An Interesting New Spin at Troy Laundry

Apr. 2, 2024
By: Fred Leeson

One vital tool for saving historic buildings is finding new uses when their original functions no longer survive. The shorthand term is “adaptive re-use.”

An interesting new example of adaptive re-use is at 1025 SE Pine Street, where a 1913 brick structure that once housed Troy Laundry, home of the Pacific Northwest’s largest laundry businesses before the advent of convenient home washing machines, has been converted to into an upscale private athletic and social club called Soho House of Portland.

The target clientele for membership is “young creatives” – or at least creative young people with the financial means to support dues that many of us couldn’t countenance. Amenities include a roof-top swimming pool, which one presumes could lead to jokes about getting soaked in a historic laundry, a 4,400 square-foot exercise space and upscale eating and drinking facilities.

We’ll let social media debate whether Portland can support this financial trendiness. Membership also entitles visitation to scores of other Soho locations around the world. You can learn more about the organization and see pictures of the completely revamped interior at Soho House Portland | Soho House.

Pine Street Frontage

For Portland architecture buffs, the Troy building was an early work by prolific architect Ellis F. Lawrence, who later commuted by train on a regular basis to Eugene where he was dean of the University of Oregon’s architecture school.

Lawrence’s client in 1913 was James F. Tait, a Scottish immigrant, who opened his Portland laundry service in 1889. In the following decades, Tait pioneered technological and managerial innovations to make Troy Laundry the biggest residential and commercial laundry company in the Pacific Northwest.

Lawrence’s colonial revival design reflected an era when even muscular industrial buildings could include attractive materials and architectural details.

It is said that Troy Laundry served as many 10,000 customers on a regular basis. In the following decade, Tait also built a major laundry building in Seattle. The Troy Laundry building as added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

Renovations to the 1913 building included seismic bracing, all-new mechanical systems and removal of awnings and a main-door canopy that were not original to the building.

New apartments on SE Ash Street; Troy building to the rear

The Portland Historic Landmarks Commission approved plans for the Troy project in August, 2020. The commission also had jurisdiction over the other half of the block because a proposed six-story apartment building planned by the same Chicago developer encroached on some of the Troy building’s lot.

The new apartment with 132 units facing on SE Ash St. is nearing completion. Its dark brick facades are a welcome addition to the neighborhood and should be pleasing to those who have grown tired of metal panels and faux wood paneling so common in contemporary apartment construction.

Fred Leeson is a former president of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation and a member of the foundation's Board of Advisors.