Wistaria & Alameda/Beaumont Stairs

Ok, in the previous post I mentioned something about having another public stairs post floating around in Drafts. So this is that other post, and the stairs we're visiting connect NE Wistaria Drive on the lower end, and Alameda St. on the upper end, 3 fancy rich-person houses east of where it becomes Beaumont St. I put "Beaumont" in the title because there's another set of stairs between Wistaria & Alameda a couple of blocks east of here, and in theory they might show up here someday, and if that ever happens I'll need a way to disambiguate the two.

Embedded maps usually aren't very useful on stairs posts, since you can't really see them very well. I put one here since you can sort of make out where the stairs are, thanks to the hedges that run alongside it.

NW 25th Pl. / Barker Ave. Stairs

One of the ongoing projects I haven't revisited in a while involves tracking down public stairs here and there around the city. In fact the last stairs post was back in January 2010, though this post and another one have been floating around in Drafts for a good while, so it's not like I've been completely neglecting this particular project. So the stairs we're looking at this time are in NW Portland, connecting NW 25th Place on the lower side & NW Barker Ave. on the upper side. The stairs are weirdly grandiose for something that connects two quiet dead-end residential streets, and I wish I knew why. These stairs are in a weird corner of NW Portland and aren't among the city's better-known stairs (I seem to recall I just stumbled across them without knowing they were there), and I don't see many other mentions of it across the interwebs. It does show up on one tour of stairways in the area, weirdly enough on a cycling website. Maybe it's there for the hardcore cyclocross nuts, people who want to run up & down all these stairways while lugging a bike, while it's raining or (hopefully) hailing, and maybe wolves or velociraptors are chasing you or something.

Wistaria & 49th

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More photos from the (Not Very) Great Alameda Photo Freakout of '09. Said event being the morning I tracked down the Vernon Ross Veterans Memorial and the nano-parklet at Alameda & 38th, and assorted other spots nobody but me cares about. Well, me and a few loyal Gentle Readers, plus the occasional Google hit that's often the result of someone searching on an unrelated topic -- and typically they don't stay long. I kind of enjoy tracking down really obscure places and things around town, but the downside is that pretty much by definition I don't get a flood of visitors searching for the things I cover. Which is fine, I mean, if it really bothered me I'd stop and do something else.

Still, this is one of those times when I stop and wring my hands and wonder aloud just how far down this particular rabbit hole I intend to go. The "park" at Wistaria & 49th shows up alongside the aforementioned two places in an obscure city document I keep linking to. But it's not really much of a park, is it? It's a steep, narrow, unbuildable strip of land, the result of the city street grid bonking up against the side of the Alameda Ridge. There isn't even a decaying statue of a forgotten politician to hold our interest here. So I'm starting to wonder if I've wandered off the far side of esoteric into... whatever's over there, I'm not sure what that would be. One of these days, I'll be taking third rate photos of some nondescript weedy highway median somewhere, and a white van full of anorak-clad British trainspotters will drive by, and they'll laugh at me and call me a nerd. And it's not like I'll be in a position to argue with them.

There is one point of interest here, which you can see in the top photo. The Alameda area is home to a fair number of public stairs, and one of these staircases forms the short side of the park here. I was doing a public stairs project a while back, until I ran out of examples that I knew the location of. Not knowing Alameda very well, I never covered anything in this part of town. I really ought to have stopped and taken a few shots of just the stairs while I was here, but I'd forgotten all about the old stairs project. I suppose I could go back and take care of that at some point. Which sounds kind of silly, but I'm not going to absolutely rule it out.

The stairs appear on a couple of walking maps, and they point out a number of the other staircases in the area. So I could probably ramp the stairs project back up again if I was so inclined. I can't absolutely rule that out either.

So to address the rabbit hole question: The answer is this far, and a little further. There are two more stops left on the Great Photo Freakout after this one, and they don't even have stairs to make them, uh, interesting.

In my defense, I do have a few posts about actual interesting places and things lying around in my drafts folder. But the boring places are low hanging fruit. The fact that there's nothing much here makes the research part really easy. So I guess it's got that going for it, at least.

stairs x 5

I got a reader question the other day from someone wanting to know more about the steep narrow stairs between the Mt. Tabor reservoirs. I responded, and got to thinking that I hadn't done any stair exploring around town recently. So I figured I'd have another go at it. I'd read there was a loop you could do up in NW Portland where you can hit a bunch of stairways all at once, if you're feeling up to it. I've got a few photos from the excursion, but first a map:



I couldn't find an existing map on the net with the stairs marked, since the city doesn't yet have a NW Portland walking map like it has for the rest of town. The stairs are shown in red, although their positions are sort of approximate. It's the best I can do in MS Paint, I'm afraid.

