This beautiful aerial photo looks directly west over the Burnside Bridge at the newly completed west side seawall and inner Southwest and Northwest Portland. Blue lines along Burnside indicate where the street would be widened in the coming years.
The first of Portland’s cast-iron buildings to be demolished, the Bank of British Columbia, was razed the year this photo was taken. It was sited at the small triangular block at Front and Ankeny, shown empty in this photo. Skidmore Fountain can be seen in the street just beyond.
(City of Portland Archives)
Vintage Portland 
If you look closely, you can see the arches of “the Great Light Way” crossing the intersections on 3rd. The photo is too late to solve a vexing mystery, that of if there were arches over Burnside and Glisan (?) I have seen photographic confirmation of each arch from Yamhill north, except those two. Glisan and Burnside had been widened for bridge access by the time the photo. I assume they once had arches, but so far they have eluded me. Has anyone seen pictures of them?
The first thing that immediately stuck out to me is that little sewage pumping plant just South of the Burnside Bridge that is still there, now right by the new Saturday Market area.
In my quest for looking for the Carlton and the Fabian Hotel…next door….I can see the Carlton but photo is not clear if Fabian is still there. On the Sanborn map in the mid 1920’s there is a vacant lot where the Fabian was. I wondered if it had been destroyed…by fire. That lot was later a used car lot. Any ideas?
Great shot. Here it is on bing bird’s eye: http://binged.it/tNhEhL
Look at the gorgeous new dome of Beth Israel at the top of the picture, just right of center.
good chunk of those buildings are left on the N side of Burnside from the White Stag building to 4th.
Not much green, but what a lotta buildings!
It occurs to me that in 1928 most planes were biplanes. Odds are this picture was taken from a biplane.
I can see my office at the New Market Theater building..
did the Brubaker/Delana aerial archive end up at UofO or OHS?
Delano