It appears engineers used this circa 1938 aerial photo of the South Park Blocks area to pencil in a potential route for the Stadium Freeway. The area would grow into the PSU campus we know today. The 1911 Lincoln High School building, bottom-center between SW Broadway and Park, would be the college’s first building on campus.
(City of Portland Archives)
This photo shows how many of Portland’s 19th Century buildings had been allowed to decay over the following century. Fortunately they weren’t all demolished; although the photo is labeled “2nd Avenue and Yamhill Street,” this is probably the northwest corner of the extant 1880 Mikado Block at SW 1st and Taylor.
(University of Oregon Libraries)
This illustration was a competitive design for the Chamber of Commerce building by architects Parkinson & Hamme; its final shape and scale would be similar but the details would be considerably less Gothic. Completed in 1892, the building would eventually dominate the north side of SW Stark between 3rd and 4th Avenues.
(American Architect and Building News: 1890, Volume 29)
East side business groups had designs for a grand auditorium and museum on their side of the river in 1913. They asked the city to build it somewhere in a large area bounded north-south by Broadway and Hawthorne and east-west by 12th Avenue and the river. Seems the businessmen were a bit miffed that all the public buildings were being going up on the west side. This never got off the ground.
(City of Portland Archives)
We’ve seen this intersection before but this view looks west on NE Ainsworth where NE Union passes through. Both the Texaco and the 76 gas stations are long gone but the house on the north side of Ainsworth is still there. The lad on the bicycle, just barely captured for posterity, may still be with us, too.
(City of Portland Archives)
This 1938 aerial view gives us a distant overview of several images we discussed earlier this week. It’s also a good comparison with a photo with the same approximate perspective from 10 years earlier.
(City of Portland Archives)
Associated with yesterday’s photo is this one, also labeled “SE” Water that’s actually SW Water Street. Just south of the area shown yesterday were several lumber and shingle mills. The photographer may have just turned 90 degrees to the right and made another image.
(City of Portland Archives)
Vintage Portland 