As mentioned at sellwoodstreet blog and nosmot blog in previous posts as well as here on this blog, here is the Westinghouse post I have been working on.JT and I walked around on Sunday in the neighborhood between N. Hancock and N. Thompson and I-5 and Interstate Avenue. This neighborhood is very quiet and not very busy. It is almost all industrial and warehousing with what looked like a magnet shop and a gallery connected to a stained glass company.
Like I said the focus of this post is the vacant Westinghouse building. It is a building slated to be razed in 2007 as part of a master plan for the Portland Water Bureau’s Interstate Field Operations Center. The Westinghouse building along with the on-site fleet garage canopy that provides covered parking for bureau maintenance vehicles were slated for demolishing this year but only the canopy will come down in 2006. The fleet garage canopy will be demolished as the structure does not meet current seismic standards and the Water Bureau is concerned that the garage could collapse during an earthquake reducing the number of vehicles available to help restore critical water service. The Westinghouse building is where electrical transformers were once repaired and care will be taken in the removal of residual materials (PCB's as seen in Nosmot's post) from the building. They will make way for a new material and storage area and a new water quality swale as well as landscaping along Tillamook Street and Kerby Avenue.
This project will further accommodate necessary upgrades of the Water Bureau’s 10-acre operations facility.
If you haven't had a chance to check it out and maybe take a few cool pictures yourself (I am sure JT, John and I will all be back ourselves) I recommend getting down there and doing so before it is gone in 2007. You will not be disappointed.
Here is a link to the site where this information was found.
Exterior Pictures
South end. Immediatly inside this large overhead door is a pit of some kind. Not visible in this shot is the parking lot that contains pallet after pallet of what appears to be water pipes.
Rows and rows of windows make up the Kerby Avenue side of the Westinghouse building. I really like the old lighting fixture. The west side is inside the fence so I have no idea what it looks like close up.
One of hundreds of broken windows that make up the east outside wall. This was the only one I found with something sheilding it on the inside. I thought the smokey broken glass and little holes had a nice look.
Because Nosmot got the broken window picture that looked like a pigeon I found a different "neat" smash. That does look like a bullet hole in the next window over doesn't it?
Poking the camera through the very window towards the ceiling.
Did I mention there were some broken windows? This is looking through the building towards the south end.Interior Pictures
These pictures are not from inside the building, they were taken by sticking my hand through the broken windows on the Kirby Avenue side of the building.
Almost the full length of the building looking towards the north end. I really liked the way the sunspots projected on the floor. You can't really see it here but I assure you it is cool.
Northwest corner of the ceiling. Check out the years of tar roof seeping through the cracks. The roof here is the only place I recall the sun not beaming through.
Straight overhead. The end of an electrical hoist track. Notice the aforementioned cracks in the ceiling.
Overhead towards the south end of the building. Those cracks are becoming out-and-out holes now.
Where the south and west walls meet. As you can see there is more sunlight hitting the floor here giving that cool effect I talked about before. The yellow safety tape is around the pit in the south end's floor.Ok. Now if that hasn't piqued your interest I hope it at least made you think about checking it out.
Happy hunting kids.
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