Downtown

I had an appointment in downtown Portland yesterday at the main branch of my bank. There are some great old buildings downtown. Buildings with presence and grandeur. Buildings with details like these:
You just know that this is an important building where significant work is done. It has honking big columns!



Other buildings might put bars over the window to ensure security. This building has much too much class. They have ornate brass grillwork. Bars are for prisons, not secure financial institutions.


And how's that for fancy lighting? This is NOT some little hick-town hovel of a building.


Even the flag standards are impressive.

You know, in your very soul, that anyone who walks through these doors is SOMEBODY.
Aand all this brasswork may have been shipped 'round the horn. I'm not sure we had foundries doing this kind of work back then. It was important enough to the people who built this building to go to CONSIDERABLE time and expense to make the building look "Impressive" and "Prosperous" Now builders just go for the bottom line. No elaboration or pomp. Most banks could just as well be warehouses now a days. You don't feel special when you walk in. But in the main branch of my bank, they have a dapper gray-haired gentleman in a suit who greets you if you look the least bit dazed, and is delighted to help you find what and who you came for. He made me feel VERY special!


Now-a-days, we make a big deal of shipping slabs of stone from Montana and Brazil and Italy. In those days, you didn't bring in Italian carved granite pediments. You brought in Italian stone masons and used your own local granite. There was a significant Italian community in Portland because the all stone masons then brought all their families, and the aged uncles were gardners and the Nonnas started bakeries and restaurants, and the cherished daughters became shop clerks and married Norwegian loggers . . .


And someone started making ornamental cast iron.


When is the last time something was constructed with this much pride and beauty lavished upon it? I'm all for clean lines and modern materials, but I cherish the elaboration of pomposity, too.

I had invited the Bahh Boys to come downtown with me, but they preferred to stay at home. Bobby said he needed to write some e-mails to let his folks back home know they made it this far OK. I hope he didn't abuse his internet priveledges.