Everything Will Be New at Jefferson High

Mar. 11, 2024
By: Fred Leeson

Heading for the dumpster

The people spoke.  The Portland School Board listened.

As a result, a brand new Jefferson High School will rise somewhere on the school’s 14-acre North Portland campus, and the welter of existing old buildings dating as early as 1909 will be scraped off.

 Jefferson community members didn’t like the idea of their 700 students being shipped off to the old Marshall High School deep in Southeast Portland for three years while the historic Jefferson building was being remodeled – as well as possible – with historic architectural standards in mind.

The change in plans was all the more dramatic since architects and planners had already spent many weeks trying to figure the best means of preserving the historic 1909 building and adding new additions to the south of it.

“What was more important was keeping the Jefferson community intact,” Chandra Robinson, a principal of Lever Architecture, told the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission. 

There are some other factors to keep in mind, as well.  A new building is expected to be less expensive than restoring the old school and adding new elements it would need.  Further a detailed study by the Architectural Resources Group found that Craftsman-era architectural details of the 1909 that had been plastered over during a 1950s renovation were too damaged to be restored.  The unfortunate 1950s work also destroyed much of Jefferson High’s original roofline.

Original Jefferson High

Attempts were made to see if Jefferson students could be housed on or near the Jefferson site while the original restoration plans unfolded. Options were studied for using portable classrooms and spaces at the old Kenton School and Portland Community College, but no combination of options proved feasible, Robinson said.

There is adequate space on the Jefferson campus to complete a new building before demolishing the old structures.  But the switch in planning poses a puzzle for the landmarks commission, which had jurisdiction over the project because the school sits in the Piedmont Conservation District.

One option for the commission would be to recommend revision of the historic district boundaries so that the school no long sat within it.  However, doing so would remove the landmarks commission as a body to hold public hearings over the new design that the community likely would want to attend.

Another option is to leave the boundaries alone and declare the old Jefferson building to be “non-contributing” as a historic resource because its condition has been extensively changed from the original.  This strategy would let the commission continue to have a public review of the new plans, whatever they turn out to be.

A key challenge to the new design will be what to do about the football field and running track that faces on N. Killingsworth Street.  Locating the school on the athletic site would put it close to the North Portland Public Library and Portland Community College.  The athletic filed could be moved farther south on the campus, but the field was funded years ago with a public fund drive. 

One assumes that the Jefferson community will offer some opinions. Firmly, perhaps.

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