It was a busy day downtown in this 1949 photo during Oregon Traffic Safety Week. Shoppers, workers on their lunch breaks, and sailors are among those who jam the sidewalks while the Junior Safety Patrol tries to keep them all separated from traffic. Three of the four corners are relatively unchanged today; only the Corbett Building, the photographer’s vantage point, is gone now, replaced by Pioneer Place.
(City of Portland Archives)
Tags: Corbett Building, History, Irvington Bus Line, Kress, Meier & Frank, Pioneer Courthouse, Pioneer Post Office, Portland
September 10, 2010 at 6:04 am
This is great because I can see what Portland looked like the year I was born. Look at all of those streetcar tracks. Too bad they had them all torn up within a year. Kress was around at least into the 60′s. It was one of the many ‘five & dime’ stores around Portland & it had a worn wooden floor.
September 10, 2010 at 7:55 am
Two-way traffic!
Anybody know when the one-way grid was instituted?
September 10, 2010 at 9:31 am
Tad – I believe the one-way conversion occurred shortly after this shot was taken; 1950 is the date that sounds about right to me. I don’t remember, of course… I was still a generation away from being born.
September 10, 2010 at 12:42 pm
yeah it was 1950, found an old article about it. one way streets downtown came the day after the last streetcar shut down… i’m gonna say thats definitely not a coincidence.
note almost no center line, lane markings or crosswalks.
regarding the streetcar tracks i understand the northwest/west hills streetcars looped around downtown running on morrison and washington, yet there were tracks in both directions on these streets. did some lines loop clockwise and others counterclockwise? (of course at the time of this photo i understand many of the tracks weren’t in use anymore with only the final three streetcar lines in operation.)
September 11, 2010 at 8:34 am
The Corbett building was a high-rise brought low by controlled demolition in 1988. Immediately adjacent to the south was the Richardson Romanesc Goodnough building which was destroyed by wrecking ball to facilitate the implosion of the Corbett building (and make way for Pioneer Place).
Both buildings can be seen here: http://boundless.uoregon.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/archpnw&CISOPTR=10220&CISOBOX=1&REC=18
While I mourn the loss of the Goodnough building in particular, It’s somewhat alleviated by the outer design of the Pioneer Place building which mimics the historical terra cotta buildings nearby.
September 12, 2010 at 8:45 pm
And of course we now have light rail tracks and trains on both of these streets!