A Lost Oregon Colossus

The Forestry Building, circa 1905 (all images public domain)
 

I recently came across photographs of a Portland structure I hadn’t encountered before: the Forestry Building from the 1905 Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition. Although I had previously heard of the fair, I was not familiar with its architecture. The images of the massive building immediately impressed me.

The Forestry Building measured 206 by 102 feet and centered around a central nave of fifty-two old-growth fir trunks, each about six feet in diameter. Crews selected and matched the logs individually, handling them in ways that preserved their bark. All told, builders used roughly a million board feet of timber. The result was a monumental timber hall that reflected the confidence and priorities of Oregon’s early logging era. Contemporary accounts often described it as the “world’s largest log cabin,” though later comparisons (e.g., Old Faithful Inn) challenge that superlative.

A souvenir postcard image of the Forestry Building from the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition.

Construction of the Forestry Building, 1904.

The Forestry Building as it appeared in 1956.

The colossal central "nave."

Following the conclusion of the exposition, the city retained the building and used it as a museum and forestry hall to house logging and lumbering exhibits. Maintenance proved difficult. Decay, insect damage, and repeated fire scares accumulated over the decades, and by the 1940s, the building faced possible demolition. A restoration effort in the 1950s stabilized it. That process underscored how impossible it would be to replicate its materials or methods from scratch.

The Forestry Building, engulfed in flames, August 17, 1964.

In August 1964, faulty electrical wiring started a fire that entirely destroyed the building within hours. The intensity of the radiated heat was enough to blow out the facing windows of the nearby Montgomery Park Building. Nothing inside the Forestry Building survived. The loss removed one of the last physical links to the state’s early timber identity.

In response, civic and industry leaders established the Western Forestry Center—now the World Forestry Center—building a new facility in Washington Park to continue the educational mission. It occupies a similar footprint but did not attempt to replicate the original structure.

The historical information and images in this post come from several sources, including the Pacific Coast Architectural Database and Offbeat Oregon. Encountering the Forestry Building through their accounts was a surprise, a reminder that even in a region I think I know well, significant pieces of its architectural past can still surface unexpectedly.