Meier & Frank Building facts for kids

Meier & Frank Building
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Meier & Frank Building (from Alder St.) in 2012
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Location	621 SW 5th Avenue Portland, Oregon
Built	1909; expansions in 1915, 1932
Built by	Dinwiddie Construction Company (1909 portion)
Architect	Doyle & Patterson, et al.
Architectural style	Commercial style (Chicago school)
NRHP reference No.	82003744
Added to NRHP	July 8, 1982

The Meier & Frank Building is a tall, fifteen-story building in downtown Portland, Oregon. It's made of shiny, glazed terra cotta tiles. You can find it across from Pioneer Courthouse Square.

This building used to be the main store and office for the Meier & Frank department store chain. In 2006, Macy's took over Meier & Frank. From 2006 to 2007, the lower floors of the building were updated to become a Macy's department store. The upper floors were changed into a fancy hotel called The Nines in 2008. Macy's closed its store here in April 2017.

The building takes up a whole city block. It's located between SW Fifth and Sixth Avenues and Morrison and Alder Streets. The building you see today was built in different parts. Construction started in 1909, with big additions in 1915 and 1932. It replaced an older Meier & Frank store from 1898.

Building History

The Meier & Frank Building was the first major project for a famous Portland architect named A. E. Doyle. He was originally asked to design an addition to the old store. But Doyle traveled to Chicago with Sigmund Frank, one of the company's founders. They looked at many modern department stores there.

Frank was very impressed with what he saw. So, the plans changed to build a completely new, modern department store that would fill the entire block. Sadly, Sigmund Frank passed away in 1910. This meant the building had to be built in smaller parts over many years. Because of this, some elevators and stairways didn't reach all floors.

However, A.E. Doyle first used glazed terra-cotta on this building. This shiny material became very popular. Many other buildings in Portland later used it, designed by Doyle and other architects.

A Hub for Business

The building was home to the main offices for the Meier & Frank stores. In 1966, another company called May Department Stores bought Meier & Frank. The Meier & Frank chain then became a part of May Department Stores, but its offices stayed in this building.

Inside the Store

Over the years, the inside of the building was updated many times. Not many of the original historic parts remained. But there were a few special exceptions.

Special Places Inside

The Georgian Room restaurant was on the 10th floor. This restaurant looked almost the same for over 50 years! It was a very historic spot.

Also on the 10th floor was Santaland. This was a very popular holiday tradition for families in Portland. It closed after the 2005 Christmas season. Santaland had a small overhead monorail for kids that went around the ceiling. It was first put in in 1959. There was also a holiday model train display and, of course, Santa Clauses.

The store also used Pneumatic tubes. These were tubes that used air pressure to send messages and money quickly from one floor to another. You could still find parts of this old system in some back areas of the building.

Firsts and Features

The Meier & Frank Building was the first place in Portland to have an escalator. It also had its very own radio station! The station, called KFEC, started broadcasting on October 19, 1922. Its studio was on the 5th floor, which was also used as a library for employees. The radio towers were on top of the building. KFEC stopped broadcasting from here on March 22, 1929. It was sold and moved to Yakima, Washington, where it still operates today as KIT.

Detail of terracotta.

For many years, until August 1962, this building was the second tallest in Portland. Only the Public Service Building was taller. The Meier & Frank Building has two main lower levels and a third service level below them. The first lower level was used for shopping until the mid-1980s. The levels below that were used for storage.

The store used to have elevators operated by employees. These were later replaced with automatic elevators for the public. But the old hand-controlled elevators were still used to move merchandise behind the scenes.

What You Could Find There

At its busiest, the store had everything! It had a pharmacy and even a pet store. The famous actor Clark Gable once worked in the store's tie department in 1922. There were also several delis and food shops on different floors.

Over time, people didn't need these services as much. So, the store started to focus more on things like clothing and housewares. Some floors were turned into offices. Other floors were simply closed off and used for storage. The store kept going like this until new shopping centers, like the nearby Pioneer Place mall, and more competition from stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom made it harder to compete.

Modern Changes

The Meier & Frank Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. This means it's recognized as an important historic site.

6th & Alder corner of Meier & Frank in 1982, with a bus on the Portland Mall.

In 2005, the May Company (which owned Meier & Frank) was bought by Federated Department Stores. This company also owns Macy's. All Meier & Frank stores were renamed Macy's in September 2006.

Even before that, in late 2005, a big renovation project began. It cost $100 million! The plan was to turn the top nine floors of the building into a 330-room luxury hotel called The Nines.

The renovation of the Meier & Frank store on the lower floors started first. It was still going on when the store became a Macy's in September 2006. Macy's later decided to close the store temporarily in December 2006 to finish the remodeling faster. The newly updated store, called Macy's at Meier and Frank Square, reopened on October 26, 2007. The hotel opened in late summer 2008.

In 2016, Macy's announced it would close the store in spring 2017 because sales were going down. A big clearance sale started in January, and the store closed for good in April 2017.

In March 2018, a Japanese store called Muji announced it would open its first store in the Pacific Northwest in the building.

Other Historic Buildings

Meier & Frank also owned two other buildings in downtown Portland. These were the Delivery Depot and the Warehouse. Both of these buildings are now also on the National Register of Historic Places. They have both been changed and are now used for other purposes.

For example, on August 18, 2010, Vestas Wind Systems announced they would rent the historic Meier & Frank Delivery Depot. Vestas is a company from Denmark that makes wind turbines. After renovations were finished in 2012, this large space became the company's main office for the U.S.