The intersection of West Burnside, 10th Avenue and SW Oak street seems to be one of those places that we keep coming back to. The names and details have changed since 1939 but the basic components remain pretty much the same.
(City of Portland Archives)
Vintage Portland 
You could make allot of money with the gas pumps and signage from that Mobilgas station.
Not that I’m opposed to public art, but I’ve always disliked the piece that sits at this intersection: http://goo.gl/maps/sRyHw
Those are the Civic Apartments in the background.
I retract that Civic comment not even close.
The background building is the building that currently is the Ace Hotel.
Good old Western auto. They not only sold auto parts, they sold wagons and sleds, outboard motors, sporting goods, guns and some hardware items. An auto parts, toy, sporting goods and hardware store rolled into one.
disike that they walled off the side facing burnside,increased windows facing parking lot.makes that side of the buildong cold and impersonal
Hotel Treves, now the Joyce Hotel, built ~1912. A lot of those single room walkup hotels were built in Portland folowing the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition, when the population boomed. The Joyce enjoys quite a reputation these days!
Back in the 50’s I remember that location as a business that repaired auto convertible tops.
Reblogged this on Oregon Real Estate Round Table.
Nearly new Eaglelux Signals proudly on display here too, complete with finials. The city converted the old silver two color ACME signals over to new black 3 color signals in ’38-’39. very few Eagleluxes remain in the city now