New Delhi, Aug. 3 -- PORTLAND, Ore. - For years, the Centennial Mills complex on Northwest Naito Parkway sat at the edge of the Willamette River as one of the last intact industrial-era timber-frame structures in Portland's Pearl District, a 116-year-old building whose fate had become a long-running community debate about what belonged on that stretch of waterfront. On Sunday afternoon, the debate became moot. The building burned, and by midnight it was gone.

holes in the floors, stairwells that had been stripped from the structure during the years the building sat vacant. The interior was inaccessible. Rick Graves, the department's public information officer, said crews moved their attack to the Willamette River and the air, fighting fr...