Eugene/Architecture/Alphabet: L

 

The Lane Building, east facade (my photo)

This is the next in my Eugene/Architecture/Alphabet series of blog posts, the focus of each being a landmark building here in Eugene. Many of these will be familiar to most who live here but there are likely to be a few buildings that are less so. My selection criteria for each will be threefold:  

1. The building must be of architectural interest, local importance, or historically significant.

1. The building must be extant so you or I can visit it in person.

1. Each building’s name will begin with a particular letter of the alphabet, and I must select one (and only one) for each of the twenty-six letters. This is easier said than done for some letters, whereas for other characters there is a surfeit of worthy candidates (so I’ll be discriminating and explain my choice in those instances).

This entry’s selection begins with the letter L, for which my choice is the Lane Building.

The Lane Building
The Lane Building is located at 488 Willamette Street in downtown Eugene just south of the Southern Pacific Railroad depot (today Eugene’s Amtrak Station) and across the street from the Oregon Electric Railway Passenger Station. George G. Gross, a realtor and founder of the Willamette Valley Land Company, developed the three-story wood-framed building as a hotel in 1903, capitalizing upon its convenience to intercity rail service. He immodestly named the hotel after himself. Gross sold it in 1908, whereupon it became in succession the Griggs Hotel, the Hotel Lane, the Palace Hotel, and eventually the Lane Building. The historic structure is no longer a hotel, but it thrives today recognizably close to its original form, accommodating a variety of offices and small businesses.
 
I do remember finding the Lane Building distinctive upon first seeing it. That was back in 1980 when I arrived in Eugene to study at the University of Oregon. My wife and I would later frequent it when the Monster Cookie Company operated a storefront shop there. What struck me about the Lane Building was that it appeared quite old. Its plain, relatively unadorned construction and wrap-around wood porch/veranda suggested an archaic, bygone era to me. In truth, the Lane Building’s vintage is not especially remarkable, as a handful of surviving buildings, including the nearby Smeede Hotel, are older. Regardless, the Lane Building stood out then and remains today a singular example of its type in Eugene.

View looking northwest (my photo).

 
So, of what style is the Lane Building? The 1977 nomination form for its placement on the National Register of Historic Places describes it as Italianate, though the height of this style’s popularity in Oregon mostly spanned years between the 1860s and 1890s. Regardless, the Lane Building does feature a few characteristically Italianate elements:

• Low-pitched hipped or sometimes flat roofs, especially on commercial buildings.
• Projecting eaves with decorative brackets.
• An attempt to capture in available materials the look of Italian Renaissance palazzos and villas.

Wealthy Americans who toured Europe during the 1800s brought back with them a taste for Renaissance-inspired designs. The Italianate style evolved as an indigenous response, becoming widely popular because of its suitability to many different building materials and budgets. The designer/builder of the Lane Building (a Mr. C. McFarland) capitalized upon these attributes, realizing a suitably gracious expression through economical means (the construction budget in 1903 was $6,000).

5th Avenue facade (my photo).

 
The wrap-around, 8-feet deep veranda (and deck above supported by simple turned columns) is the Lane Building’s most distinguishing feature. The veranda mediates between the flanking sidewalks and the plain box of the main structure, while the deck and its balustrade suggest the piano nobile of Italian Renaissance villas. The third-floor balcony on the east façade furthers the Italianate allusions, bringing to mind a belvedere.
 
Some of the original hotel’s features remain preserved within the first-floor retail spaces. I haven’t been through the upper two floors of the Lane Building, but I suspect the successive renovations and adaptations to their use for offices have altered them considerably.

Eugene, view looking south from Skinner Butte, 1910. The Lane Building is in the center of the photo, near the bottom.

I do consider the Lane Building important because, like the Baldwin Market Building, it stands as one of too few a number of Eugene’s early examples of commercial architecture. It contributes significantly to the character of its immediate vicinity, one of the city’s remaining clusters of historical architecture.