Congress Center
office building in Portland, Oregon
Congress Center (formerly the Orbanco Building and Security Pacific Plaza) is an office building completed in 1980 in Portland, Oregon. It is currently the fifteenth tallest building in the city. The building's current name dates to January 2002.
History
Construction began in 1978 and was completed in 1980. It was named the Orbanco Building, for its largest tenant, Orbanco Inc., which at the time of groundbreaking was set to lease around 30 percent of the space. That company's two largest subsidiaries, Oregon Bank (established in 1887) and Northwest Acceptance Corporation, were set to be headquartered in the building. Oregon Bank moved to the new building from another downtown location in March 1980. The building earned Gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council in 2012 for its sustainability. American Realty Advisors and Unico Properties LLC purchased the building in December 2016 for $85 million from Shorenstein Properties.
Design
The firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) designed what is now Congress Center, with reflective dark glass that contrasts with the mostly white or lighter colored architecture common in Portland's architectural history.
“Congress Center” enters the record as office building in Portland, Oregon. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Congress, Center and office can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Congress Center” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Congress, Center and office provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5160789. Authority coordinates are 45.517, -122.680. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 2002, 1978 and 1887.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Congress Center”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Congress Center primary sources, Congress Center archive and Congress research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Congress Center”?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
- Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Congress Center” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.