Laurelhurst Gates

Our next adventure takes us to the edge of the Laurelhurst neighborhood, the frontiers of which are guarded by seven stone gates. Laurelhurst was created as an extra-swanky subdivision back in the early 20th Century. To keep it that way, the neighborhood came with a very restrictive set of covenants. One rule prohibited businesses within the area, as well as all residential uses other than single-family detached houses, and houses could not be sold for less than $3000, which was a lot of money back then. Another rule, the most notorious of the set, banned minorities from owning property anywhere within Laurelhurst. I'm not sure whether the rules also banned Jews, Catholics and freethinkers; some covenants of the time did and others didn't.

In any case the developers also put up fancy sandstone gates along major roads as they entered the subdivision. They were even lighted at one point, although the lighting system hasn't worked for decades now. Calling them gates is maybe overstating the case a bit; they look kind of gate-like but only extend over the sidewalk, and they don't provide a way to block the sidewalk, much less the street as a whole, and there's nowhere for armed guards to sit and demand ID from everyone trying to enter. So they're at best a larval form of the modern gated community. The neighborhood association now prefers to call them "Laurelhurst Arches", and certainly they sound less exclusionary that way.

There were originally eight gates, but one at NE Peerless Pl. & Sandy Blvd. was demolished at some point. A Plaid Pantry convenience store now stands where it once was, though the neighborhood association states a long term goal of replacing the lost gate, as well as restoring the lighting someday. This post has photos of two of the seven survivors, namely the pair at 32nd & Burnside, but a post at History Treasured & Sometimes Endangered includes photos of all the gates, including a few from 1910 when they still fronted an area of empty lots.

As far as I can tell (by which I mean "I searched the net and various databases"), the identity of whoever designed the gates is lost to history. If it had been a prominent architect or sculptor of the day, Laurelhurst real estate ads (which featured the gates prominently) undoubtedly would have mentioned it as a selling point.

Gold Award Garden Fountain

Our next adventure takes us back to the Rose Garden in Washington Park, and once again we aren't looking at flowers. I was at the Rose Garden a few months ago taking photos for a couple of art posts (the Shakespeare relief, the Currey bench, and the Royal Rosarian statue), in the non-flowering off season to avoid the crowds. One of the garden's various sections is a "Gold Award Garden", a collection of past grand champion award-winning roses, some dating back to 1919. As I walked by, I noticed there was a little fountain among the non-blooming celebrity roses, so I took a few photos of it, along with a Vine clip to show the fountain running.

The garden only dates to 1969-1970, when local high society people (a.k.a. the sort of people who worry about these things) decided the rose garden wasn't doing a proper job of preserving past winners for posterity, and after various fancy-dress luncheons and fundraiser galas the whole thing came together. Newspaper accounts from that time just mention the fountain in passing, which I guess makes sense. The Rose Society's page about the garden (linked above) just says "Dorothy knew this needed an expert for design and layout and she chose what she considered the best. The board agreed with her Selection of Wallace Kay Huntington noted landscape architect to design the Gold Award Garden." Huntington is a prominent architect and architectural historian, and he was still consulting with local architecture firms as of a few years ago.

Moore Island

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Our next adventure takes us to the Columbia Slough's Moore Island, separated from Wright Island by a muddy channel, surrounded by mudflats, and not even accessible by an illegal scramble across a busy train bridge. Like Wright Island, the whole thing is city owned, and it's managed as a nature reserve, with salmon-friendly "Large Woody Debris structures" (i.e. old logs, anchored in place) coming to its shores in the next few years. Long story short, I have basically nothing interesting to pass along about the place, and what little I do have already showed up in the Wright Island post.

Portland's Moore Island is not to be confused with West Linn's Moore's Island at Willamette Falls, bordering the old locks. Moore's Island is entirely industrial, and there are "catacombs" carved in the rocks beneath the old paper mill, patrolled by giant nutrias. That sounds like a more interesting place than Portland's muddy slough island, although sadly I don't know the right people or have the right lockpicking skills to get a look at it in person.

