In 1986, Carton Service purchased a building that, for the first time, they did not intend to cram full of boxes. A realtor who knew of their proclivity for distressed properties suggested that they purchase a long abandoned office building that sat alongside a 1927 fireboat station. Vacant for a number of years, the hot water pipes had frozen during a harsh cold spell after the boiler ran out of fuel. The heating system was now worthless. Paint was peeling badly inside and out, the carpet was thread bare and most of the windows were broken. Still, and even in this condition, the office building was actually in better shape than the company was used to at its office on Hoyt St, and the fireboat station sported a very cool profile.

Architecturally distinctive, with an Italianate arch porch and three story tower built to hang canvas fire hoses out to dry, the station was used as a bunkhouse and berth for fireboats from the time of Babe Ruth through the years of Joe DiMagio right up until the coming of Mickey Mantle. In 1969, US Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy visited River St. on a campaign stop to shore up his union support. In the building lobby there is a picture of JFK in front of the "Miki Miki", a tugboat on the "weighs" in front of the building before it launched into the river.

Sometime in the 1950s the Fire Bureau moved out and Willamette Iron and Steel (WI&S) bought the site and constructed a three story office building next door. WI&S manufactured valves and did ironwork for hydro-electric plants, the military, nuclear power plants and bridges; using the River St. buildings for their engineering and design offices. Over the next thirty years the company was bought out, split up and recreated four times in a complicated execution of corporate maneuvers. Ownership of River St. passed from WI&S to Bingham Willamette Iron and Steel to Dillingham Industries back to renamed Willamette Valve and finally to International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) who bought just the valve line and, shortly thereafter, made the decision from it New York City office to divest itself entirely.

Before ITT got the notion to unload, the Willamette Valve family of companies had a worldwide reputation for superior quality and design. Bingham Willamette made the valves that serviced the Three Mile Island Nuclear Facility. Industry experts say that if their valves had not performed at 120% of design, the "incident" at Three Mile Island would have been a meltdown.

In 1986, Carton Service - now managing properties as the Unkeles Group - splashed a little paint on the walls, added an HVAC system and began renting studios. The lower level which opens up to the Willamette River, in fitting homage to its industrial past, has become a place for the industrial arts; home to welders, metal workers, glass workers and sandblasters. PICA, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, held its first DaDa Ball in the parking lot below the hose tower (where JFK stumped for votes).

In 1996, the Willamette River briefly reclaimed its historical river way and breeched its banks, chasing all of the lower level artists up to the first floor as the water entered the building five feet high. Judging from the previous marks on the wall of the fireboat station going back to the 1920s, this was not the highest the water has invaded. The following season the river flooded again, although not as severely, and a ragtag crew of artists, maintenance personnel, box salesmen and casual laborers filled sandbags and raised a barricade to keep the swollen river at bay.

      - Ken Unkeles