Portland Gas & Coke Building Makes National Top-Five List of Architectural Losses

Campaign to save the building needed $2 million, but was able to raise only $4,000.

A national building-preservation nonprofit has ranked the tearing down of the Portland Gas & Coke Building as one of the five most significant architectural losses of 2015.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit, has released its 2015 list of "10 Preservation Wins and Losses."

One of the losses: the 102-year-old structure owned by utility NW Natural, just southeast of the St. Johns Bridge.

NW Natural tore down the building in November, saying the site was too polluted to preserve.

The GasCo Building, as it came to be popularly known, was built in 1913 by Portland Gas & Coke Company to contain offices and a gas plant, which operated until the 1950s.

In December 2013, Portland architecture blogger Brian Libby warned that NW Natural planned to tear down the Gas & Coke Building. Nearby residents and preservation advocates mounted a campaign to save it.

In April 2014, they succeeded in negotiating a deal: The utility agreed to save the building if the community could raise $2 million to preserve it.

But the campaign raised only $4,000, and the demolition was carried out last month.

Scott Ray Becker, an activist with Friends of Gasco, says the group hopes to use the $4,000 to build a viewing station and plaques along Highway 30.

Willamette Week

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.