Writing walking directions from scratch can be kind of tedious, so let me start by quoting a couple of the sources I relied on. A piece about Forest Park at Walk About Magazine covered the stairs, albeit going in the opposite direction than I went:

From here you will walk to the left and downhill, following NW Luray Terrace for about 10 to 5 minutes, then branching right and uphill at the Y in the road onto NW Luray Circus. On the left, almost at the end of this cul-de-sac, is the first set of stairs. (All of the entrances to the stairwells are tough to see as they are covered with foliage and blend with the surrounding houses, so look closely for them.) Go right at the bottom of these stairs, which puts you back on NW Luray Terrace, then when you hit Cumberland Road go left, staying on the left-hand sidewalk. In about 15 yards you’ll cross over Shenandoah Terrace and then — on the left-hand side, just in the crook of the road where it breaks right — the next set of stairs will plunge steeply down to Fairfax Street. From here you want to cross Fairfax, and then cross over to Westover Street, walking about 20 yards to the right where between two houses the next set of stairs waits. At the bottom of these stairs turn left, and follow NW Summit Street downhill to NW Cornell. Turn left up Cornell, walk about 25 yards, cross the crosswalk, and then descend the stairs immediately on the other side of the crosswalk. At the bottom of these stairs take a right down Pettygrove Street, and at the stop sign at 26th Avenue go left onto the paved path. This path cuts between the school and the park and will lead you back to Raleigh Street and your car.

A recent forum post has a similar description, this time going the right way:

Pettygrove Street near 26th there's a stairway to NW Cornell, then take right to NW Summit Street and turn right to next set of stairs, this leads to Westover Street that you cross over and up to Fairfax Street to just up to next stairs that climb to Shenandoah Terrace, then right to Cumberland Rd. and to NW Luray Terrace and turn left till next stairs that go up to NW Luray Circus (a cul-de-sac), this meets again with NW Luray Terrace that you follow up to a pathway that's to Cumberland Road that meets there with the Tunnel Trail on right but keep going along the Wildwood Trail ... till it crosses NW Cornell Road past the parking lot and restrooms and Forest Park's 5000 acre wood... I remember a stone house down along the trail where the name changes to the Lower Macleay Trail.... that can take you back down to the Lower Macleay Park Trailhead on Upshur Street and it's about three blocks to NW 28th Avenue just a few blocks from where you started in Northwest/Nob Hill around trendy-third, I mean 23rd Ave. ... 'PORTLAND'S LITTLE RED BOOK OF STAIRS' by Stefana Young has the guide but I've yet to look for and find it.

Ah, the ever-elusive Little Red Book of Stairs. I still can't find a copy for sale anywhere, dammit. Anyway, there's also a description at NW Portland Neighborhoods, but you probably get the gist by now.

[Updated 5/25/07: Until just now, I'd forgotten to go look for stairs stories in the library's Oregonian database. Nothing about these particular stairs in the O dating back to 1987, but a few stories did crop up:

• A piece from last October, profiling a guy who developed an interest in the city's public stairs. He was taking photos and notes and had no idea what he was going to do with them. That's easy, if you ask me. Put it on the net. Share information, don't hoard it.
• From 1998, a walking tour of the numerous stairs in the Alameda neighborhood. I don't know Alameda too well, so this is unexplored territory for me so far. If I get around to checking it out, it would be safe to bet there'll be photos here.
• A '99 article about the Elevator Stairs, which mentions the Little Red Book. They were one of the author's faves, and they're one of mine too. I've already covered them in a previous post.
  
• And a '97 bit about the stairs in Mt. Tabor Park.

