Marking up the backs of some Artist Trading Cards that I'm going to be playing with.

The real breakthrough was carefully drawing the "typewriterly" letters.

Ok to copy these about!

The house is a thing I seem to see in Washington and Yamhill counties more than in Marion or Clackamas.

I'm sure that has no bearing on the health or wealth of the east side of the Willamette valley versus the west side, but it is an observation I've made over the course of years.

My wife was struck with awe over the big, turbulent sky over Washington County today. It would make a wonderful painting – she's thinking arcylic, but I'd do watercolor or oil

Here are my pictures of the beginning of the historic evolution of Portland's 39th Avenue into César E. Chávez Blvd.

1. SE CEC and Stephens St:

2. NE CEC and Sandy Blvd. This one is only on the overhead at this point:

Despite news reports that proclaim the name is along Thirty-Ninth from Hollywood to Hawthorne, in fact, is is only at this point at the 39th/Broadway/Sandy plenum and the single sign at Stephens.

All taken on a rainy, gray Heavenly Oregon day.

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.

This picture, on page 295, shows the inside of Portland's street sign shop with several signs either being made or ready for installation. The amazing thing is the signature Portland style of the time, which I would call a sort of grotesque, heavy strokes with clipped angles at the corners, similar to lettering seen on military equipment. The dark areas on the signs were a deep, dark blue. 

This style survived on PDX street blades well into the middle third of the 20th Century, when they were replaced by white letterforms on green:

Thanks to fellow signster Eric Fischer (http://enf.livejournal.com/) for the find, which you can access at http://books.google.com/books?id=7AJLAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22street%20name%20signs%22&pg=PA295#v=onepage&q=%22street%20name%20signs%22&f=false ,

Yesterday, my wife found me two gorgeous postcards that I couldn't wait to share. They're undated, but my guess, based on what I can identify of the cars and the lack of one building, is that these were taken in the mid-to-late 1950s. This first one is taken from a vantage point from the top of the state Transportation Department building, one block north and a s'kosh east:

That dream remains as such, but … I did find something nifty. I give you … The Tom Peterson And Gloria's Too Coffee Mug, found this last Wednesday in a vintage shop somewhere up upper Hawthorne Blvd and purchased by ourselves for about two bucks. Here's a photeaux:

For those of you who weren't lucky enough to live in Portland during the Tom Peterson years, he was the quintessential Portland furniture and appliance salesman. A nice fellow by reputation, honest dealer, and born salesman, he charmed three generations of Portlanders with his inexpensively-done but enthusiastic late night ads on KPTV (especially the "Wake Up!" sale ads, where he kept the stores open all night, and made like he was knocking on the inside of your screen (nobody bought it, but it was fun to watch him act it out).

Tom's store closed last year, as my blog http://zehnkatzen.blogspot.com mentioned before anyone else (and almost everyone else ripped me off on without crediting). I miss him, I miss his commercials. It was a simpler time.