Weatherly Building, Beaux-Arts office building in Portland, Oregon
The Weatherly Building is a 12-story office building designed by Sutton & Whitney and Lee Thomas and built by Robertson Hay & Wallace. Its brick and terra cotta facade has Romanesque embellishments, including an arcade of arches near the roof. It has three elevators and two rooftop penthouses.
Built in 1927–28 for ice cream businessman George Warren Weatherly, the Weatherly Building was designed by Sutton & Whitney with Lee Thomas and erected by Robertson Hay & Wallace. Cinema operator Walter Eugene Tebetts persuaded Weatherly to add the adjacent Oriental Theatre, designed by Lee Thomas and Albert Mercier; the theatre, the area's second largest, was demolished in 1970 for a parking lot. Building and theatre cost $1.5 million.
The building's name comes from George Warren Weatherly, whose creamery grew from a second-hand freezer in a candy shop in 1890 to produce an estimated 90% of Oregon ice cream sales. He was locally credited with inventing the ice cream cone, and his employee F. A. Bruckman patented the first successful cone-making machine. An ice cream shop occupied the ground floor.
The building stands at the east end of the Morrison Bridge, within the East Portland Grand Avenue Historic District. Its three elevators serve all twelve floors, but the lobby and ground-floor commercial spaces are the parts most accessible to visitors; upper floors are leased offices.
The ground floor originally housed an ice cream shop run by Weatherly himself, reflecting his significant market presence in Oregon. This direct link between the owner's business interests and the building's commercial use is now mostly invisible to visitors.
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