There are a few other old articles out there, but these are the most informative & useful ones.] The hardest part to any stair excursion is finding the stairs. They're unmarked, so you have to look a bit, and you want to avoid mistaking someone's front steps for a public staircase. It's easier to do than you might think. That's where this post comes in, I hope: I've got photos of each staircase from the top and the bottom, to make them easier to locate out in the field. Or that's the plan, anyway. As you might've guessed, our trip begins at the stairs from NW Pettygrove up to Cornell, although you could just as easily start off with the stairs on Quimby, Overton, Northrup, or Marshall, if you prefer, since they all end up on Cornell. So here's the Pettygrove side:

And the Cornell side:

Looks pretty steep, huh? Well, that's just the beginning. A short walk uphill gets you to the next set, from Summit Ave. up to Westover Rd. The Summit side:

These stairs have seen some maintenance recently. Here's a post all about stairs from last June over on jgaiser's blog, and he's got a photo of the Summit-Westover stairs caked in moss. He also includes an envy-inducing photo of his copy of the Little Red Book. So ascend those newly cleaned and maintained steps, and this is what you'll see on the Westover side:

Ok, so far so good. We're already getting a decent view from up here. If you look off in the distance you can see Mt. St. Helens on the horizon. Just below it you'll see a water tower, which looks like the one next to Going St. up in North Portland. Which means that just to the right of it, and not visible to us, is tiny Stanich Park. But that's a different expedition, and I do hate to digress. Honest. Anyway, those last stairs put you close to one corner of a four-way intersection, where Westover, Fairfax, and Cumberland all join together. The next set of stairs is diagonally across the intersection, from Fairfax Terrace up to Cumberland Road. (Cumberland loops around, see?) Here's the Fairfax side:

If you're like me, these stairs may start to feel like entirely too many stairs right about now. Sometimes you just have to stop and take photos of the flowers... if you're like me, anyway, which you probably aren't:

Ok, so here's the (vertigo-inducing) Cumberland side of the steps, finally:

Moving right along, walking a bit uphill (and west), we get to the stairs from Luray Terrace up to Luray Circus. The base:

And the top:

So you're at a cul-de-sac here, and all you can do is walk downhill until you're back on Luray Terrace. Which begs the question: What's the point of these stairs, if you can just as easily walk around the block? Beats me. At least there's a decent view:

You probably get a better view if you own a house up here, or know someone who does, which I don't. Still, you get a wide vista of the Willamette, with the BNSF railroad bridge and part of the St. Johns Bridge in the distance. Not bad. From here, the hike directions usually send you up Luray Terrace and into Macleay Park, from where you loop back around down into NW Portland. That's sort of what I did too, but I'm trying to keep this post reasonably focused on stairs, if I can. I've got park photos too, but we'll save those for another post, ok? So from here you can either follow the directions from one of the sources given above, or turn around and go back down the stairs, or I guess you could take the sidewalk down if you're feeling mundane, or go by street luge if you're a little more adventurous. It just so happens that I looped around through the park, and ended up back on Cornell, where I ran across the stairs connecting Cornell & Quimby St., right at a steep corner on Cornell. Unlike the other stairs, I was heading downhill at this point, so here's the top first:

And the Quimby side. This is right at the corner of Quimby & 29th Ave.

If you're doing this for the sake of completeness, the Overton, Northrup, and Marshall steps are nearby. Or you can be like me, and declare Mission Accomplished and go locate a frosty beverage of some sort instead.

cedar & cactus

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A couple of photos of the cool stairway between Cedar St. & Cactus Drive, two tiny streets just outside the main entrance to Washington Park, in downtown Portland. This is one of my favorite sets of public stairs in the city. I really haven't visited that many of those, but this has to be a standout. It has flair, somehow, and it's much fancier than you'd expect for something that connects two very obscure dead-end streets.



I'm not the only person who likes 'em: Here's a walking tour of the Washington Park area that includes the Cedar/Cactus stairs, with a couple of photos. I recall that the ever-elusive Little Red Book of Stairs also mentions them, but as usual I don't have a copy handy to quote from.

Here's a Google Map of the area, though I doubt it's going to be very useful. You can barely see the little streets, and you can't really see the stairs even on the highest zoom setting. But it may give a somewhat better idea of the area I'm talking about, since the street names themselves aren't likely to ring a bell with anyone except people who live there. The map is roughly centered on the stairs.

A fun historical note about the area: Many years ago, this was the location of the childhood home of John Reed, the prominent early 20th century writer and communist. That page, part of a larger Portland Radical History Tour, mentions the stairs briefly:

Today, only the elaborate concrete steps that connect SW Cedar Lane with Cactus Drive survive but nearby SW Green Street is named for his capitalist grandfather.

The main page adds

The only remains of the home are concrete steps (which probably led to the stables) at the end of Cedar, where it meets Cactus Drive.

