PRESERVATION

The innovative series of downtown Portland fountain plazas by world-renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Known individually as Keller Fountain, Pettygrove Park, Lovejoy Fountain, and the Source Fountain, the public plazas are located between SW Clay and Lincoln streets and First and Fourth Avenues and are connected by a system of pedestrian walkways. They are collectively called the “Portland Open Space Sequence.”

A winner of the Presidential Medal of the Arts and other honors, Halprin and members of his firm, Lawrence Halprin and Associates, designed the plazas from 1963-1970 as the heart of the city’s first urban renewal district, known as the South Auditorium District. Their unprecedented sculptural wedding of public space, water, and references to the natural landscape turned the plazas into instant people magnets.

Five decades after the late architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable declared that it ‘may be one of the most important urban spaces since the Renaissance’, this defining achievement in Halprin’s extraordinary career has been deservedly recognized by inclusion in the National Register. Halprin’s ideas about nature, movement and social interaction transformed the American urban landscape and influenced a generation of designers.

The Halprin Landscape Conservancy, nearby property owners and the City of Portland Parks & Recreation have initiated a public-private stewardship program that has resulted in cooperative vegetation management, lighting upgrades, repairs to the iconic shelter designed by Halprin associate Charles Moore at Lovejoy Fountain and the restoration of the entire Sequence.

The National Register is maintained by the National Park Service under the authority of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. More information about the National Register and recent Oregon listings is online www.oregonheritage.org

VISIT HISTORY INSPIRATION PRESERVATION RESTORATION REFLECTIONS