Campus - Landscape

Situated on the corner of Portsmouth with its easily recognized dome roof is the University of Portland’s 4,852 seat multi-purpose arena for athletics, tournaments, concerts, speakers, high school graduations and more — the Earle A. and Virginia H. Chiles Center.

Ground was broken in May 1983 and the new arena was completed and dedicated on October 20, 1984. The Chiles Center’s impressive specifications included a 60-foot high dome measuring 300 feet in diameter and locked in place by 30 buttresses. A “cloud” feature hidden in the ceiling above the arena floor is the main system to hold lighting, sound, and electronic scoreboard which can be dropped down in view when it’s needed. The arena also has theater type seating which can be rolled back to open the main floor for 20,000 feet of event space. On the upper level is a recreational running track with a cushioned surface.

As home court for Pilot athletics contests – women’s volleyball, men and women’s basketball, indoor track and field – UP hosted the West Coast Conference men’s basketball tournament in the Chiles Center in 1997 and 2007. Starting with the 2023-24 season, the Portland Trail Blazers G League affiliate team, The Rip City Remix, use the Chiles Center for their home court.

As an event space, Chiles is the venue for a number of important University non-athletic events, celebrations, and functions from UP presidential inaugurations, commencement and baccalaureate ceremonies, book/reading fairs, Career fairs, and the Hawai’i Club Lu’au. The University also welcomes appearances by prominent speakers and entertainers, from H.H. the Dalai Lama, Bob Dylan, Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Jane Goodall.

Through forty years of multi-faceted activity, the Chiles Center continues to expand to meet the needs of athletes and teams at the current moment: including upgrades to the women’s locker room (2006); renovations of the weight room (2008); refreshing and refurbishing the ceiling scoreboard (2010); expansion of men’s locker room, expanded space for strength and conditioning, a new student-athlete study area, and additional administrative offices (2012 – Chiles Foundation financial gift); and additional short- and long-term building improvements (2023 – Chiles Foundation financial gift).

One of the University of Portland’s hidden gems — though actually on full-display through the foyer windows of the Beauchamp Recreation and Wellness Center — is the Rock-Climbing wall. An oddity to be sure, this outdoor activity which is glassed-in behind walls. Nonetheless, the Wall is one of the unqualified fitness challenges on the current campus.

But that is not all. This month — and outside for the amazing fall weather (fingers-crossed) — the staff and faculty Walktober (2nd annual) has over 160 registered work-out partners consolidating friendships under the sponsorship of Human Resources promoting the friendly rivalry of Health & Wellness.

Not a fitness program, but oriented towards wellness, there is more to the Walktober activity than circling the Franz river campus and counting-steps climbing back to the upper campus.

Which brings us to a twenty-five year ‘throw-back’ and the dedication of the nine-station, perimeter enclosing walk & stretch fitness course that dotted campus from 1979-1989.

The Parcourse (a commercial name) was the joint gift of the Class of ’78 and UP Guam families and alumni. The organizer, fulcrum-person, impresario was Peter Sgro ’81, ASUP Senator in ’78-’79, ASUP President ’80-’81. We don’t have a firm terminal date when the course was removed, but the only possible remnant is a chin-up station by the Sequoias near the Pilot House on the edge of Pru Pitch (Prusynski Field).

Photo & Article Gallery. Click to enlarge and view as slideshow.

Performing and fine arts history at University of Portland dates back to the 1930s (with even earlier hints and traces stored in the Archives, such as the fragile photo of posed youthful orchestra members, 1904(?)). In drama, the Columbia Players were formed in 1929 and stage plays became a regular feature of the UP college experience. Vocal and instrumental music has been a constant in our curriculum, with orchestra and Glee club performing on the Howard Hall stage through the 1930s into the 60s.

Performances and recitals were held in a variety of locations across campus, wherever there was space — West (now Waldschmidt) Hall, Howard Hall, Education Hall, Music Hall, and Buckley Center Auditorium. Only in 1973 was Mago Hunt Center for the Performing Arts completed, and the campus provided with a dedicated theater and performance hall.

This continuous tradition was disrupted by disaster in the early morning of April 18, 1969, when a five-alarm fire destroyed three wooden buildings in the area where Franz Hall and Mago Hunt Center are today. Lost in the blaze were Education Hall (Theater and AFROTC), Music Hall, and a smaller building that housed offices for The Beacon, student government, and other programs.

Theater suffered the greatest, the fire destroying its entire collection of costumes and equipment; while the Music programs lost about two-thirds of their band and orchestra instruments. To address this catastrophe, the University launched a campaign for a teaching theater and recital hall, with the lead gift from benefactors, Mr. and Mrs. William and Mago Hunt. Mr. Hunt was a member of the UP Board of Regents from 1970-1999, serving as Board Chair from 1972-1977.