This planning doc [PDF] from city hall regarding the King's Hill Historic District (which for some reason includes all of Cactus Drive except for the stairs, and none of Cedar Street) has slightly more info:

The Green residence, complete with large hot-houses for growing exotic plants, was located on Cactus Drive where it joins Cedar Street at the edge of Washington Park. S.W. Cedar Street, a narrow, winding road, was the original drive to the Green estate, and S.W. Green Avenue is named for the family. The Greens were known for throwing lavish parties. Their grandson, John Reed, was an early Northwest "radical".

That document goes on to indicate that the immediate vicinity is platted as the "Cedar Hill Addition", and is occasionally referred to as "Cedar Hill", not to be confused with "Cedar Hills", which is way out in the westside 'burbs. Prior to being subdivided, the Green house itself was named "Cedar Hill", apparently. The name is exceedingly obscure, and using it when asking people for directions will only end in tears, or in Beaverton, which is essentially the same thing.

I'm skeptical about the suggestion the stairs were once part of a house. To me they look like they were always meant to connect two streets; the curvature you see at the top is the cul-de-sac at the end of Cedar St. I haven't seen photos of whatever used to be here in the old days, so I could be wrong. The house theory would certainly help to explain why these stairs are so much more elaborate than the other examples you see around town. Although in the absence of proof, I prefer to think it was all just a lark on someone's part. Throughout most of the city's history, there was a desperate shortage of eccentric people doing odd things for inexplicable reasons, which means most of the city's history is pretty damn yawn-inducing. If you read anything John Reed wrote about the city in the early 1900s, it's clear he absolutely hated the place.

We like to think we've mellowed out and gotten a bit more free-spirited over the last hundred years or so. Per my usual inclinations, I've been sitting here trying to think of a way to be cynical and pessimistic about that notion, with extra points awarded for using the words "poseur" and or "dilettante". But it just isn't working. It's freakin' true, already. The place really has improved over the years, and even I have to admit it. Bojack probably wouldn't agree, but I have it on good authority that Jack was already a notorious cranky old guy a full century ago, churning out endless broadsheets and handbills, ranting on about how them newfangled horseless carriages and moving pictures would be the death of us all.

Yet another Mt. Tabor controversy

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A few photos of our fair city's Mt. Tabor Park [map], which is in the news once again. Word on the street is that the city's looking at selling off a chunk of it -- and to a creepy conservative religious college, no less.



Naturally, Grandpa Simpson, er, Bojack, & Co., are going ballistic -- see the previous link, or this update. I try not to indulge in hysteria here, and sometimes I succeed, so let's all take a deep breath and try to puzzle out what's going on.



One key point here is that the land under discussion is currently home to a Parks Bureau maintenance facility (above photo), including a bunch of greenhouses to serve the bureau's decorative plant needs across the city. On the map linked to above, it's roughly the area between SE 64th & 66th, just north of Division. It's not exactly the area you think of when you think about Mt. Tabor; I don't think it's even open to the public. This fact seems to have fostered the notion that it's not really part of the park, and what the city does with the land is none of the public's concern. You'd think the city would be a little cautious about this, since the park's one of the city's crown jewels, and the public went ballistic last time the Powers That Be tried to monkey around with the place. (Remember that ugly business about burying the reservoirs?)



Sadly, the bureaucracy has precedent on its side. Some time back in the 90's, the city decided it didn't need Reservoir 2, at the SW corner of the park, so they simply demolished it and sold off the land. Now there's a charmless Beaverton-style subdivision there. The only remnant is the reservoir gatehouse, at the corner of SE 60th & Division, and it's been turned into a private residence. I have to admit I wouldn't mind owning that gatehouse building myself, but I don't understand why they went the subdivision route. Other than generating revenue for the city, I mean.

Another account of the city's periodic real estate shenanigans, from a 2002 letter from area neighbors to then-Commissioner Jim Francesconi, who was responsible for the Parks Bureau at the time:

Commitment to keeping public lands, publicly owned concerns all of us. When the Mt Tabor changes were brought before the Landmarks Commission, the first question the commissioners had was whether or not the reservoir land was to be sold. This was not unfounded, as Reservoir 2, another 1894 marvel was sold and developed in the 1990's. Those of us who have lived in the Mt Tabor neighborhoods for a long time have watched as part of the old nursery land (Mt Tabor Yard), technically part of the park,
has been parceled out and sold for housing development. And recently, we have learned, an historic building in the nursery was demolished. We are interested in maintaining what is left of our green space and history. It is integral to our neighborhood and to the very city itself. We do not want to have what is left of our greenspaces sold or developed. We regret the move in this direction with the sale of Reservoir 2, the adjoining lands in Mt Tabor Yard, and the projected fire station to be built in Forest Park. As the Commissioner at the helm of parks, we hope that you will see fit to spend our tax dollars on protection of what little public land we have left and not continue the precedent of putting these lands up for development.

