Portland Historical Architecture: Downtown, Pearl District, Old Town

This edition is a pictorial survey of the Downtown, Old Town and Pearl Districts sectors of Portland. The book concentrates on the period beginning with surviving frontier structures until 1930. The edition identifies construction dates, architects, architectural styles and historic property uses. Historical anecdotes are included about some of the more renowned and infamous buildings.

This profile documents the architectural treasures of over 250 existing properties that survived significant urban renewal and parking lot redevelopment during the late 1960s-1980s. Aesthetically Portland features one of the most concentrated West Coast cores of attractive urban heritage design. The restored and refashioned monoliths are excuse enough to slow and resist demolition and any intrusive replacement by many contemporary banal and characterless redevelopment projects.

The largest concentration of high-rise construction began during the late 1890s following the recovery from two devastating downtown fires in 1872 and the following year. The 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition acknowledged Portland globally as a major West Coast hub for the shipping industry and as an important urban population center. Population increased from over 90,000 residents in 1900 to over 207,000 in the 1910 census.

The ragged North End district (today’s Old Town) was displaced as the center of commercial retail and activity. The downtown sector, which commences southeast of West Burnside Street, features some of the most iconic and demonstrative high-rise constructions of the early twentieth century.

Leading up until World War II, the era experienced heightened social turbulence. Issues emerged prominently in politically conservative Portland enflamed by the Women’s Rights movement, Prohibition, racial intolerance, rampant law enforcement corruption, unethical political maneuverings, anti-homosexual persecution, union unrest and local crime syndicates. It is difficult to imagine contemporary Portland steadfastly entrenched by the pre-World War I Republican Party spearheaded by The Oregonian publisher and Machiavellian deal broker Henry Lewis Pittock.

Portland’s downtown and Pearl District today have become a growing hybrid of the historic and contemporary. Photographed during 2019 and 2020, “Portland Historical Architecture” celebrates the grandeur and diversity of a city whose name was historically decided upon by a coin flip and has reversed the former derogatively coined Stumptown into a designation of pride.