Wright Island expedition

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Today's adventure takes us to what's likely one of the less-touristed spots in the Portland city park system. Wright Island, is an island in the middle of the Columbia Slough, south of PIR and the Heron Lakes municipal golf course, entirely surrounded by mudflats, and reached only by a Union Pacific railroad bridge. You might need a hovercraft to get to the island, or a kayak, hip waders, luck, and a phone to call 911 when you get stuck. Or you could try to scramble out onto the train bridge, avoiding trains and railroad cops, and rappel down to the island, hopefully leaving a rope in place so you aren't stuck there forever. Or I suppose you could go by helicopter if you have one, or know someone who does. I'm afraid I played it safe (as usual) and just took photos of the island from across the slough. So I've never actually been to Wright Island, but I've seen it and taken photos of it, which is probably sufficient for internet purposes. The city's 2009 vegetation unit survey for the island mentions that it had recently been home to an extensive homeless camp, so there's obviously got to be some way to get there, if you're sufficiently motivated.

The city owns it primarily as a nature reserve, not a visitor attraction. Recent plans indicate they want to anchor logs ("Large Woody Debris structures", the city calls them) around the island, and around Moore Island, just east of here, to enhance baby salmon habitat.

Technically only the east half of the island is officially a city park. Railroad right-of-way runs down the middle, and the western portion is primarily Bureau of Environmental Services, with a smaller bit owned by the City Auditor's office. In practice the ownership situation is probably not a very important detail, but it was the only interesting detail I saw on PortlandMaps. And I'm resorting to PortlandMaps at all because, as far as I can determine, Wright Island hasn't been mentioned in the Oregonian even once since the paper's founding back in the 1860s. So I don't know when the city acquired it, or why, or any fun historical anecdotes. It's possible the city inherited it from Vanport City after that town was lost to the 1948 Vanport Flood, but I don't have anything concrete to back that up.

Note that Portland's Wright Island is not to be confused with the much larger (and equally inaccessible) Wright Island off the coast of Antarctica. If I had to choose between the two, I'd probably pick the Antarctica one as a Bond villain lair, mostly because the Portland one is just too small for a proper evil base. Although on the other hand Portland's island offers a (somewhat) better climate, and is close to the Hayden Meadows/Jantzen Beach area for when one needs to stock up on lair supplies, and one's henchmen will have an easy commute down from the 'Couve. So there are advantages and disadvantages either way, I suppose.

Kenton Art Benches

The next stop in the ongoing public art tour is conveniently just down the street from the previous stop, Poder de la Mano, the giant hands-n-book thing on Denver Avenue in the Kenton neighborhood. The Kenton Art Benches are by the same guy, are also on Denver Ave. near McClellan St., and they elaborate on themes from the "main" sculpture. From the RACC page:

Designed in collaboration with Greenworks PC, artist and third-generation stone carver Mauricio Saldaña created seven Art Benches located on street corners along Denver Avenue. Each bench features a carved image derived from the nearby sculpture Poder de la Mano, also by the artist. Each image highlights unique elements of the neighborhood both past and present.

Saldaña also created Rico Pasado, the cute bear sculpture in Jamison Square, as well as Vida y Esperanza, the squirrel & tree stump at Mt. Talbert Nature Park near Clackamas Town Center. If I had to rank them (and I do realize that's kind of a gauche thing to do), I'd say bear, then squirrel, then benches, finally hands. The hands kind of creep me out, to be honest.

Poder de la Mano

Our next item on the ongoing public art tour isPoder de la Mano ("Power of the Hand", I think) by Mauicio Saldaña, in the Kenton neighborhood at N. Denver Avenue & Kilpatrick St. The inevitable RACC description:

Poder de la Mano was created as a tribute to the Kenton neighborhood. A hand holds an open book which is carved with images depicting the history of the area and its people. It includes well known building facades such as the Kenton Firehouse, the Masonic Temple, and the Kenton Hotel, as well as whimsical and imaginative details that showcase the uniqueness of neighborhood. The images were inspired by community and neighborhood meetings and can also be found on nearby benches also carved by the artist.

So the subject matter this time around is "local neighborhood landmarks". Neighborhoods usually just do a mural if they want to celebrate the local old buildings and whatnot (see the one in Buckman for example), but Kenton went for something a bit more permanent. Or the city did on the neighborhood's behalf. When this went in, the city's then-mayor lived somewhere nearby, and gentrifying the area became a high municipal priority during his term in office. Hence the giant stone hands holding a giant book illustrated with a few of Kenton's mildly interesting old buildings.

