McMenamins Hotel Oregon

Jim Gullo

My nephew Christopher was in town; he had just turned twenty-one, so naturally I took him to the highest spot in town and began to educate him on some subtle points of fine living. This peculiar rite of passage came courtesy of McMenamin’s Hotel Oregon, whose building has been a fixture on Third Street since practically before there even was a Third Street. Thanks to some clever design and remodeling, the Hotel Oregon’s Rooftop Bar is just about the perfect place to watch a summer sunset and dine al fresco, particularly with pints of the housemade Hammerhead and Terminator beers in hand, the better for which to make points about how craft beer is all about quality, not quantity.

The outdoor patios on the roof have tables with umbrellas and chairs, and a series of steps lead upwards to several more platforms, until you’re at the very top of the building, with a 360-degree view of town, rolling hills and the Coast Range mountains to the west. Sculptures of spaceships serve as reminders that the hotel is the official headquarters of our annual Alien Daze parade and UFO Fest. Christopher was impressed, but then, when you’ve just turned twenty-one, pretty much anything that involves good beer is impressive.

The rooftop is but one of many great surprises inside the four-story Hotel Oregon, which dates back to 1905 and has done time as a Greyhound bus depot, Western Union station, beauty parlor and soda fountain. The Portland-based McMenamins brothers specialize in snapping up old buildings (their Kennedy School in northeast Portland, built from a decommissioned grade school, has long been a favorite of mine), sprucing them up, filling them with art and opening their doors again to serve as gathering places for visitors and the community.

To that end, the Hotel Oregon offers forty-two guestrooms, each named after a famous personage, with hand-painted quotes and notes about the person written on the walls. The hallways are a riot of murals, artifacts and photos of old-time McMinnville; even the elevator is painted from floor to ceiling. The Cellar Bar is a dark, low-ceilinged place with live music; the first-floor pub has a gorgeous, wooden back bar and a menu of good salads, pastas and burgers; and the Paragon Room has two full-sized billiards tables.

Like McMinnville itself, it’s a fine place to explore. But on sunny days, that Rooftop Bar is in a class of its own. I’m going to grab what’s left of summer from a table at the top.