Fourth Street, now SW 4th Avenue, looked impressively wide in this 1907 image looking south through Stark Street. Pantages Theater was on the southwest corner and the extant 1898 Oregon Pacific Building can be seen another block down on the right. The tall building on the immediate left is the Chamber of Commerce building.
(City of Portland Archives)
Vintage Portland 
Two things I notice. The street almost looks like it’s dirt, but I’m sure it is cobblestone. Also, the curbs and sidewalks seem very low. Usually they became low after repeated street pavings.
Back then people crossed the street seemingly whenever and wherever the whim hit them. It’s not quite that bad these days. Or is it?
Re paving, on the 1894 paving map, 4th was apparently macadam. Of course this is 13 years later so it could have been improved, but it looks pretty consistent with a macadam paving here rather than stone block.
Does anyone know what the tall spire-like structure on the left side of the street is? Barely visible far down the road, with an onion bulb-ish feature on top.
There was a post a couple of weeks ago about a similiar onion bulb building that one was one of two Jewish synagoges that had burned down.I wonder if the buildingin this picture is the other one.
I love the ‘feel’ of this photo. It would make a good movie poster.
Mike,
I believe the building with “bulby” decorations is the Washington Building:
http://www.cafeunknown.com/search?q=washington
I think TomK is right. In that cafeunknown post one of the views of the building is taken from a panorama shown here in an earlier VP post. If you enlarge it you’ll see the building almost directly in the center of the panorama.
This is how it looks today in Street View: http://goo.gl/maps/KBGo6
Looks like a few buildings are still standing.
Did you hear that Vintage Portland got reblogged on Bike Portland? http://bikeportland.org/2013/04/29/the-monday-roundup-224-86118
What does the term”reblogging” mean?
Reblogging is posting something from another blog on your blog. Bike Portland just linked to a VP entry from 2010 though, instead of posting the whole thing on their site, which would be a reblog proper.
I wonder how many Macadam Roads – roads named such, that is, not roads made out of the stuff, which is pretty much obsolete in the developed world – are in the US. Google throws out 10 suggestions when I look on the Maps, not including ours.
2010? I could have sworn it was just a week or so ago. Someone must have linked to the trolley map in a comment.
Yep, the trolley map was posted on this site back on May 4th 2010.
https://vintageportland.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/portland-trolley-map/
The two story structure south of the Chamber of Commerce Building would be replaced 3 years later by the Oregon Pioneer Building. The pair of 3 story brick buildings south of that are still standing, as is the 4 story structure directly south of the Oregon Pacific Building. Beautiful picture