The curious thing here is that the sculpture looks to be of sturdier construction than the buildings it depicts. It's entirely possible that it will outlast its subject. I'd be willing to bet money it survives at least one of the buildings shown. It's just that none of us are likely to be around when it's time to settle this bet. The main natural predators of stone sculptures are acid rain, vandals, art thieves, and fashionable good taste, and the latter is probably the main threat here. I could see the city, circa 2034, deciding it's just too cheesy to keep (by 2034's exacting standards) and consigning it to a dusty warehouse, or trading it to the aliens as a native handicraft in exchange for some sort of advanced technology. It could happen.

Green Silver

Couple of photos of Green Silver, an art installation on a rooftop corner of the Trenton Terrace Senior Center, across the street from North Portland's McCoy Park. The description from its RACC page:

A double-row of aluminum panels depicting Northwest evergreen forests are illuminated with LCD color lighting between panels and that sits on top the NE corner tower of the building, facing the adjacent park. The lighting color is programmed to reflect different seasons and holidays. The lighted sculpture creates an aerial landmark for the building both day and night, and pays tribute to the resilience of the senior residents at the former housing project.

Sadly I only have daylight photos of it, so we're not getting the full effect, but both the RACC page and the artist's website have nighttime photos so you can see what it looks like then. His website notes that he also created Spiral Path with Moon and Stars, the moon-and-star designs scattered around the park, as well as Glass Leaves inside the senior center.

So that's about all I know about this one, as there isn't much on the net about it. It doesn't even have a proper RACC page; the page I linked to above is a portfolio page for artists pre-approved to work on new RACC projects. I'm not really sure what the criteria are for something to merit a full database entry vs. just being a portfolio item. I'm mildly curious, but it's probably a very boring reason relating to ownership or funding sources or something along those lines.

Jewels of Portland

At the southwest corner of downtown Portland's O'Bryant Square, there's a small building with brightly-painted mural panels on its sides. One panel says the panels are called Jewels of Portland and were created by Amy and Ilona Stoner, in cooperation with the city parks bureau. It has images of various local landmarks, and namechecks even more of them, I suppose for tourists visiting the world-famous food cart pod across the street.

This went in around 2008 when they renovated the square a bit, mostly to remove some 70s-era open-sided shelters that attracted homeless people, something that city hall finds intolerable. The brick structure the murals are on houses ventilation and electrical systems for the park's underground parking garage, and until the renovation its sides were just black louvered vents, if I recall correctly. So the mural panels seem like a decent upgrade from that, even if they are just painted sheets of plywood. I assume the garage still has adequate ventilation after boarding up these vents. Hopefully that was a design consideration. In any case, the murals feel like an inexpensive temporary patch on the place, until the city has another go at redoing the park.

The city has big but currently unfunded plans to essentially nuke and pave O'Bryant Square (or unpave, as the case may be) as part of the circa-2005 "Three Downtown Parks" plan, the other two being the all-new Director Park (the only funded one of the three), and tiny Ankeny Park, on Burnside at SW Park Avenue.

A recent Portland Tribune article wrings its hands about the unfunded rehab project, but also pushes the old "needle park" meme about the square, which is a bad rap I've never really understood. I'd agree that the current park design isn't fabulous, and I'm not necessarily opposed to remodeling. I wish they'd keep the park's Fountain for a Rose in any future design, and hopefully take some design cues from the park's current groovy 1970s look, because I'd hate to see any net loss of municipal grooviness. The current murals won't stick around though. There probably won't be a parking garage in any redesign, in which case there won't be a ventilation building, and thus no place for the plywood panels to go. Sic transit gloria mundi, or whatever.

Uptown Village Clock

The city of Vancouver, WA turns out to have a public art program, obviously much smaller than Portland's. One of the items listed is a free-standing retro clock at 2500 Main St, in Vancouver's Uptown Village neighborhood. The city's description:

Aluminum and fiberglass clock created by the Verdin Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. The clock was installed in 1998 in partnership with the Vancouver Housing Authority, expressing the VHA's commitment to high quality urban design.

