Portland Art Museum

In 1991, The Portland Art Museum acquired the Masonic Temple of Portland, an 80-year-old structure adjacent to its campus in Portland, Oregon's downtown Cultural District. Its restoration was the culmination of a 10 year, $125 million master plan for the Museum's revitalization and development. Prior to its renovation, the "North Building" was full of light fixtures of unknown origin. Although deemed to be historically valuable, there was no existing documentation as to who made them, where or when. Neither were there photographs showing what they had looked like originally. Since many of them were missing all of their glass globes, this created an interesting challenge!

This lighting restoration project included luminaires ranging from small single-lamp sconces to chandeliers five feet in diameter, from freestanding torchiers to large exterior sconces. The fixtures, reflecting a wide range of materials and manufacturing techniques, were in very poor condition, many of them coated in paint and not functioning.

Eleek submitted a competitive bid for this project and won the contract in December 2002. The work was completed and the restored fixtures were delivered to the job site in June 2005. The result is breathtaking and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. The complex opened on schedule in October 2005.

The Restoration

We handled these delicate fixtures with kid gloves through the following steps:

• Created archival drawings of each fixture style so that any future restoration work can be done to current specifications.
• Conducted careful research to insure historical accuracy.
• Disassembled and cleaned all parts, stripping paint and old finishes as needed.
• Duplicated missing metal pieces by making molds from existing pieces and casting new parts.
• Refinished all parts, using historically accurate patinas and protective coatings.
• Replaced missing glass globes and panels, etched glass and art glass with historically correct replacements, building and utilizing adaptors as needed.
• Replaced all electrical components and wiring.
• Reassembled and tested each fixture.
• Listed each fixture for ETL compliance (using UL specifications).