Guest blogger: New! Improved! Portland Friends' Meetinghouse

While your regular editor toils away on Christmas gifts, she invited me ("DH") to post photos of (and commentary about) the recently-completed annex and remodeled main structure of the Multnomah Monthly Meeting of Friends (Quakers) Meetinghouse. (Unprogrammed Friends --the branch of Quakerism we're associated with-- prefer to refer to our gatherings, and the structures where we gather, as 'Meetings' and 'Meetinghouses,' rather than as 'churches.' Quakers have other odd customs, too; an introduction to Multnomah Meeting, and to the Religious Society of Friends, can be found at www.multnomahfriends.org).

After years of consideration and a relatively short period of fundraising, Multnomah Friends decided to sell and move (for the lofty sum of $1-- moving costs borne by the purchasers) a small residence we owned beside the Meetinghouse, to build a new educational annex and entry/elevator housing, and to remodel the interior and exterior of the existing structure. We're very pleased with the results, accomplished with many generous donations of funds and several thousand hours of volunteer (and contracted) labor! Here's a photo of the front facade, with the newly constructed annex on the left (east) side:



The annex has four classrooms and a nursery split between two floors, two accessible restrooms, an elevator (actually a heavy-duty 'lift') and stairs to the second floor, and a downstairs lobby and upstairs skylighted vestibule. The 'old' Meetinghouse has a low-ceilinged basement; an office/small group space, a kitchen, two smaller restrooms, and a social hall on the first floor; and a library and main meeting hall (also skylighted and light-tubed; again, Friends would hesitate to call it a 'sanctuary') on the second floor. Here's a view of the newly remodeled, larger meeting hall; the central skylight, an architectural expression of the Quaker belief in the Light within every person, is visible only as a rectangular shape in the ceiling:


One of the major limitations of the 'old' Meetinghouse was the cramped social hall. We non-nonviolently deconstructed a nursery space, which opened up more space and more light, replaced 20-year old ceiling tiles with a new false ceiling, and laid attractive sheet marmoleum over nondescript linoleum tiles. Every vertical surface was repainted using recycled "Metro" paint (I helped supervise the painting of the annex, throwing my back out in the process!) Here's a shot of the refurbished social hall, looking toward the southwest:



Creating adequate, welcoming space for our children, along with making our building a welcoming place for people with disabilities, was a key goal of the project. This final photo shows a large upstairs classroom, whose south-facing windows let in plenty of light for our 3rd through 5th grade "First Day School" class (there's another Quaker custom, numbering days instead of accepting customary labels).



Thanks to "DW" for giving me this photographic forum, and thanks to Portland architect Liz Williams, Barrs & Genauer Contractors, and the many, many donors and volunteers who made this beautiful, simple, functional space possible!