The manufacturer's page about clocks explains that this is called a "post clock", which are available with either 2 or 4 clock faces. Apparently their designs are customizable, which looks to be what Vancouver did here. Their design-your-own-clock page seems to indicate this is the Courtyard model, with the Arabic clock face (but a custom dial), the black color option, with the optional gold highlights, and maybe a custom header. At that point the form asks for contact info so a sales rep can contact you. I didn't take my research quite that far, so I'm not sure what one of these bad boys would cost, much less what it would have cost in 1998.

I was kind of disappointed to see that all their available clock options are retro looks from the 19th and early 20th centuries. There's nothing in an Art Deco or Midcentury look, or anything more contemporary, or even any steampunk retro designs. Kind of a missed opportunity, if you ask me. The design they went with does fit the neighborhood, though, and it looks like it belongs here, so it has that going for it.

Whether a clock ordered from a catalog counts as art or not is a philosophical question. My personal inclination is to say it isn't, but it was on the city of Vancouver's official list, so I figured it was in scope. It's also located right across the street from a Walgreens store, a store that happens to be the closest Washington pharmacy to the Oregon border, and therefore Portland's hookup for non-prescription Sudafed. So I'm in the area anyway now and then when allergies act up, and taking a couple of quick photos of the clock was pretty convenient. Also nearby, if you're so inclined, are a gas station (so you can pump your own gas, which is still illegal in Oregon), seasonal fireworks stands (also illegal in Oregon. I hate fireworks, though.), and one of Washington's first legal weed stores (also still illegal in Oregon, though that may change in November).

From the random anecdote department, here's something I ran across while looking for info about Vancouver's clock. The Canadian parliament building features a central clock tower known as the Peace Tower, which is a Canadian icon and features on the nation's $20 bill. It turns out the clock in the tower is a much larger Verdin product, and when it broke down in 2006, the government realized they had to bring in foreign experts from (gasp!) Cincinnati to fix it, causing yet another bout of national handwringing. The company website doesn't let you design clocks this big online ("big" meaning 5.4 meter clock faces), and obviously you'd have to talk to a sales rep (or more likely a whole room full of them) to figure out what one of these babies would set you back. But it's a four-face clock, and those always cost more.

SW 62nd & Dickinson

Today's obscure city park is at SW 62nd Drive and Dickinson St., in outer SW Portland, not far from Tigard city limits. It's undeveloped so far, so it doesn't have its own info page on the city parks website, meanwhile the PortlandMaps page for the property just tells us it's 0.22 acres, and there were a couple of tall grass complaints about it back in the early 2000s, for whatever that's worth. It's a relatively recent acquisition; the city acquired it as tax-foreclosed property in 1999. Apparently when a foreclosure happens for unpaid property taxes, local governments get to call dibs on property they think they might need before it goes back on the market, and the city took a shine to this place. I imagine they figured it would make a nice playground someday.

The city's "Parks 2020 Vision" (created in 2001) mentioned the place briefly, calling it the "SW 62nd Property" and just saying it should be developed as a new park some time in the next 19 (now 6) years. If you asked, they would probably explain that this is a vision, not a legally binding contract. As a data point, there are a lot of places in the city's inventory that have sat around undeveloped for much longer than this place has. They've had Governors Park on the rolls since the 1890s and still haven't done anything with the place, for example. So I wouldn't hold my breath.

NW Melinda & Maywood

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Today's installment in the ongoing bridge project takes us to Portland's West Hills, at the hairpin intersection of NW Melinda Ave. & Maywood Drive, not far from NW 23rd. We're here because of an unusual arched concrete structure that supports Maywood as it climbs sharply from the intersection. I ran across it in the 2013 Oregon's Historic Bridge Field Guide, Part 4 -- the guide's alphabetical by county, and Multnomah County falls in part 4 -- which calls it the "NW Maywood Dr Semi-Viaduct" and describes it:

Description:
Nine 13-ft reinforced concrete frame spans with an arched façade
Significance:
The significant aspect of this relatively simple structure is the arched façade on the frame spans which give the bridge the appearance of a Roman aqueduct. It is unknown why this sort of bridge would have been constructed in this neighborhood. Along the road underneath the viaduct is a large amount of stone masonry that may be the remnants of the previous bridge or roadway.

