In a new book, a walking tour of Portland history, as told through its storied buildings

The building at 411 SW 13th Ave. is where Portland inscribed itself into rock-and-roll history. It’s where the Kingsmen recorded “Louie, Louie” on a crappy microphone hung from the ceiling—so lo-fi that the FBI spent two years investigating whether the song’s inscrutable lyrics were dangerous to America.

“There are hundreds of people here right now, in cars and on foot and bicycles and scooters and in these buildings,” Libby said, gesturing outside on a hot evening in August. “Chances are that none of them know about that song being recorded there.”

Libby’s new book, In Search of Portland: Exploring a Transforming City (OSU Press, $30, 276 pages, amazon.com), is devoted to uncovering similar histories that hide behind the anonymous faces of countless Portland buildings.

The book is constructed as a series of pleasant little walks across the westside, with Libby, who has spent decades chronicling Portland’s evolving architectural landscape for publications from WW to The New York Times, as a personable guide.

There’s the one about Humphrey Bogart’s favorite table at Jake’s Crawfish, the story of how Gov. Tom McCall helped save Pioneer Courthouse Square, and the former nightclub where a young Sammy Davis Jr. held court. One comes away richer, with a renewed sense of the city as a living thing.

Last month, as his book prepared to publish, I invited Libby out for a walk to see downtown Portland through his eyes—beginning at Libby’s former home in Portland, the Empire Apartments.

The Empire Apartments (1217 SW 11th Ave.)

The low-rent Empire Apartments, across from the now-demolished St. Francis Hotel where Gus Van Sant filmed a scene with William Burroughs in Drugstore Cowboy, were Brian Libby’s first Portland home in 1997. The Empire is also where the idea for Libby’s book began, when he visited his old block 20 years later.

“I had that moment standing outside the Empire Apartments in 2017, and seeing that just about everything had been torn down and replaced,” he said. “People don’t quite realize how much the city is continually changing and rebuilding and remaking itself…. I started to think of a manuscript that I would write as kind of a mental map, or a way of preserving the memory of these places, even if they were to disappear in my lifetime.”

The Hotel Rajneesh (1115 SW 11th Ave.)

At least one building near Libby’s old haunt remains intact: a century-old brick building now home to affordable housing under the name Campbell Court House. But in the 1980s, it was better known as Hotel Rajneesh, owned by Oregon’s most famous cult.

“There was actually basically a terrorist bombing there,” Libby said. “Even though the Rajneeshees were later infamous for carrying out an attempted act of domestic terrorism of their own, they were actually the victims here. Some other fundamentalist who opposed the Rajneeshees planted a bomb [technically, three small bombs].” No one but the bomber was hurt. […]

Read full article: wweek.com

Brian Libby appears in conversation with art writer (and WW contributor) Richard Speer at Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323, powells.com. 7 pm Thursday, Sept. 15. Free.

Matthew Korfhage has lived in St. Louis, Chicago, Munich and Bordeaux, but comes from Portland, where he makes guides to the city and writes about food, booze and books. He likes the Oxford comma but can’t use it in the newspaper.