The Mago Hunt Center was dedicated on October 17, 1973.  The 21,000 square foot structure features a theater with flexible seating and staging arrangements with a maximum of 325 seats; a recital hall to accommodate various musical ensembles has fixed seating for 150; scene shop; costume shop; practice rooms; art exhibit and display area in the lobby; and offices.

Four student-acted, student-constructed, and student-sustained plays are presented each year on the Mago Hunt Stage.  Recitals for voice and instrument are exhibited throughout the academic year.  Classes and learning workshops are the everyday purpose of the Mago Hunt Center, a dedicated setting allowing the Performing Arts to thrive at UP.

For more photos and artifacts relating to the Mago Hunt Center and Performing and Fine Arts at UP, visit the 50th anniversary display in the lower level of Clark Library with material from the University Museum and Archives, and also from Performing and Fine Arts.

Twenty-five years ago the UP campus lost a parking lot and gained Corrado Hall. Dedicated on September 25, 1998, Corrado was the first new residence hall built since the construction of Shipstad Hall in 1967. Some crowding had occurred during those thirty years, largely due to expansion of student enrollment, which had nearly doubled in that period and was on course to reach 3000 undergraduate students by our Centennial Year, 2001. (The academic infrastructure grew in strict parallel, the 1969 Buckley Center not followed until Franz Hall in 1995.)

Named for Albert, ’55 and Susanne Corrado, long-time leaders and donors involved in the continuing growth and development of the University of Portland, the new residence hall signaled a major step forward.

Both Corrados are Portland natives who met as teens and have been committed to each other, their family, their faith, city, and this university throughout their lives. Albert grew up in Portland, a child of immigrants – college was a dream – and UP the fulfillment of that dream. He enrolled as a commuter student, worked multiple jobs during college, graduated in 1955, and found UP lingered in him ever after. Adding dreams. The 1950s model of the first-generation student success story. Achieving a successful career, Albert served on the University Board of Regents beginning in 1991 and as chair from 1997-2002. A former commuter student, he was now an advocate for on-campus living, seeing residence hall construction as the ‘next logical step’ because on-campus living ‘is part of the Holy Cross tradition of teaching students’. [Beacon, November 6, 1997, January 21, 1999] The Corrados also provide major support for student scholarships, in addition to helping fund many programs and campus buildings and academic initiatives through the years.

On receiving an honorary degree from UP in 2001, Mr. Corrado shared his experience and love of the University with the graduating class, advising them:

“I believe that the University of Portland at its best is a seed, a kernel, a nugget inside you, that stays with you, that will grow and grow and grow over the years for your whole life. […] It’s different for every one of us, that seed. But it’s there now, inside you and it will be there all your life. My only advice to you today is this: Let it grow”.

Corrado Hall is one of nine residence halls where The University of Portland lives out its mission of teaching and learning, faith and formation, service and leadership; in short, a learning community where seeds can take root and grow.

Resources
Corrado Hall Groundbreaking, The Beacon, November 6, 1997

Students Move in to Corrado Hall, The Beacon, September 10, 1998

Corrado Hall Dedication, The Beacon, October 1, 1998

Pamplin School of Business Hall of Fame, Albert Corrado

Spirit of Holy Cross Award, Albert and Susanne Corrado, 2013

Happy Birthday to Clark Library – three times over!!! 

• For the 65 years since the dedication of the first library building on November 30, 1958
• For the 45 years since the library burst open and doubled in 1978 (dedicated on January 27, 1979)
• For the 10 years since the blessing and dedication of the remodeled, renovated, and reimagined Clark Library on September 27, 2013

As the library building has changed in size and shape over the years, so too, have Clark Library’s services and collections, ever evolving and changing to meet the needs of students, faculty and staff, on campus and beyond, both physically and virtually.  A library with endless boundaries; always welcome and open to all who seek, learn, and discover.   

Slideshow of the library over the years

Related posts about the Library

Christie Hall Library

Library Dedication, 1958

Dictionary Stand

Library Bookplates

Brother David Martin, CSC., Library Director, 1928-1966

Rev. Joseph Browne, CSC, Library Director, 1966-1970; 1976-1994

Richard Hines, Library Director, 1998-2006

Bookplates have long been used by libraries and individuals to record ownership and to ensure that a book is returned to the lender. These decorative labels are affixed inside the front cover or front pages and, particularly for a library, bear the institution’s name, and in the case of dedicated collections, the name of a sponsoring donor.