Thanks to the library's Oregonian database, we can answer some of the open questions in the state's description of this sorta-bridge. The aforementioned stone masonry was likely part of an early 20th Century retaining wall, which collapsed on December 21st, 1932. The article says the wall had been there for nearly 20 years. A pair of photos in the next day's paper show it really was an enormous landslide, and it's surprising that no deaths or injuries were reported. Melinda Ave. was reopened the day of the slide, but Maywood was out of commission for an extended period of time. A full year later the city still hadn't gotten around to repairing it despite residents' repeated pleas. The city eventually had to appropriate an extra $8000 for the replacement viaduct; budgets must have been very tight during the Depression. I assume that money went to build the present structure, which was completed in 1934. I don't have references for why it looks the way it does; I imagine that after all the delays and handwringing they felt they should build something that looked (and was) solid and reassuring. Or maybe it was just the contemporary style at the time. I'm not really sure about that part.

As for the present structure, it's 80 years old this year, vastly outliving its predecessor. The city's 2011 bridge inventory gives it a sufficiency rating of 59.6 out of 100, meaning "not deficient", but also notes it has a posted weight limit, gives its condition as "poor", and says it ought to be replaced at some point.

There's one other detail here, something I only realized after I looked at the map for a while and couldn't figure out what looked wrong. Melinda Avenue is apparently one of the very few roads in the city that runs east-west but is designated an avenue. There are quite a few avenues that aren't straight, but this is the only one I know of that is basically straight and runs east-west. I'm only asserting "one of the very few", though, because I haven't looked for other examples, and looking for them seems like it would be incredibly tedious. Tedious even by my usual standards, which is saying a lot.

a brief program note

It's come to my attention that Sitemeter (which I've had since time immemorial, roughly) has begun serving up ads now and then, really annoying full page video ads. I initially didn't realize this was happening since it wasn't serving them up to me, I suppose because there was a cookie marking me as the site owner or something or other. I'm not even sure what it was advertising; hopefully it wasn't anything too shady. Needless to say I wasn't making a cent off of this. So I've gone ahead and removed Sitemeter from this blog, and hopefully that will make the pop-ups go away. My apologies if you encountered one of those annoying ads here.

Waverleigh Boulevard Blocks

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Today's adventure takes us to the short stretch of SE Waverleigh Boulevard between 31st & 33rd Avenues, just north of Powell and east of the Cleveland High School football field. This stretch of Waverleigh Boulevard is sort of diagonal to the normal Portland street grid, and has a grassy median strip down the center. PortlandMaps (the city's public GIS system) says this median strip is actually a city park, or at least is owned by the city parks bureau. There's another stretch of Waverleigh on the other side of the football field, between 28th & 31st, but instead of a median it has a concrete divider and parking spaces down the center of the street. The whole arrangement seemed kind of unusual, since Waverleigh isn't a major street and doesn't go much of anywhere. So it was time for some research. It seems that back in 1907 this area was the shiny, new Waverleigh Heights subdivision. The first ad in the paper for it sounds both exuberant and shady, sort of reminiscent of realty ads a century later during the great condo bubble.

We take checks, certificates of deposit, clearing-house certificates, shin plasters, or old gold, in payment of lots in Waverleigh Heights.

Put your money in "dirt" and get your money's worth. No worry here. Give us your money and we will do the worrying for you.

The company behind the project, and this dubious ad, was the amusingly-named "Jno. P. Sharkey Company". A few months later they offered a free corner lot at SE 33rd & Brooklyn to the winner of a sorta-anagram contest, strangely enough. Here are the official rules, although I'm afraid the entry deadline is long past:

See how many words you can make out of the thirteen different letters in "Beautiful Waverleigh", not using the same letter more than once in any word. Therefore the letters you can use are B,T,F,U,W,A,V,R,L,E,I,G,H.

A word cannot be used more than once, even though it has different meanings.

You cannot use plurals or the names of persons or places.

Any word now in use in the English language (Webster is our authority) will be counted, but not obsolete words.