With a recent history like that, public mistrust is inevitable, and well-earned. While I doubt anyone at City Hall is seriously considering selling off the whole park for development, they clearly don't have a stellar track record of acting in the public interest, especially when that bumps up against the self-interest of well-connected insiders.

To me, and probably to most people, the land is part of the park, and if for some reason the city doesn't need it as a "backstage" area anymore, it ought to be turned into something the public can use and enjoy, not quietly sold off as surplus property. There's all sorts of things you could do with the area. Ball fields, open space for the off-leash dog folks, or maybe a greenhouse/conservatory people could visit and enjoy in midwinter. I've long thought it'd be nice to have something like that in town, somewhere to visit during the 9 months of the year when it isn't warm and sunny here. True, the place would be awash with tour buses full of geezers much of the time, but the inevitable gift shop might go a long way to plugging the hole in the city's parks budget, just on the collectible spoon and novelty shot glass revenue alone.

For a little more background on the area, the local neighborhood association has a history of the park and its reservoirs here.

Jack & friends suspect all sorts of dark fanciful plots, full of new aerial trams and condo towers and such. And in truth I wouldn't be surprised if money and insider connections played a part in this proposal, but this is a classic case where one shouldn't attribute to malice what one can attribute to stupidity. Recall that Dan Saltzman, the city commissioner responsible for the Parks Bureau, was also responsible for the abortive hide-the-reservoirs plan. He unveiled it as a done deal, not open to public debate, only to have the whole thing unravel at his feet. I mean, I think he's generally a decent guy, and his heart's in the right place when it knows what the right place is. He probably read somewhere that unveiling a grand plan and presenting it as a done deal is a mark of a decisive, forceful alpha-male leader, and possibly that's even true, generally. It's just that when he tries it, it's always a ham-fisted, politically tonedeaf effort on behalf of a poorly thought-out idea. And then when the proposal garners public mistrust, suspicion and hostility, he doesn't have the clout to push the thing through over everyone's heads. If you'd like an object lesson in the ungentle art of the fait accompli, you'd do well to look elsewhere. We are a city of process geeks, for better or worse, and when someone doesn't play the process game, with public meetings, "visioning processes", stroking the fragile egos of neighborhood association bigwigs and whatnot, people get suspicious. If you don't invite everyone to a grand open house right off the bat, people assume you're conspiring with greedy cigar-chomping developers. That accusation is true far more often than it ought to be, so it's only natural that people assume it's always the real motive. If it looks like you're trying to sneak something unpopular through before the public catches on, that's never going to boost your poll numbers.

Oh, about the other photos: Photo 1 is of the long, narrow stairs between the upper and lower reservoirs. The stairs are quite a workout. Not only are they long, without a single landing on the way up, they also get increasingly steep as you near the top. Photo 2 is looking southwest from the upper reservoir, with the lower one in view along with a tangle of Oregon Grape and various vines. The ducks in photo 3 were at the lower reservoir, just steps from a sign forbidding visitors from feeding any wildlife that might be present. Apparently the city tries to capture any beasties that hang around here too long, and I don't know what becomes of them after that. Probably they just truck them somewhere and release them, but that seems kind of silly for a bunch of plain old mallard ducks. They aren't exactly rare or anything. And duck can be awfully tasty. So who knows, really?

Jewett Park excursion

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Here are a few photos of Portland's tiny Jewett Park, a pint-sized triangle of land at the intersection of Vista & Spring St., across the street from Ainsworth School, up in the West Hills. Here's a Google Map of the area, but you really can't see much from above. The photos above show essentially the entire park, and as you can see the place is basically 100% stairs.

A 1998 Sunset Magazine piece titled "Step up to Portland" talks about the still-elusive Little Red Book of Stairs, and relays this tidbit:

A set of stairs in Portland Heights is actually a park in and of itself. The 18 steps leading from a corner of S.W. Spring Street up to Vista are known officially as Jewett Park, named in 1974 after their creator, Bill Jewett. A bronze plaque next to the steps bears this inscription: "There is nothing like sitting on steps in the sun when one has the unparalleled pleasure of doing just nothing at all."

The full text of the plaque, for dialup users who'd rather not download the larger & more legible version of photo #2 (I've added punctuation as needed, rather than mess around with HTML center tags and whatnot.)