The bookplate employed for many years at the Clark Library is unsigned. But the name of the designer is found in The Bookman, a publication issued for the Friends of the Library of the University of Portland, October 1946 issue, p. [5]. There Colista Dowling (1881-1968) is credited with designing the graphic. Dowling worked as a commercial artist in Portland for sixty years and was known for watercolors depicting city and coastal scenes, book illustrations, and bookplates.

For most of its history, books in the Clark Library were adorned with one of these bookplates as part of book processing, but this practice has now been given over to stamps inking the Clark Library and University of Portland names on end pages and inside front cover. Present day library patrons will still find books with vintage bookplates in the library stacks. A reprint of Dowling’s vintage bookplate is used today to recognize donors giving $100 or more to the library during the University’s annual PilotsGive campaign.

Reference:
Allen, Ginny. “Colista Dowling (1881-1968).”The Oregon Encyclopedia. https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/dowling_colista_1881_1968_/#.YtmqdHbMLIU. Accessed July 21, 2022.

Land Acknowledgement
In these 1940s representations we see the land stretch out in unbroken horizons; in fact, even in 1901 the city of Portland filled the foreground between the Bluff and Mt. Hood.  And before that too, other people enjoyed these lands.  As stated in the University’s Diversity documents: We acknowledge the land on which we sit and which we occupy at the University of Portland. “The Portland Metro area rests on traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River creating communities and summer encampments to harvest and use the plentiful natural resources of the area” (Portland Indian Leaders Roundtable, 2018). We take this opportunity to thank the original caretakers of this land.

There is a humorous, often repeated story recounted by Rev. James A. Anderson, C.S.C., (CP ’32, Chemistry faculty, 1946-1982).  Asked about the origins of co-education (women) on campus, he answers:

There wasn’t really too much difficulty about that, or at least if there was, it was a long time ago.  Because the beginnings of co-education was really with the Nursing School.  That school was at St. Vincent Hospital.  It just became more convenient eventually that the nurses would take a class here rather than over there.  Then, when Music was started, there were girls who wanted to take music.  So there was no particular problem.  The only problem was about the girl’s dormitory.  This had to go to the Superior General of Holy Cross [in Rome].  He said it was O.K., but to build it on the corner furthest away from the boy’s dormitory.  In retrospect, it might well have been built someplace else.  Everyone had to use the Commons and it might have been more convenient to have the dorms and eating facilities in the same general location.  But that was the only thing.  He didn’t exactly make a problem over the exact spot, just as long as it was as far away as we could get it.   [abridged]

This 1968 reminiscence found in the oral history of the University gives evidence of the first seed of a colorful anecdote about how the presence of women on campus was enough to inspire a paralyzing sense of sexual panic among the Catholic administration (fainting priests).  With this winking, knowing anecdote about cautiously positioning the women’s residence along the rim of the campus, ‘beyond whistling distance from Christie Hall’; the Villa Hall origin-story hints at fear & exclusion, assuming that our school has been reluctant to welcome women or to extend all students an equal equality.  Such foot-dragging is unlikely in the event however.  The women’s hall was built on-campus (a year before Kenna!).  And even prior to 1957, the Dean of Women had already been coordinating living arrangements for women students in boarding houses beyond campus, just across Portsmouth (in effect market-testing the need for a brick and mortar residence hall on the campus proper).

As things work over time, much has changed regarding the genteel living promised to women in the new and most-remote student hall.  Therefore, naturally, today Villa Maria is a men’s residence (since 1984), and too, the University has long since spanned Portsmouth (counting in the Franz Campus on the river) such that Villa now holds a central location, though the dining hall still seems remote to Villa residents.  Within the last twenty years the proud denizens of Villa have adopted a gorilla as mascot and a hall badge boasting modest excellence.  The kilted bag-pipe wailing Villa Drum Squad (see: the Celtic cross in the hall badge) has claimed a mixed gender membership for several years.

1956 Admissions Brochure

Citations: Oral History Program I:245-6; The Pilot, September ’56: A Guidebook for University of Portland Students, p. 14; Province Review (February 1957) p.3

Related post: https://sites.up.edu/museum/orientation-at-the-university-of-portland-campus/

Built in 1891, West Hall served the short-lived Portland University (1891-1899) and was purchased along with the 25 acres of the bluff campus by Archbishop Alexander Christie in 1901 as a Catholic college (Columbia University renamed University of Portland in 1935) under the direction of the Congregation of Holy Cross. As the only structure at our beginning, West Hall contained the entire new University: becoming classrooms, dormitory, library, dining hall, Chapel, and offices. Naturally library, dormitory, dining hall and Chapel later migrate as new facilities appear. Today West Hall/Waldschmidt Hall houses student services and administrative offices. 

