Ya Po Ah Terrace

Ya-Po-Ah Terrace
General information
Type Apartments
Location 350 Pearl Street, Eugene, Oregon, United States
Coordinates 44°03′22″N 123°05′26″W / 44.05611°N 123.09056°W / 44.05611; -123.09056Coordinates: 44°03′22″N 123°05′26″W / 44.05611°N 123.09056°W / 44.05611; -123.09056
Completed 1968
Opening 1968
Height
Roof 212 feet (65 m)
Technical details
Floor count 18

Ya-Po-Ah Terrace (nickname The High Place[1]), is the tallest building in Downtown Eugene, Oregon at 212 feet (65 m). It is a controversial high-rise apartment building for senior citizens erected at the foot of the butte in 1968.[2]

History

"Ya Po Ah" means very high place in the language of the Kalapuya Indians who inhabited the Willamette Valley prior to the arrival of the Euro-American settlers. Ya Po Ah was the name used by the tribe for what is now called Skinner Butte, in honor of Eugene Franklin Skinner, the founder of Eugene City. He erected his first log cabin on the western slopes of the butte to avoid the frequent floods of the Willamette River to the north, per the advice of the Kalapuya.

The building is an 18 story, 222 unit apartment building located on the southern slopes of Skinner Butte, overlooking Downtown Eugene. Often not known is that Ya Po Ah also houses a performance hall, library, salon and convenience stores. Constructed in 1968, public outcry over the building's size led to laws being passed soon after, limiting the height and floors of buildings in Eugene. This was a measure taken to preserve, among other things, the views of nearby mountain ranges. Up until the end of the 1990s these measures had fostered the inability for denser and upward growth as the city's population kept growing, forcing urban sprawl outward which was then limited by the current Urban growth boundary. Only within the last decade has Eugene begun to amend some of these measures to promote denser growth within the city's core.

References

  1. ↑ "Ya-Po-Ah Terrace statistics". Emporis.
  2. ↑ Style & Vernacular: A Guide to the Architecture of Lane County, Oregon. Western Imprints, The Press of the Oregon Historical Society: 1983. ISBN 0-87595-085-X
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