W Burnside & SW 5th, 1928

Although this photo is labeled NW, I’m pretty sure it’s looking at the south side of Burnside at 5th Avenue. The Crown Zellerbach building (seen in upper left) was on the south side, and the buildings to the right appear to angle south of Ankeny. It was probably rare to see a lone woman walking in this part of town as we see here.

(City of Portland Archives)

8 thoughts on “W Burnside & SW 5th, 1928”

Here’s another view from an earlier VP post looking northeast from Ankeny

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The cars at the end of the block in this photo look like the same ones as in the photo from down the block. Same day?

Really. Rare to see women in a business district unescorted. Seriously. What kind of city do you think we were. LOL This was never Tehran or Riyadh. The worst she might have seen was an out of work logger or a posse of school kids tumbling out of a street car. God only knows what terrors lurked in that newsstand. Believe me our mothers and grandmothers were tough enough to handle anything that might appear in the wilds of downtown Portland in 1928. Though come to think of it that guy in the hard boiled hat will bear watching. He might be a Wobblie or a (gasp) Bolshevik. They don’t wear ties. Hmmm, I wonder if she knows the password to that speak up the street. Gotta be careful how ya ask. Ever since they got the vote they act like they run the place.

Sorry. That was harsh. First I was born in ’40 not that far from 1928. In fact I knew many of the original cast of 1928 personally. At the time we are looking at, that was a far different world.
Consider even when I was growing up out in Montavilla nobody locked their doors. Before air conditioning the whole neighborhood slept with all the doors and windows wide open. People let their children explore all over town, ride their bikes, the streetcars, buses everywhere. Most mom’s worried about the kid crossing busy streets. That was the main concern.
After the depression we had lot’s of unemployed homeless people among us but that is all they were. Unemployed and homeless. Bums, hobos call them what you will. Every neighborhood near a railroad track had a Hooverville, ours was under the 82nd street viaduct. But when these vagabonds came down the street hoping for a handout they were civil. My grandma always made them put in a half hour on the wood pile for a sandwich and some cookies.
The mentally ill were all warehoused. See Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cukcoo’s Nest. I certainly don’t mean to defend that but say what you will they were housed ,fed and off the street. Opium,heroin, morphine, that stuff was done out of sight and behind closed doors. In 1928 the most widely used designer drug was “bath tub gin” Starting about 1952 or so something snapped,the population exploded, the nightly TV news with it’s “If it bleeds it leads” mentality came in to scare the crap out of everybody and by 1960 it became a different reality. So by that concern of yours about the lady started to make sense. Just not then.
I have lived long enough to tell you with absolute certainty that there were never ever any good ol’ days. 1928 had it’s problems. They were just different problems. As did 1938, 1948 1958 ect. .