United States Custom House – N.W. 8th Avenue, Portland, Oregon, Portland, Oregon

Fueled by Portland’s economic development during the late 19th century, the U.S. Custom House was constructed to accommodate the city’s burgeoning prosperity and status. In 1875, the U.S. Customs Service first established a presence in Portland, moving into the newly constructed U.S. Post Office, Courthouse, and Custom House building (now known as the Pioneer Courthouse). As the city outgrew the space, a new Federal building was planned to house the Customs Service and additional courtrooms. In 1898, construction began on the present U.S. Custom House, reaching completion in 1901.

The U.S. Custom House is an exemplary display of the Italian Renaissance Revival style of architecture, exhibiting Baroque and Mannerist features. The building’s first-story walls are brick masonry sheathed in light-gray granite, with rusticated joints and quoins at the corners, and are pierced by window and door openings headed with articulated semicircular arches. A continuous granite stringcourse carved with Vitruvian scrolls and a balustrade above divide the first and second floors. The upper stories are composed of Roman brick with terra-cotta detailing and crowned with a dentil cornice molding supported by scrolled consoles. The flanking pavilions are capped with slate-covered pyramidal roofs, prominently featuring two ornamental vent stacks clad in terra cotta atop a rusticated stone base.

A distinctive feature that evokes the interpretative style of the mid-16th-century Italian Mannerist architecture is the ornamentation of the fenestration. This is most prominent with the second- and third-story windows’ display of the "Gibbs surround," which is characterized by keystones and spaced blocks surrounding large windows. Here, this motif is composed of terra-cotta displaying bead and reel decoration, elaborately carved quoins, keystones, and Doric order moldings. Framing the second- and third-story bays of the north and south pavilions are two-story engaged Corinthian columns, supporting a continuous architrave, which is capped with a dentiled cornice and a parapet of alternating brick panels and open balusters