Reception
In May 1983, the building won an American Institute of Architects honor award. In 1985, the hammered-copper statue Portlandia was added above the front entrance.
The building's style remains controversial among Portlanders as well as the entire architecture field. In 1990, The Oregonian stated "it's hard to find anyone who doesn't like Pioneer Courthouse Square.... it's even harder to find anyone who admits to liking the Portland Building." Paul Goldberger said:
For better or for worse, the Portland Building overshadows other things. It is more significant for what it did than how well it does it. It had a profound effect on American architecture and brought a return to classicism that brought us better buildings.
Pietro Belluschi said "I think it's totally wrong. It's not architecture, it's packaging. I said at the time that there were only two good things about it: 'It will put Portland on the map, architecturally, and it will never be repeated.'" In October 2009, Travel + Leisure magazine called the Portland Building "one of the most hated buildings in America".
Read more about this topic: Portland Building
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)