John Storrs

Architect John Storrs was born in 1920, and graduated from Dartmouth in 1942 and from Yale in 1950. He lived in Fairfield, Connecticut before moving to the Portland area, where he practiced since 1954. His projects represent a broad spectrum of architecture, and his innovative designs and planning approach have been a significant contribution to the Northwest Regional Style. Storrs specialized in wooden buildings, calling wood “an understandable, romantic material.”

Influenced by hearing a talk by Pietro Belluschi on regional architecture, John Storrs moved to Portland after graduating from Yale in 1949. In addition to his residential work, Storrs designed larger projects such as:

- Portland Garden Club (1956)

- Salishan Lodge at Gleneden Beach (1965)

- World Forestry Center (1971)

- Sokol-Blosser Winery, Dundee(1976)

- Oregon College of Art & Craft (1979)

Storrs was part of the second generation of architects who established the Northwest style — an Asian-influenced architectural form noted for its use of natural wood and stone, ample window to bring the outdoors in, and its subtle, understated buildings that blend in with the land.

Northwest Regional Style of Architecture

The Northwest Regional style is often traced back to the work of A. E. Doyle, who designed several ground-hugging shingled beach cottages in the 1910s. In Oregon, it developed during the 1930s in the work of John Yeon, Van Evera Bailey, and Pietro Belluschi, among others; a good deal of similar design was done in the Puget Sound area as well. The style derives from efforts to design buildings that respond to the region’s environment and make good use of indigenous building materials. As the style developed, it drew inspiration from the mild marine climate of the Coast, Puget Sound, and the Willamette Valley, and from the cedar and Douglas fir found there.

Characteristics of the style include asymmetrical floor plans, expanses of glass that frame views and extend garden areas into the building, low-pitched gable roofs, and the extensive use of unpainted wood. The style reflects Asian influences such as an emphasis on integrating buildings with their site, as well as elements of the clean-lined forms of the International style, usually seen as antithetical to the idea of regionalism.