commonwealth Building. It still looks like it could be designed today.
Here’s Wikipedia: “… designed by architect Pietro Belluschi and built between 1944 and 1948. The building was originally known as the Equitable Building and is noted as one of the first glass box towers ever built, pioneering many modern features and predating the more famous Lever House in Manhattan.” In other words, the first International Style tower in America.
I suspect that if it were in a more prominent eastern city, it would be very well known. I doubt even many PDXers are familiar with its importance.
The Equitable is well known in the urbanist and architecture geek crowd in Portland. What is less well known is that the two buildings you note are from one firm. US Bank (still in business, now HQ’ed in the Twin Cities) was designed by A.E. Doyle, who also gave Belluschi his start in the city; After Doyle died, the girm eventually came under Belluschi’s control.
Also, Belluschi rose to fame for the Equitable, leading to a collaboration with Mies on the Pan Am building in NY, and a position as the head of the MIT Architecture Department.
If asked if the Commonwealth Building was built in the last ten years, I would have failed.