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Thursday, November 2, 2006

By Fred Leeson

Business was good to Fred Bickel and Frank Dekum.

The pioneers arrived in Portland in 1852 and opened the young city's first bakery and confectionery store on Southwest Stark Street near the waterfront. They were partners for 25 years.

Along the way, they realized they could make more money in real estate development. More than a century later, their legacy is historic downtown buildings, not bread and candy.

Dekum completed the eight-story brick and sandstone Dekum Building, then one of Portland's largest, in 1892. It still stands at 519 SW Third Avenue.

Bickel gave up baking in 1883, the same year he erected the four-story Bickel Block using factory-made cast-iron parts at 33 NW Couch Street.

As years passed, the ornate cast-iron facade became encased in cheap brick. William J. Hawkins III, a Portland architect, remembers walking through a shabby-looking warehouse with its owner, Bill Naito, maybe 30 years ago.

"That's when I discovered the ironwork behind the brick," says Hawkins, who was becoming an author and an expert on cast-iron buildings. He was in the Bickel.

Hawkins always hoped the building's original beauty would be restored.

Now it's happening.

Workers have chipped off a layer of bricks and returned the cast-iron columns and arches to public view. The cast iron bears a marker: Architectural Iron Works, San Francisco.

"I couldn't be more excited," says Hawkins, who is not involved in the renovation. "This is big stuff for a friend of cast iron."

The building is one of three, all formerly owned by the Naito family, being remodeled into a new downtown center for the University of Oregon. Early 2008 is the completion target.

The Bickel was completed near the end of the cast-iron era. From the 1850s to the late 1880s, cast iron was the material of choice for commercial and industrial buildings in major cities, starting in London.

Columns, arches and architectural details were produced in large factories and shipped to building sites where the pieces were bolted together. It was an early form of prefabrication.

"It just happened that Portland was founded during that time," Hawkins says. Portland's cast-iron buildings numbered in the dozens, lining the lower streets along the river.

Soon after the Bickel was finished, steel proved stronger than cast iron. Steel and improved elevator technology allowed buildings such as the Dekum to grow taller.

Many of Portland's cast-iron buildings were lost to parking lots after World War II. "Now they're mostly gone," Hawkins says.

Art DeMuro, head of the Venerable Group that is restoring the Bickel, says some iron pieces were lost as the building went through various remodels. "We're recasting that work at a fairly high price tag," he says.

A new cornice will grace the roofline, replacing the original that was shorn off decades ago. DeMuro says no drawings of the original have been found.

But not to worry. "We will have a cornice," DeMuro says. "You kind of take your best guess."

Fred Leeson: 503-294-5946; fredleeson@news.oregonian.com

Current Oregonian

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