This little park is given to the City of Portland for the enjoyment of the children of this neighborhood in memory of my parents and brother: Stanley Guion Jewett, Leslie Weidler Jewett, and Peter Jewett, who lived next door for many years.

William Weidler Jewett
"There is nothing like sitting on steps in the sun when one has the unparalleled pleasure of doing just nothing at all."
1974

That's the only mention I've been able to find about the place anywhere on the net. The city doesn't mention it anywhere, which is a real shame. Its creation was obviously a labor of love, and it's a cozy, tranquil little spot, even with the traffic on Vista. It would be a nice place to sit and read a good book, if the sun was out. All in all, it's a very civilized little urban amenity. Poetic, even. And (so far as I know) it's unique to our fair city, but without the forced-smile quirkiness and cloying twee-ness of certain better-known "uniquely Portland" things (*cough* sidewalk ponies *cough*)

Incidentally, I'm guessing that the Stanley Guion Jewett mentioned above might be Stanley G. Jewett, a wildlife biologist who cowrote several landmark books about the birds of the Northwest. But I could be wrong.

If you're more into extreme action sports, this may not be the place for you, although it might be fun to jump down the stairs on a skateboard, maybe. Technically you're probably not supposed to do that here, so you didn't hear it from me.

It's funny how something created as recently as 1974 seems like a relic of a bygone era. Today's overprotective parents would never let their kids anywhere near these stairs, at least without swaddling them in protective gear. As if kids had any free time to do "just nothing at all" anymore, which they don't. And then there's legal liability issues to worry about, and ADA compliance, and making it "elder-friendly", and there's the vociferous design-junkie community to pacify (and naturally they'll be demanding a kid-hostile "Tanner Springs II", with whirling razor blades this time if possible.), plus the bike fascist community to mollify, and on and on and on. Which is a shame, since these stairs are an interesting use for a weird sloping little parcel of land.

Diagonally across Vista from the park is what's reputed to be one of the city's best pizza restaurants, cleverly hidden high in the West Hills. I haven't been there, but it seems to come highly recommended. And where there's pizza there's usually beer. If you decide to walk, or bike, or unicycle, or otherwise get here under your own power, braving the narrow little streets and giant SUVs and steep hills, you couldn't ask for a more civilized amenity than that.

Alternately, TriMet Bus 51 runs right by the park on its way up to Council Crest, and there's a stop right at Vista & Spring St. If you're a tourist, or you have company in town and you're playing tour guide, you'll probably end up at Council Crest sooner or later anyway. Jewett Park is right on the way there, if you aren't in a hurry and it seems like your cup of tea. I realize it may or may not be. Suffice it to say that I can't think of anything snarky and negative to say about the place, which is quite unusual for me. You can take that as a recommendation, if you like, or as a sign that I've lost touch with my inner edginess, or that someone's bribing me, or blackmailing me, or impersonating me, or whatever.

---

Updated 7/7/08: I recently realized I only had two photos of the park in this post, and they really weren't that great, so I thought I'd go take another batch and update this post accordingly. The full set's on Flickr here. The park itself hasn't changed a bit, not that I expected it would.

Stairs & Ruins

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No, I'm not wafting around Tuscany, at least not today. These photos are of what was once the gatehouse for an old 19th century reservoir near SW 10th & Clifton, in downtown Portland just south of I-405. Seems the reservoir wasn't big enough and ran dry in the summer, so it was eventually replaced by the much-beloved reservoirs in Washington Park and on Mt. Tabor. I really can't tell where the reservoir itself is supposed to have been. But everyone says there used to be a large body of water around here somewhere, and I don't know why someone would lie about a piece of trivia like that, so I imagine it had to have been around here somewhere.



If you look in through the "window", you can see someone's been sleeping inside there quite recently. I would too, if I was homeless. Not "swanky" exactly, but it has a roof, and it's built better than most new houses these days.

Just to the left of the view in the top photo, 10th ends in a short public stairway up to Cardinell Drive. I was down at the Central Library the other day and looked over their reference copy of the ever-elusive Portland's Little Red Book of Stairs, and plotted this walk out from it, more or less, sort of.

One thing you don't see on the [map] is that there's a path between Cardinell Drive and Hoffman Avenue, right at the hairpin turn where Hoffman turns into Sheffield. The signs indicate it's private property open to public use, "at your own risk". It's a nice, wide, flat path, so I think the "risk" bit is just lawyer-speak, unless you suddenly get the notion to hurl yourself down the hill or whatever.

