This circa 1910 street scene shows W. Burlington St. in the city of St. Johns, which was annexed into Portland in 1915. Those look like some pretty substantial buildings; does anyone know if any of them survived or where exactly we’re looking?
(City of Portland Archives)
Vintage Portland 
Just looking at Google Maps, it seems like this would have to be the section of Burlington that is kind of Southwest of N. Philadelphia, but looking at the street view, there’s not much of anything old left on the street except the Portland Police Training Division. It would kind of make sense for this photo to be just kind of southwest of the Portland Police building though, as the street does curve to the left there, if you were traveling east on Burlington. Who knows, obviously all just speculation 🙂
It appears that all of these buildings are gone. My best guess is that this photo was taken from near the old City Hall (now the Police Training Division). Scroll down to the 21st photo in the attached link to see a slightly different (and later) view of this section of town.
http://www.positivespin.us/NL16.htm
Jim:
The picture labeled, “View of Central Business Section” that has a fountain in the foreground? Looking back and forth between them, yes I’d say they’re the same location. The question is, what streets are those with today’s names?
Sorry for the second post but I just noticed while looking at a map, if Philadelphia Ave. were just a little straighter it would turn into Burlington. Can’t find a Jersey street but the streets in that area have been modified a lot. Dave is probably right.
Hi Dave and Jim,
I’d agree. If you scroll down to the photos of Jersey st. the building on the left of both pictures look similar. Something still seems off about these photos and the suggested location.
http://pdxhistory.com/html/st_johns.html
The intersection of Philadelphia and Jersey is now the intersection of Philadelphia and Lombard. Lombard becomes Jersey again a few blocks South of this intersection.
If you view the Pitton Map (https://vintageportland.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/pittmon-map-of-portland-1946/) you can see that Lombard turns into Jersey at Richmond. Jersey was changed to Lomabard at some later point, but that road remains relatively unchanged. Burlington also still runs all the way through to Leonard. I don’t know when the little park and Dad’s was created, but that could add to some of the confusion. I still contend we are looking at what is now N Lombard and N Burlington.
I believe this is an approximate view of the area today (or at least as Googlemaps streetview will allow me to get). The street view is taken from Philadelphia looking Northeast just after exiting the St. Johns bridge. Burlington is to our right and curves into Philadelphia, which then winds into Lombard (formerly Jersey). After Lombard, Burlington resumes. The street layout has been changed to the point of being unrecognizable.
http://g.co/maps/jcsdq
The two-story building that is in the middle of this photograph is still standing at Lombard and Burlington. It was a hardware store for years and is currently occupied by a toy store.
After researching the Sanborn maps from 1911. I can tell you the building straight and center is the Teriyaki building next to Starbucks on Lombard, in this photo I believe to be a bank. The Old Hotel on the left is where Dad’s is, the top floors were removed. They are going to open a hotel there again and re add the top floors. The Hardware store can not be seen from this angle on the picture, it is at the far front corner of the hotel. None of the other buildings in this photo remain 😦
The building on the left is the Cochran block which housed the Central Hotel. The Central Hotel is in the midst of an update. This view is looking North to Jersey (Lombard)
Building in the top right is the Cochran Block built in 1903. They later took off one floor and it is now the Central Hotel. The building in the top middle was a bank. The building at the top right was the Holbrook block. I was replaced by the US Peninsula bank and the other buildings were torn down and this now the parking lot of the US bank on Ivanhoe and Philadelphia