In 1977, during the University’s Diamond Anniversary celebration, West Hall was named a historic building and placed on the National Register of Historic Places. At its century mark (1991-92), an extensive renovation brought an elevator, light, the grand-staircase, and more to the old bones. At a rededication ceremony thirty years ago on October 17, 1992, West Hall was renamed as Waldschmidt Hall in honor of the University’s 15^th president (1962-1978), Bishop Paul Waldschmidt, C.S.C. 

As the University’s longest-serving building, Waldschmidt Hall has welcomed all University presidents from the first, Rev. Edward P. Murphy who rang the opening bell on September 5, 1901, to the University’s 21^st president, Dr. Robert Kelly. 

For more pictures and history of West/Waldschmidt Hall visit the Clark Library’s Digital University Buildings Collection, displaying images of photographs and objects held by the University Archives and Museum (with descriptions from the Archives and Museum).

Portland magazine article about the first 100 years of West Hall
Mortar & Memory by Teri Van House Cettina ’86; illustrations by Dennis Clemmens

Related Posts:
In the Beginning: Cornerstone West Hall

In the Beginning: Day One

Dr. Robert Butler, Emeritus Professor in Environmental Sciences, arrived on the Bluff in 2004, and immediately saw that the physical Bluff itself—our green campus overhanging the Willamette River—could be an object-lesson in his science classes. 

But, how to create a learning-module about our patch of land?  In his first days on the Bluff, Dr. Butler visited the Archives and came away with a “treasure chest that I used in my teaching of Earth Science courses from 2004 through 2016!” Pulling some 25 or more historical photos of the campus that could be used as classroom and lecture exhibits. “To the eyes of a geologist, these photos demonstrate landscape changes, some natural but most from alterations by humans.”  

Dr. Butler selected these three photos to illustrate.

1) The 1914 aerial photo shows landslides/erosion on the edge of the Bluff east of Waldschmidt.  This land subsidence / rapid erosion was almost certainly precipitated by an oversteepening of the slope by construction of the road leading down to the rail line at the base of the slope.  

2) The comparison of Swan Island between 1922 and 1935 is a case study in major landscape modification by humans.  Prior to dredging, the main channel of the Willamette River passed along the north bank of what is now Swan Island.  On the south side of Swan Island and down-stream toward the city center, the river was impassible to large vessels.  When the main channel was opened by dredging, the dredge spoils created a landfill all-but closing the Swan Island channel. 

3) The 1969 aerial photo shows surface landfill into the gulch on the slope of the bluff below Mehling Hall. This landfill was an attempt to stop that gulch from advancing northwards and further eroding the upper campus. The current Physical Plant building rests on the landfill area. 

Dr. Butler recently sent us word about how these primary-source images “mined out of the Archives became critical resources in my teaching of Earth Science on the Bluff.  Students were quite engaged by these views of the campus over the past century.” 

Readers, do you have an Archives or Museum success story?  We invite you to share your own experiences using Archives and Museum resources.   Drop us a note at archives@up.edu and museum@up.edu about your discoveries in the Archives and Museum.

For additional historical views of the campus property see the Clark Library Digital Collection through this link, which provides more information about the 1964 aerial view accompanying this post on our home page.

Springtime on the Bluff is a colorful season. Sunshine. Students repurposing freshly cut lawns for study. Flowering trees blossoming across campus!

For about three or four weeks each spring, a vibrant canopy display of flowering cherry trees decorates the campus – bursting forth from Waldschmidt to Tyson, Orrico to Shipstad Halls.

A visitor might think these cherry trees formed UP’s landscape since its beginnings (we welcome many, many admissions visitors in the spring), each visitor greeted at the University’s entrance with a splash of color and seeing the same pink blossoms forming a natural boundary for the Quad. The first picture we’ve found is given as a detail of campus life in the 1960 Log. There is a reference in Dr. James Covert’s, A Point of Pride: The University of Portland Story, to the flowering trees adorning the new main drive at the time of Shipstad Hall’s construction (1967). The back cover of the Spring 1996 Portland Magazine claims 1965 for the planting of these trees.

The flowering trees at the statuary group by the performing arts building likely arrived around 1973 or 1974 with the completion of Mago Hunt Center. The Campus Gardens: A Self-Guided Tour of the University of Portland Collections lists Kwanzan cherry trees at just Mago Hunt Center and the main entrance by Shipstad Hall in 1989.

But then in 1995 we commit to cherry trees in a big way, with an August 31 Beacon article about the landscaping plan for the Academic Quad announcing rows of cherry trees along the sidewalks framing the lawn from Franz Hall to the Chapel, the Commons to the Library.

These flowering trees, carefully maintained by dedicated grounds crew, appear to the delight of viewers after winter months, and most especially this year, in the midst of a pandemic.