Very cool 1910 photo of W. Burnside looking east from 19th Avenue through the intersection at 18th; Alder angles off to the right. Burnside was actually Washington Street at this time; Burnside ended where Washington angled in from the east, and Washington continued on to 23rd where it became Barnes Road. A number of buildings seen here are still around.
(City of Portland Archives)
Vintage Portland 
What is the large multi-towered building on the right side of the picture, does anyone have any information on it?
It’s the old Portland High School. On a side note, interesting that the lamp post in the middle of the intersection seems to have been drawn in.
The island is painted in. I wonder if this was to show how a proposed traffic change would look?
@Rob: Portland High School from an earlier VP post.
And here we are today http://goo.gl/maps/oSp7x
In response to my earlier question, thanks. I kind of thought that what it was, it guess I did not realize it was that far north. Thank you for this excellent site.
That building in the center of the photo has added a floor since then: http://www.flickr.com/photos/poetas/7638161164/
The (what are now) apartments in the top two floors are being renovated right now, after having been declared structurally unsound at some point.
Despite Burnside being wider, and consistently clogged with traffic, this scene still does look pretty familiar.
What do you think the chances of getting a tram back in on Burnside are? I’d be up for it!
I thought I was looking east. Kingston Hotel would be looking west. And the firemen’s park/Campbell Memorial is not shown only a speck of the pavement at three O’clock on the image. Great image. Love the rich tones.
@ TL March; the pic is facing east.
Oh yeah, you’re right. In that case, the building in the middle is now Goya Goya and parking lot, the buldings along the left side are now the McDonalds and parking lot, and the brick buildings on the right and left are still there.
Sifton… TL March is saying “Oh I thought I was looking East”..
Kingston Hotel would also be looking east but the shot would have been further west that it was taken, the city kept trying to fix the traffic at that intersection. I often wait for the #20 Bus on the island near the spot of that drawn in traffic light.
The old building to the immediate left would be the Stadium Tavern, looking a bit worse for wear in this photo: https://vintageportland.wordpress.com/2010/12/07/stadium-tavern-1949/
What a great picture. In my youth years (1980’s) I worked @ Mexicali Express (which would be at the center in this vintage photo). Now there’s red light cameras at the intersection. Where is everybody? There’s not a soul I can see in this picture.
Bailey,
What years did you work at Mexicali? I worked there in the latter part of the 80s. I was under the assistant manager trifecta of Margaret/Dianne/Tina.
Interesting times and a good group of people to work with for the most part.
not as warm and Inviting as it was then !!
Just six years prior to this photo being taken, the triangular block in the middle of the photo was occupied by a Portland Railway Company streetcar barn – the 1901 Sanborn atlas of Portland even calls it “the triangular barn”!
On March 19, 1904, debris from a flood blocked the Tanner Creek sewer running underneath the barn and the water backed up onto “Multnomah Field” (which I presume corresponds with modern day Providence Park). The City Engineer, W. C. Elliott succeeded in unblocking the sewer with “the piledriver and hydraulics”, but the resultant rush of water undercut the foundations of buildings along the sewer’s path, causing them to collapse.
The railway company sent six men to get the cars out of the barn before it too fell into the sewer – they got three out and were working on the fourth when the barn began to rapidly shift its position. The men escaped unharmed, but the barn and ten cars still remaining in it plummeted twenty feet to the water below.
Newspaper reports varied on the amount of damage: The Oregonian seemed to think that the cars were mostly undamaged and could be salvaged in the next day or so, while the Oregon Daily Journal reported all were smashed like match-sticks.