page_title: Lovejoy Columns
section_title: Description and history
hierarchical_section_title: Lovejoy Columns / Description and history
caption_attribution_description: The old "Lovejoy Ramp" (which was really more of a viaduct) that connected NW 14th Avenue with the Broadway Bridge, in Portland, Oregon. It was closed on the morning of August 1, 1999 (less than 24 hours after the photo was taken) and demolished over the following months, its easternmost section (out of view here) rebuilt as a shorter ramp between 9th Avenue and the bridge. The photo is looking northwest and was taken from a connecting viaduct/ramp on 10th Avenue, which closed at the same time and was also demolished. The Lovejoy viaduct (built in 1927–28) originally carried the street over a large rail yard, but the yard was abandoned in the mid-1990s, to be replaced by dense residential development – some of the earliest of which can be seen at left (at what will be the intersection of 11th &amp; Lovejoy). Lovejoy Street still exists at this location, but not elevated.
context_page_description: The Lovejoy Columns, located in Portland, Oregon, United States, supported the Lovejoy Ramp, a viaduct that from 1927 to 1999 carried the western approach to the Broadway Bridge over the freight tracks in what is now the Pearl District. The columns were painted by Greek immigrant Tom Stefopoulos between 1948 and 1952. In 1999, the viaduct was demolished but the columns were spared due to the efforts of the architectural group Rigga. For the next five years, attempts to restore the columns were unsuccessful and they remained in storage beneath the Fremont Bridge.
  In 2005, two of the original columns were resited at Northwest 10th Avenue between Everett and Flanders Streets. The Regional Arts & Culture Council was searching for photographs showing the murals in their original location for an ongoing restoration project. In 2006, Randy Shelton reconstructed the artworks on the columns using the photographs for reference.
context_section_description: The Lovejoy Columns supported the Lovejoy Ramp, a 2,000-foot (610 m) viaduct that stretched from Northwest 14th Avenue and Lovejoy Street to the Broadway Bridge. It was constructed in 1927–1928. Between 1948 and 1952, Athanasios Efthimiou "Tom" Stefopoulos (died 1971), a Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway night watchman, artist and master calligrapher in the copperplate style, drew upon the columns in chalk and later painted them. His work was spontaneous and not commissioned. Stefopoulos painted Greek mythology and Americana imagery in a calligraphic style; the designs depicted "fanciful" owls, landscapes "bedecked with homespun aphorisms", and ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope navigating the streets of Athens with a lantern. He painted around a dozen murals, though photographic evidence does not exist for each of them. The paintings became a local landmark and quickly gained Stefopoulos notoriety and media coverage.
  In the late 1990s, developer Homer Williams persuaded the city to demolish the viaduct to open up dozens of blocks in the redeveloping Pearl District. Preservation efforts began immediately. In 1998, Georgiana Nehl completed a painting of the columns called Guardians: Under the Lovejoy Ramp to "catch a small flavor of these 'guardians,' while they were still in place in their surprising location—before they were lost in the name of progress". In 1999, James Henderson took a series of photographs of the remaining pigments of the original paintings; he recorded the murals using cross-polarized lighting and used digital enhancement to restore the colors. The Regional Arts & Culture Council administers at least six of Henderson's photographs, which were printed in 2002 and each called Lovejoy Column.
caption: The Lovejoy viaduct one day before its closure, in mid-1999
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