Greenleaf Park (aka "Scott Triangle")

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Next up we've got a few photos of Portland's tiny Greenleaf Park, at SE 65th and Scott Drive, a couple of blocks north of Mount Tabor Park. You won't find this one on your typical list of city parks. In fact it only appears on one list or map that I've ever come across, printed in the October 25th 1970 Oregonian. Readers were treated to a detailed map of all 136 units of the city park system at the time, courtesy of Commissioner Frank Ivancie, who was responsible for parks and various other public services and who was --quite coincidentally -- running for reelection just then.

I put together a blog post about this place back in November 2008, calling it "Scott Triangle", because that's what the Urban Adventure League folks called it when they visited a few months before I did. In our collective defense, I'm not sure the Oregonian database even existed in 2008. Or if it did the search function wasn't that great and either way probably nobody would have figured this out even if it had occurred to anyone to check back then.

For posterity's sake, here's the original post in its entirety:

So this is "Scott Triangle", a tiny grassy bit at the corner of SE 64th & Scott Drive, just north of Mt. Tabor Park. I made a quick side trip here after tracking down Stark Street Island, after seeing a mention of it in a May '08 Urban Adventure League post. As is their usual m.o., they rode here and had a nice meatless potluck. Since it was May, I'm not sure the weather would've been any better than it is now. Imagine, a pack of bike hipsters gnawing on tofu in the rain. I wonder what the neighbors thought?

I agree the place isn't spectacular. And I also agree that my photos of it aren't spectacular. What's more, I don't have much of anything to say about the place. On the bright side, it means it didn't take long to bust out this post. On the other hand, it also raises the eternal question of "Why?"

I ask myself that a lot, actually.

Pivoting back to online resources that didn't exist when this post went up back in '08:

• The city parks website doesn't mention it, and the Parks and Recreation GIS map doesn't have an entry for it.
• PortlandMaps.com (which has county taxlot data) does have a page for it, calling it property ID #R283185, with a size of 1500 square feet or 0.03 acres. But it just lists the owner as "Public", address unknown. Which is odd but not that unusual; subdivision developers do this all the time with streets without any trouble, as in, dedicating them to the public, and the city or county or whoever figures out ownership from there), but when they do the same thing with parks it seems to to continually flummox everyone involved and half the time you get a vacant lot nobody claims responsibility for, but clearly that's not what's going on here.
• That entry also tells us this area was called "Tabor Heights" back when it was subdivided, and sure enough, the county survey office has the original subdivision filing dated June 1889 and an amended one now labeled "Belmont Place", from January 1891. Both show the park and adjacent streets just like they are today, and the latter shows the whole subdivision more or less laid out the way it turned out. Except that SE 65th is labeled "Brooke Street" on the map, and it shows a narrow alley or walkway just labeled "Lane" heading due south from the park for several blocks, all the way to Mt. Tabor Park, and I'm fairly sure this lane doesn't exist, or at least no longer exists. But back then it would have made it easy to catch the streetcar on Belmont courtesy of the Willamette Bridge Railway Co. Oh, and both surveys were performed by a gentleman named R.S. Greenleaf, which has got to be where the name comes from.
• The city Transportation Bureau has some info about it on their GIS map of Traffic Circles and Islands, which gives it an asset ID of 3330-0000354, and lists a size of 379.447 square feet. Which is quite a bit smaller than the taxlot entry, and I don't know what might be going on there, but ok. The map entry seems to assert that they own the little park, but follows that with a field for "Maintenance Responsibility", which is listed as "UNKNOWN".
• Here's a small Tabor Heights real estate ad from July 1889:

  [Tabor Heights] Are located on the top of Mount Tabor and at the end of the motor line. They comprise some of the grandest building sites on the mountain, having a fine view of the surrounding country. If you are contemplating the purchase of a home see Tabor Heights before making your selection.
  
  Terms are reasonable. For full particulars call on J. FRED CLARK & SONS, No. 13 Stark St.

• Evidently that approach did not get results, as Tabor Heights lots were being sold at auction by October of that year. The ad copy kicks it up a few notches this time around, describing the area as "Portland's Choicest Suburban Property" and "the cream of Mount Tabor", with unparalleled views and incredibly convenient streetcar access. And the real estate promotional stuff just goes on and on like this, relentlessly, every couple of days for years on end, in the usual manner of 19th century Portland real estate advertising.
• There is probably room in this post, eventually (but not today), for a mini-bio of R.S. Greenleaf, the park's namesake. Going over the many news articles mentioning him over time, he was active in local politics, first as a GOP candidate for county surveyor, then for county assessor a few years later He was elected assessor in 1894 and set about trying to reform the property tax system to make it less unfair. (Apparently it was quite common back then to have your property arbitrarily made exempt from taxes if you had the right connections.) Served several terms in that capacity, evenually switching his party affiliation from Republican to Independent. Was also involved in surveying the new Laurelhurst and Eastmoreland neighborhoods, and the water lines from Bull Run, and had something to do with sorting out a sewer scandal in the early 1890s. Also a Civil War veteran (artillery with the 10th Illinois) and still involved with the local National Guard in some capacity that seemed to involve a lot of parades. In general a life of upstanding pillar-of-the-community stuff, marred only by a minor traffic arrest in June 1911 for having an automobile horn the police found to be of "a distressing nature or such as will tend to frighten persons on the street". He promised to stop using the screeching device and the case doesn't appear in the paper after that.