This photo provides an excellent view of W Burnside Street looking east from SW 18th Ave. The building on the left side of the image is still standing. There are several business that are visible, including Derby Cleaners and Ace Hotel.
W Burnside St looking east from SW 18th Ave, April 6, 1967 : A2001-007.636
Vintage Portland 
A bit unsettling to think this is ‘vintage’! I was just starting Portland State College…soon to become PSU.
Today’s view: http://goo.gl/mAKvyK
By 1970 I was living in this neighborhood. It was a great area to live in. I lived on W. Burnside & St. Clair. There was a Tradewell grocery store where the Walgreens now stands. Most of the buildings that existed back then seem to still be standing.
I was expecting the Marathon Taverna to be in the 1967 photo…
actually it is there on the other side of the cleaners. Marathon must have expanded to the corner when the cleaners shut down
I was four when this pic was taken, so this looks like my earliest memories of Portland. It’s cool to see the big “MG” sign down on Monte Shelton’s. But I wasn’t aware that US 30 was routed onto 18th Street prior to the construction of I-405.
Could that be a billboard on the far right for Rainier beer? This just a few blocks from Blitz-Weinhard! Ah yes, A.B. Smith Chevrolet. Their radio jungle was “…it’s as easy as A.B. Smith!”.
I actually lived in the Ace hotel for several months in the late 70s. It still looked pretty much like this with a taco time restaurant on that island if I remember right.
According the paperwork, A.B.Smith was the original dealer for my ’56 Chev.. I remembered the name, but was never really sure where it was. It seems West Burnside must have been ‘car dealer row’ for many years judging by the photos.
Nancyann,
I believe the business built on the island was a Taco Man in the late 70s, early 80s. When I worked there in the mid-late 80s, it was a Mexicali Express. My manager said she had worked there previously when it was a burger joint (if I recall correctly). I don’t know if the burger joint preceded or followed the Taco Man period, but it was apparently short-lived.
With the neighborhood mix, it was an exciting place to work. You had the Lincoln High students, local apartment denizens, employees of local legitimate businesses, and employees of not-so-legitimate Burnside entrepreneurs for the lunch crowd, followed by the adjacent rowdy bar munchie crowd (and aforesaid “entrepreneurs”) for the night shift. Weekends and swing shift could see massive crowds from Civic Stadium for periodic two tacos or bean burritos for a dollar specials.
It was quite an education for a small town boy from Eastern Oregon.
My first, and only, job in fast food lasted a few weeks in the spring of 1980 when I worked at the “Taco Man” which was built (I “think”) where that used car lot is. I had a radio station bumper sticker on the rear of my Mazda RX-3 wagon (“KB101”)….and one day the “KB101 cash van” pulled into the parking lot and saw the sticker. I won $101 (tons of cash for a 16 year old in 1980) and all my co-workers won free albums and stuff. So I was the hero of the day!
Nettles503, I think there were a few streets in Portland that funneled traffic onto US 30. My family lived in NE & we would take the Broadway Bridge to US 30. Harbor Drive eventually joined up with US 30 in the industrial area.
“According the paperwork, A.B.Smith was the original dealer for my ’56 Chev.. I remembered the name, but was never really sure where it was. It seems West Burnside must have been ‘car dealer row’ for many years judging by the photos.”
It would be interesting for someone to do a study or doctoral thesis on this subject, auto row’s changing locations in Portland. My dads best friend who was a used car dealer from 1945 to the 1990’s had his business locations following the new cars dealers as they changed their locations. From the mid 1960’s he specialized in foreign sports cars so when he came to visit us at our beach house he might be driving a Ferrari, Sunbeam Tiger, Jaguar or something equally exciting. He finally ended up selling them out of his home in Hillsboro which was ironically where him and my dad grew up together in the 1930’s.
From Wikipedia:
Before the interstates were built, US 30 ran on Saint Helens Road to the Willamette Heights section of Portland, then on Wardway St, then Vaughn St, then NW 18th & 19th Avenues, then Burnside Street (now BR 30), then Sandy Blvd.