Skip to main content
I’m always amused by the inscription on a building at Southwest 11th and Alder. I don’t know my architectural lingo, but if you look up, you’ll see it: “DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD THEY SHOULD DO UNTO YOU.” I’d be interested to hear your take. —Nancy H.
For some reason, American architects in the early 20th century developed a mania for plastering deep-sounding mottoes across the architraves (I suspect that’s the word you were looking for) of public buildings.
The U.S. Supreme Court building, for example, got “EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW.” The University of Texas Library got “YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE.” And New York’s (former) post office got that famous one that begins “NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN…” and goes on way too long (to be fair, it is a long building). For a few decades, inscriptions were everywhere.
Did Portland’s city fathers watch this linguistic frenzy and hastily choose the Golden Rule as the building’s slogan just to get it done before all the good mottoes were taken? (You can see why they’d be concerned—no city wants to be late to the party and wind up with a Palace of Arts and Culture bearing the legend “TIGHT BUTTS DRIVE ME NUTS.”) But no, there’s a better explanation.
The building at 614 SW 11th Ave. currently comprises the west wing of the Sentinel Hotel, but it was originally built to house the Portland chapter of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. At the time of its completion in 1923, the building was (probably) the largest Elks lodge in the country and hosted a local chapter of 3,800 members.
Of course, club rules at the time required all those members to be white and male, which doesn’t sound all that benevolent to me—but hey, it was a different time, right? You’ll be pleased to learn that the BPOE swiftly saw the error of their ways and repealed that discriminatory language—a scant 50 years later, in 1973. (At least now we know what they were protective of.)
This history may make the Elks’ claim that their order is based on the Golden Rule ring a bit hollow (the fact that the whole thing started in the 1860s as “The Jolly Corks,” a social club for blackface performers, doesn’t help, either), but that’s the reason the inscription is there. Is it hypocritical? Probably. Is it more hypocritical than the inscription on the Supreme Court? Your call.
Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.