Restore Oregon recognizes that the time is now to boldly move beyond traditional approaches to historic preservation to create an inclusive, equitable, and diverse preservation community in Oregon. Our Board of Directors and staff have worked together over the past year to create a new, five-year Strategic Framework. With that framework now in place, we have started to implement this bold, new vision for Oregon.

Pictured above clockwise from top left: The Wong Laundry Building, 1908 and in the early 1940s, Portland. The Yamaguchi Hotel demolition, Portland. Photo courtesy of the Japanese American Museum of Oregon.

We’re thrilled to share the news that this year’s DeMuro Awards is getting an exciting new twist! In 2024, Restore Oregon will present the DeMuro Impact Awards. Rather than project-focused awards, this year, the awards will focus on the people and organizations behind Oregon’s preservation movement and allow us to reimagine how we honor preservation in Oregon.

Building on preservation work over the past 10 years, Restore Oregon released a new five-year strategic framework centered on achieving our mission through three issue-based priorities: Sustainability and Climate Change, Social and Cultural Equity, and Housing Generation. Learn more about our strategic approach, impact goals, and our 5-year road map. 

This shift has given us the opportunity to celebrate this year’s DeMuro Awards a little differently AND refresh the 2025 nomination process in alignment with our new strategic framework.

What does this mean?

For this year only, we will pause our DeMuro Awards nomination for project-based awards. Instead, Restore Oregon will select and honor a select group of Oregon individuals and organizations who, through their work and leadership, are helping to move the preservation movement forward. 

Why make this temporary change?

The 2024 DeMuro Impact Awards will honor and be awarded directly to people/organizations rather than projects. Restore Oregon acknowledges that preservation has a history of exclusion, and we are dedicated to promoting inclusive preservation. This strategy includes highlighting those who’ve been left out of conversations and bringing more people into the preservation discourse. 

What if I wanted to nominate a project this year?

If you have a recently completed project for consideration, please fill out this quick form so we can contact you in early 2025 when the nomination process opens once again.

Standard DeMuro Awards nominations are limited to those projects which have been completed within the last 5 years. We will extend next year’s requirements to 6 years to cover those who may have been interested in submitting a nomination this year.

We are committed to celebrating, advocating for, and evolving the role Oregon’s preservation and reuse holds. We can do so much when working together and we are excited to take a year to celebrate those working behind the scenes to create a better Oregon!

Restore Oregon had a fairly narrow policy agenda for the short session, focused on housing production priorities and funding for the arts/culture/heritage sector. Many of you participated in the public hearing and testimony process, for which we are truly appreciative. Thank you for taking time and lending your voices.Thank you, also, to our Policy and Land Use Committee members, and the committee chair, Carrie Richter, who contributed significantly to our work.  Carrie helped author this recap as it relates to SB 1537:

SB 1537 (housing): On March 4, the Oregon legislature passed SB 1537 directed at increasing the housing supply.  The bill allows for adjustments of development and design standards for housing including properties subject to historic preservation protections. Although we were unable to convince the legislature to exclude all designated historic resources from the scope of the act, an adjustment is available only where a development proposes “net new housing units in new construction projects.” Working closely with Senator Patterson during the Committee hearings, we were able to secure confirmation from the bill sponsors that the term “net new housing units” applies only to new ground-up construction and not to housing accomplished through the expansion or alteration of existing structures. The result is that existing landmarks and contributing structures within historic districts will continue to be protected. This is not only a significant improvement over where things stood with the previous legislative proposal - HB 3414 from the 2023 session – it affirms Restore Oregon has partners in the legislature and that the commitment to preserving Oregon’s cultural and historic legacy remains strong.

There were other sections of the bill and its associated funding package (SB 1530) that we think will be beneficial overall and help to stimulate more housing production, like the revolving loan fund; but our work kept a narrow focus on adjustment and design standards.  

HB 4124/SB 1582 (funding for arts/culture/heritage): The mirror bills proposed approximately $27 million in funding to the arts/culture/heritage sector. With your strong support, Restore Oregon created a large volume of positive testimony and support during the crucial committee hearing process which helped get the bills to the Joint Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the budget process. In the end, there was success for part of the request, and there was a better outcome than for the effort in 2023.

During the session, the Legislature approved $11.8 million in funding for arts, culture and heritage. As a member of the Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon (CACO), Restore Oregon worked in concert with CACO to help secure our top priority of $5.9 million for capital projects across the state. Here’s their recap of the session.   

What completely failed to secure funding was a $13.5 million request for grants to support over 1,600 smaller cultural organizations (like ours, and many others in the heritage sector), many of which are still struggling financially post-pandemic. Unfortunately, much as we tried, we didn’t have sufficient lobby power to get to “yes.” 

But we’d like to give a shout out to some truly awesome historic preservation projects that received the capital project funding, starting with one of Restore Oregon’s Most Endangered Places: the Chateau at the Oregon Caves National Monument, outside of Cave Junction in Southern Oregon. The Friends of the Oregon Caves and Chateau, who we work closely with, will receive just under $500,000 to restore 97 doors and the Chateau’s original historic hardware. 

In Salem, the Eco-Earth Globe, an outdoor work of art in Riverfront Park, will also receive restoration funding. And in Medford, the Southern Oregon Historical Society secured funding for their History Center which is adaptively reusing a former department store!

Congrats to all the capital projects funded, as well as to the major arts venues that will receive this wise economic investment and who can now assist our sector’s much needed recovery.

Often referred to as “the matriarch of landscape architecture in the Pacific Northwest,” Barbara Vorse Fealy was an accomplished landscape architect and the first woman in Oregon elected as a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

With the notable exception of the Portland Garden in Yurigahara Park in Sapporo, Japan, Fealy largely worked in Oregon. Although many of her projects were residential in nature, she did design a number of high-profile public spaces. Several of her designs have been listed in the National Register of Historic Places, including the landscape design for Timberline Lodge, which is a National Historic Landmark.

Other Oregon projects include her landscape design work for the Oregon College of Art and Craft, Catlin Gabel School, Leach Botanical Garden, Waverly Country Club, and the World Forestry Center (previously known as the Western Forestry Center.) Projects outside of Portland included Eagle Crest Resort in Redmond, Oregon and Salishan Resort in Gleneden Beach.

Records from Fealy’s long and productive career are housed with the University of Oregon Library Special Collections and University Archives.

Photo Above: Barbara Vorse Fealy, courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

It was an amazing day in DC for the Oregon delegation! 

We presented Representative Earl Blumenauer with a hand carved bow tie award, from Preservation Action and National Conference of SHPOs, to honor him for years of preservation leadership. Thank you Earl!

Restore Oregon Modernism 2024 Event Line-Up

Restore Oregon Modernism: Raising Awareness, Saving Buildings, Raising Funds

Restore Oregon Modernism is a fun and informative way to celebrate Oregon’s historic, modern architecture and architects. It also serves as one of the main annual fundraisers that supports Restore Oregon, Oregon’s only statewide nonprofit focused on historic preservation Restore Oregon Modernism was made possible with the generous support of our presenting sponsor Modern Homes Collective, as well as our gold, silver, and bronze sponsors: Real Estate Through Design, Bramske Studio, and Scott Edwards Architecture and Pioneers Mill Works, along with our founding sponsors, Tony and Marti Belluschi.