INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Industry has always interested me, perhaps in part because I am of the generation that barely knew it as a living thing. The industries of my generation tended to be nondescript companies in generic, low-rise concrete buildings, like offices that got truck deliveries for some inexplicable reason.
Far more interesting are the industries of the past, from natural resources extraction and processing to transportation to manufacturing. Although technological and societal advancement has significantly altered or even eliminated many of these enterprises, in many locations traces of their existence could still be found. Foundations give rise to understanding the vast scale of now gone factories. Piers and abutments provide clues to the immensity of transportation schemes. The detritus of abandoned structures provide clues to human-technological complexes now outdated but once immense.
Some see in such ruins nothing of value. Especially in the West, with its obsession with newness and youth, to value history is sometimes to be a heretic. Yet these discards of outdated ways of thinking and being are precious. They provide lessons in human greatness and achievement, and lessons too in hubris, malice and greed. They ground us in knowledge of how those who came before us lived, and teach us not to cling too tightly to method and manner, lest we too become ruins.
THE PORTLAND SWITCHING DISTRICT PROJECT: 2008-Present
The purpose of the Portland Switching District Project is to document the remaining traces of urban railroading in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. This includes not just active rail lines but also abandoned ones, as well as the traces of railway service that linger through building form and land uses.
Switching districts were once the lifeblood — the arteries — of Portland. Without them, the city would never have achieved economic superiority in the Gilded Age. The grand cast-iron age, the great Victorian housing stock, the Edwardian charm of the central city; all of these things that we now strive to preserve were built on the financial backs of the industrial districts. Unfortunately, the industrial districts have far less charm value, and so while many great buildings of Gilded Age Portland have been saved, the old industrial areas are often neglected or altered beyond recognition.
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