Good news! Even though the tuition at Lewis & Clark College in southwest Portland is around $40,000 a year, you can enjoy the campus and take in the sights for free. This is actually one of my favorite walks in Portland.
The campus is comprised of 137 stunning acres and was ranked as the #2 most beautiful campus in the U.S. by Princeton Review in 2011.
To avoid the crush of weekday students and park for free without a parking pass, go on Saturday — which is a great day for walking on campus because the Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
What’s better is the museum is free, which makes it one of the free fun things to do in Portland, with innovative exhibitions that change regularly.
I arrived and parked in the Lower Griswold parking lot, (yes, that’s its real name.) Then I hoofed it up the steps behind the sports center to emerge close to the Frank Manor House.
This is a gorgeous 3-story Harry Potteresque Tutor-style mansion built in 1924, which now serves as campus offices. This 35-room brick mansion overlooks one of the most astounding views in all of Portland.
From the back terrace, or rear windows, you can sweep your eyes across acres of rolling, terraced estate gardens, tinkling fountains, rose bushes and reflecting pools, and see Mt. Hood rising up dead center.
Lewis & Clark’s Estate garden alone qualifies as a great walk in Portland, but when you add in the entire campus and its next door neighbor, Tryon State Park — featuring 670 forested acres of hiking, biking and horseback trails — you’ve got an excellent way to spend a day in Portland.
But rather than set out for the forest, I focused on the campus itself, which is studded with gazebos, sculptures, towering old-growth Douglas Fir trees, picturesque benches and quiet creeks.
As usual, I got lost. This is routine. In fact, I incorporate time to get fortuitously lost into all of my walks in Portland. What I was really looking for still, was the Hoffman Gallery. It was featuring an exhibit called “Wanderlust,” my favorite topic — chronicling the extraordinary adventures of photographer, Julie Jungers who captured hundreds of rare travel images taken in dozens of remote countries.
As I threaded my way across the campus searching for the gallery, which is housed in the back wing of the Watzek Library, I got a tour of all the other buildings which weren’t the library.
Eventually, I landed smack dab in front of the gallery’s impressive entrance, flanked by two towering whimsical sculptures, created by nationally known Montana artist, John Buck.
The gallery itself is cool and spacious, housing several rooms with concrete floors polished to a mirror-like sheen reflecting the artwork, like trees across a pond.
Besides the greeter stationed by the front door, I had the Hoffman Gallery to myself.
I spent over an hour wondering from photo to photo and from country to country taking in Jungers’ diverse images, ranging from close-ups of weathered faces and hennaed hands to middle eastern minarets and romping polar bears.
Leaving the building, I looked across at the Fred Field Center for Visual Arts and was treated to an art piece I can only describe as a colossal robot bug that had gone belly up.
This reminded me that I was hungry and it was time to end one of the many interesting walks in Portland and retrace my steps to the Lower Griswold parking lot.
If you prefer to take a direct route, instead of wondering the campus as I did, here’s a map of Lewis & Clark College to help you find your way around.
{ 0 comments }