The Willamette River - From a 1928 Map Of Portland, Oregon
I'm posting these up at Posterous in my continuing slow migration of photos to other hosts than Photobucket, where I've hit the bandwidth wall apparently.
This is a series of clippings from a lovely cardstock map of Portland, Oregon, printed in 1928, which is one of my fondest posessions. Here's the locator:
Each one of the red squares maps to the next maps in order of sequence. Map 1 details the area at the city's northwest corner then, this was before there was even a Saint Johns Bridge (notice the ferry route).
The docks on the Saint Johns side are largely gone now, the area directly under the Saint Johns Bridge (on either side of Philadelphia Avenue) now occupied by the iconic Cathedral Park … named for photos taken by the original owner of the house I now live in, Art Monner, a hugely-regarded news photographer in the Portland area though the middle of the 20th Century.
Map 2 details the area around what is now the Port of Portland's turning basin – and Swan Island, before it was developed into an industry-laden peninsula:
That campus in the middle of the clip, noted as "Columbia University", is now the University of Portland. Back then, it was owned by Methodists; latterly, it's owned by the Catholic Church. We've come so far.
The notation on Swan Island, "Swan Island Airport", reflects the status of the island after this map was drawn. At the time, the ship channel was around the north side of the island. Then the river dredged, the island levelled and filled and connected to the right bank to become a peninsula, and, during the late 1920s through the late 1930s, was Portland's first (and only) pre-Jet Age airport. A funny story I once heard tells that the builders of the Saint Johns Bridge (which was in the departure path) were ordered to paint the bridge towers red and white stripes – the green color typical for such fixtures blends into the background of river and woods so well, they were afraid there would be bridge-plane collisions. They promised they would but painted it green anyway. The rapidly advancing state-of-the-art soon made the question academic, as soon enough the departure corridor was deemed inappropriate for any plane and the new Portland-Columbia Airport (the seed of today's PDX) was built along the Columbia River at Portland's Northeast margin and air activities removed thither, freeing Swan Island for industrial development.
Peninsula Lumber and Shipbuilding sites on the east bank is latterly amongst the most polluted sites along the Willamette and Oregon's most notable Superfund site.
Map 3 shows off some amazing things – the pre-1930 Portland Address Grid (note the faded blue numbers running along Burnside Street and along the River), which only had 20 house numbers to the standard block (as opposed to today's 100 numbers/block). There was even a ferry (probably pedestrian) connecting the foot of Albina Avenue to the west bank at approximately today's NW 9th Avenue and Naito Parkway (f/k/a Front Avenue). There was a great deal of ship building and commerce on the river then. "OWRR Bridge" is what we call the Steel Bridge today. Interestingly, lower Westover Road was named as an extension of Cornell Road. The bold red lines with digraph notations were what Portland had for a street rail system at the time. Also notable was, in the spot where todays Civic Stadium/Piggy Park (PGE Park) is, is the notation MAAC, for Multnomah Amateur Athletic Club – the Piggy started out as the MAC's athletic field.
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Samuel John Klein
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