Going between the aforementioned stairs and the path is kind of interesting, because it turns out there's a gate on this part of Cardinell, to keep out the greasy hordes of the lumpenproletariat. At least the ones who arrive in cars, anyway. There's no gate on the sidewalk part, so you can walk through the area, you just can't drive through. I was actually coming the other direction, from the Hoffman side, so I didn't realize there was a gate until I was already on the snooty side of the gate. Weirdness.

(I'm doing this in backwards order because I liked those gatehouse pics the best and wanted to put them at the top. Plus it seems kind of artsy and pretentious this way, which seems appropriate considering we're in the West Hills here.)

Which brings me to how I got to the Hoffman Avenue end of the path. As you might suspect, it involves stairs. Lots and lots and lots of stairs. The Little Red Book dubs them the Elevator Stairs, and after climing them I tend to agree. Since we're going in reverse order, the first photo is from the top of the stairs, looking out at Mt. Tabor:



The last couple of photos are from about 1/3 of the way up. One photo looks up the stairs, and the other down:

Reservoir 3: Grand Opening!

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Here's Reservoir #3 in Portland's Washington Park. The area around the reservoir was reopened to the public today after being closed for at least 30 years or so. I've wanted to explore this area since I was a kid, but up until today if you somehow got close enough to take photos like these, you'd win a one-way ticket on the next flight to Gitmo. Right up until the reopening was announced, I was absolutely sure this would never, ever happen. But amazingly it did, so "Woohoo!"

Here's my previous post about the reservoirs and the surrounding bit of Washington Park. I'd actually taken the previous set of photos before the reopening was announced, and I was actually going to do a post lamenting the fact that they were fenced off and strictly verboten for the foreseeable future. Long ago, I figured out that the universe is set up to do precisely the opposite of whatever I think it's likely to do, so this undoubtedly only happened because I was so sure that it wouldn't. So I feel I deserve a bit of the credit here.

The walkway around the reservoir. The path's a bit narrow, like at the Mt. Tabor reservoirs, but people jog around those all the time, so it'll probably work out ok here, too. Just watch out for the rain gutter on the right. You could twist an ankle if you aren't careful.

A detail of the wrought iron fence around the reservoir. The outer fence, which excluded the public from the area until about two hours ago, is currently just ugly chain link and barbed wire. This is apparently going to change over the next few months. If the new iron fence they're promising is anything like what's around the reservoir itself, it'll be a major improvement.

The park's Grand Staircase, which until a couple of weeks ago was buried under a thick mat of ivy. This was taken by peeking through the fence at the top, since there's no gate at the top, and the stairs look like they'll need a little TLC before the public can use them safely.

Reservoir 4 (I think that's the name), downhill from Reservoir 3. This one isn't open to the public, at least not right now. From bits of conversation I overheard during the big shindig, it seemed to be on the mind of nearly everyone who showed up. If there's any way to open that area up, I'm certainly all in favor of it, speaking as a registered voter and city water ratepayer.

Here's a Flickr slideshow with more of my Washington Park & reservoir photos, if you're interested.

For some reason I managed to not get any photos of the bagpiper (in Oregon you can't have an official occasion of any kind without bagpipers), or of the security guy on his Segway. Maybe I'm just a jaded urbanite, and maybe I'm just hard to impress, but I see bagpiping street musicians all the time downtown, and I've been nearly run down on the sidewalk by a speeding Segway on more than one occasion. So if the city really wanted to impress me and put on a real spectacle, they ought to have combined the two and put the bagpiper on the Segway. That would've been something else, probably.

Updated: There's been surprisingly little media coverage of the event. Which means one of two things. Either a.) the media is clueless, or b.) this really is just a weird personal interest of mine, and everyone else in town could care less about it. Wait, don't answer that.

Anyway, here are a few links to pass along:

• The Portland Tribune has a small blurb about the reopening. The blurb claims the reservoir closure happened because of 9/11, which is untrue. The area had been closed for decades prior to 9/11. Trust me. I was there, I saw it with my own eyes.
• The Oregonian ran a captioned photo [PDF] of the festivities. I'm not in this picture. If the camera had been pointed just a tad more to the left you might've gotten a chance to see what I really look like, but you're out of luck. Sorry.
• The water bureau's news update, with a photo of that bagpiper I mentioned. I'm not in this photo either. Sorry.
• One local TV station has a small story up on its website, including a photo of that guy on the Segway. From the back, no less. So I forgot to photograph a few things, and the local media thoughtfully covered for me. Cool. Thanks, guys.

