The western-most North Bank Freight Depot building on the northwest corner of NW Hoyt & 11th is shown in the 1917 photo. The building (and its sister across the street) is still with us, a fine luxury condo building in the Pearl District. The remnants of that sign on the end of the building can still be seen.
(City of Portland Archives)
Tags: Ghost Sign, Oregon, Pearl District, Portland
September 6, 2012 at 8:01 am
Beautiful now. Preserved! Nice shrubs in the stairwell now. Very tasteful!
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=45.527233,-122.682244&spn=0.00045,0.000646&t=h&z=21
September 6, 2012 at 2:43 pm
I believe this to be the origin of the railway line in the photo of 8/30/12′s post as well as several other views that have been posted here. In later years the building here hosted several car loading company’s including Superior Car Loading Co. whose slogan was “The Fastest Upbringing In The West “. Just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it. Car loaders evolved to handle the LCL business that the railroads were rushing to shed them self’s of as fast as they could because they were labor intensive and the business was shifting to trucks. LCL stands for less than carload freight as opposed to say commodities such as petroleum. coal or grain for instance usually thought of as bulk or carload although split deliveries were not entirely unheard of.
While this building began life as a combination passenger and freight station as we see it here, by the late 40′s it had become a freight house and general office. When I was a kid the “house tracks” always held long strings of box cars spotted with their doors aligned to each other and connected by heavy steel, portable ramps across 5 or 6 tracks across which armies of laborers would wheel.all kinds of freight loading and unloading. Along with the nearby roundhouse we could always count on a full day of entertainment snooping around and the old gent who was responsible for those wonderful chalk illustrations on the bridge pillars nearby could sometimes be found touching up his art work when he was not flagging the crossings. Great times to be a kid. No TV, Xbox. skateboard parks or the like but we sure didn’t suffer for lack of entertainment. Pack a sandwich and jump on the old Schwinn or J C Higgins and it was “you kid’s be back here for dinner or else”.
sigh