EXHIBITS
ECHOES OF TRANSITIONS
Opening November 2024
ECHOES OF TRANSITIONS is a photography collection of historic doors and hardware details from around the world during years of travel by Alejandro IV Barragan, an award-winning Portland artist, videographer, photographer, and documentarian. Each door represents a poetic threshold, a moment where the path widens into a new stage of life.
TRANSITIONS are a point in the middle. A bridge between spaces. Two points in time. New directions often offer the promise of a new beginning. Transitions create a mental architecture we construct that places us together on multiple sides. All the possible futures on the road we are about to engage in.
PRESERVING PORTLAND THROUGH LOCAL ACTION: HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN THE ROSE CITY
Permanent Exhibit, Opened August 2023
In this exhibit the AHC comes full circle, presenting the story of the preservation movement in Portland from which the organization was born. The exhibit begins with the story of AHC co-founders Jerry Bosco and Ben Milligan, and their involvement in early grassroots movements in Portland engaging in historic preservation and salvage during a time of sweeping demolitions and new construction. Bosco and Milligan’s salvage and preservation work transformed into the establishment of the Bosco - Milligan Foundation and the Architectural Heritage Center, ensuring access to their collections and providing a home for education and continued advocacy centered on Portland’s built history.
The exhibit, traversing both floors of the Architectural Heritage Center’s Historic West’s Block, journeys through time and space, examining the local movement and people involved in preserving Portland’s built history. We explore the range of preservation efforts spanning initiatives to save large famous buildings, historic homes, and community neighborhoods, and the network of national and state influences on these local preservation efforts.
Through the nuanced presentation of many voices and stories that impacted the movement, Preserving Portland through Local Action: Historic Preservation in the Rose City prompts the questions: “what is preserved, and why?” and, looking forward, “what should we do now to preserve Portland for the future?”
OLD FRIENDS, NEW ACQUAINTANCES: ARTIFACTS FROM THE AHC COLLECTIONS
Opened November 2022
The recent relocation of the storage of the Architectural Heritage Center’s vast collection of building artifacts in 2020 led to the “rediscovery” of some collections items that have rarely been displayed, if at all. Also on view for the first time are exciting new additions to our artifact and archival collections, kindly donated within the past few years. This exhibit shares a number of these new and fascinating acquisitions, including terra cotta lettering from the old Portland Union Stockyards, a grotesque creature that once adorned a downtown building, a slate roof shingle from the 1889 First Presbyterian Church, a railroad freight depot blueprint, and much more.
This exhibit also features a video about a terra cotta grotesque and an accidental discovery that led to its identification – click here to view the video.
TOURING THE CENTRAL EASTSIDE
Permanent Exhibit
The architecture of Portland’s Central Eastside, the neighborhood around our center, tells the story of this district’s past and the unfolding of its distinct character over time. This exhibit traces this history through the stories of 57 of its buildings. With the oldest buildings dating to the 1860s, the district’s architecture shows how it evolved from its marshy roots in the 19th century to become a booming center of industry and manufacturing to then develop into the ever-growing hub for design, IT innovation, maker spaces, and tourism that it is today.
This project was made possible by support from Central Eastside Together.