Washington Park

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KGW's reporting that under a new plan, the area around the Washington Park reservoirs will soon be open to the public during daylight hours, similar to the longstanding arrangement at Mount Tabor. This is about the most unexpected news I've heard in a while, but the logic of the plan actually makes sense. The decades-old chain link fence around the reservoir area doesn't really do anything to secure the area against actual, determined evildoers. Letting the general public into the area means you've got a lot of eyes and ears there. The city could never afford to hire an equivalent number of security guards. After all, this is Portland -- we love our reservoirs here, and people will call 911 if they see anyone trying to mess with them.

I recently walked around the park a bit and took a few photos of the area, figuring there was a blog post in it. Then I got busy with RL work and didn't get around to writing the post until now. I was originally going to write about how it was a real shame the reservoir area's closed to the public, and how it didn't make sense considering the Mt. Tabor reservoirs are open. I was also going to say that opening the area would be the absolute last thing I could see happening, in the current climate. I sure wish I could stop being wrong about stuff all the time.

Updated: Here's the city's official press release about the reservoirs. Seems the local media didn't get the facts quite right: The Hazelwood, Texas, and Vernon Tanks mentioned in the KGW article aren't names for the Washington Park reservoirs, they're other Water Bureau facilities that will also permit public access in the future. Looks like this change has been in the works for a while now for these other locations, but it was all happening under the radar until the Washington Park reservoirs joined the list.

Updated II: The Water Bureau would like to set the record straight: The existing fences are staying up, it's just that the gates will be open during daylight hours so the public can visit the area. If I'm reading this right, they're also only doing this for the upper reservoir, at least for the time being.

This is a smart approach -- there'll still be controlled access to the area, with a limited number of ways in and out, and they can shoo everyone out in the evening. I just wish the fence wasn't so ugly, though. It doesn't fit the character of the park at all. I think a wrought iron fence similar to what's around the reservoir itself would look pretty good, if they can spare the cash at some point.


Anyway, here are a few more photos from around the park. I was originally just going to mention the reservoirs in passing, and I was more interested in the odd, neglected areas in the lower portion of the park.

(I was originally also going to remark about all the nonnative English ivy that covers the park, but it turns out the water bureau's already started tearing it out, so maybe I don't need to complain about that after all.)



This fountain doesn't really count as neglected, since it's right next to the main road and everyone sees it as they drive past. Seen from a distance, you tend to shrug and write it off as yet another fusty old Victorian-era fountain. To really appreciate it, you need to get close to it, and stop, and listen the the water dripping and pinging off of it. It's sometimes called the Chiming Fountain, if that gives you any idea. Other fountains in town are bigger, more famous, and vastly more complex, but this my candidate for the most soothing one in town. Well, except when a bus rumbles by behind you, but hey, we're in the middle of a big city, and you can't have everything.



These winding stairs are part of the multitude of weird pathways that meander down the forested hillside between the reservoirs and the vicinity of Burnside & NW 23rd. Despite connecting two rather popular areas, this stretch is usually pretty empty of people, and the surrounding hillsides block out most city noises. You see nothing but trees, and hear nothing but birds. It's great.

Rumor has it that once you reach the top of these stairs, there's a long, dark tunnel, with a gigantic hungry spider living inside of it. This rumor is untrue, so far as I know.



This is the main path through the same area. City noises are blocked out so well here because this part of the park sits in a sort of mini-canyon. It appears that this path lies directly on top of the stream that drains the area. You'd never get away with building something like this today, and the environmentally correct thing would be to rip this thing out, daylight the stream, and restore the area to a more natural state. Although you'd still be draining into a pipe at the downstream end, so I'm not sure how much good it would really do.



This is not technically part of the park, but it's nearby, and dates to about the same era. This is a detail from the north end of the Vista Avenue Viaduct. This could be a good, ahem, jumping-off point for the usual "they don't build 'em like they used to" discussion, but that's not why this photo's here. What I've always wondered about is the curved concrete bench on the right side of the picture. There's a similar one on the other side of the street, and I think on the other side of the bridge as well. I've never seen anyone sit here, and I'm a little confused as to the designers' intent. Is this something people used to enjoy back in 1925? Sit there and watch Model T's chug their way up the hill and over the bridge? Or maybe it's supposed to be purely ornamental, and actually sitting there would be incredibly ignorant and gauche. Sort of like trying to bite into the fake food in the window of a Japanese restaurant, or something. Who knows?