Today this would be a decent freshman computer science assignment, which I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.

The median was originally supposed to be a central parking strip the whole length of the street, as it still is further west. Apparently this was an unusual arrangement at the time, since three years later the city was still trying to puzzle out who owned the central strip, and who was responsible for making improvements to it, the city or homeowners whose property faced it. This issue had come to a head because the the developers had left the central parking strip unfinished; the article states that in many spots it was "simply a hole in the ground, which had to be filled at considerable expense." The city faced a looming $2779.37 bill for improvements, and was wringing its hands over whether to pass the cost along to homeowners instead. I haven't run across a followup article detailing what the eventual judgment was, but we know the eastern segment eventually ended up as a city park, not as parking at all, and the western segment sure looks like something the city and not homeowners would be responsible for.

Waverleigh was originally a through street until the stretch between 31st and 33rd was vacated in 1934 to make way for the Cleveland sports field. One city commissioner objected on the grounds that Waverleigh might be a major street someday, but obviously the project went ahead anyway. A strange artifact of this remains, not visible in person, but only in PortlandMaps. Even now, the big block of school district property is broken by a 20' wide strip belonging to the Parks Bureau, directly beneath the football field's north end zone. I imagine this means the Parks Bureau became the owner of it (as well as the extant bit west of it) after 1910 and before 1934, while it was still the median of a city street.

There are a number of other streets similar to this scattered around Portland's east side, though this may be the only one that originated as a central parking strip. Several years ago I tracked down all the examples I knew of at the time and dubbed them the "East Park Blocks", to go along with downtown's North & South Park Blocks. I'm tagging this as yet another one, since I definitely would have included it in the project if only I'd known it existed.

Sunny Crossroads

The next painted intersection on our ongoing tour is at SE 42nd & Morrison, a project known as "Sunny Crossroads". The 2014 Village Builder guide describes it:

Our new neighborhood street painting symbolizes the many bikes that pass through the intersection every day (it's on a bike boulevard), as well as the “sunny” in our neighborhood name. We will also be building a bike kiosk with a bike map and tools, and a Little Free Library for kids and adults.

On May 31st we will be hosting a bike carnival with live music, a bike rodeo for kids, carnival games, juggling and hula hoop lessons for all ages, and plenty of food!

This is part of the Sunnyside neighborhood, if that helps explain the bit about the neighborhood name. Here's someone's Flickr photoset from this year's painting party, and more photos on the project's Facebook page.. So that's about it for painting-related stuff, but I also ran across a cute photo from this intersection (taken last June) on someone's one-photo-per-day blog, so I figured I'd pass it along too.

Buckman Community Mural

Our next bit of public art is a large mural celebrating Portland's Buckman neighborhood, located on the side of a Plaid Pantry convenience store at SE 12th & Morrison. The neighborhood looks positively glamorous in the mural, and I'm not sure it's ever looked quite that energetic and cosmopolitan in real life. Which I suppose is the whole point. This mural was created by the late Joe Cotter in cooperation with the Buckman neighborhood association and dates to 2008.

It's not the first mural at this location. The neighborhood association and Plaid Pantry have teamed up on murals here since 1982, around the time they also teamed up on the (currently missing) Black Hole No. 4, at 20th & Ankeny. The 1982 mural was designed by Geoff Clark & painted with the help of local grade school kids. I don't know whether there were other designs in the years in between, or whether there was even a mural here at all the whole time. Maybe the old mural is still under there somewhere, waiting to be discovered by future art conservators, similar to how they're forever X-raying paintings and realizing a Van Gogh is painted over the top of another previously-unknown Van Gogh.

Cotter also created community murals in Estacada, as well as a lot of groovy paintings for McMenamins locations around Portland.

Murals have given the city fits over the years. The Oregon constitution's free speech provision is quite a bit more expansive than the federal First Amendment; the state Supreme Court has famously held that nude dancing and live sex shows are constitutionally protected free expression. A less well-known consequence is that government bodies can't legally distinguish between commercial speech and other speech, since the state constitution doesn't explicitly say they're allowed to do that. Therefore if you let someone put up a huge mural about their awesome neighborhood, you also have to allow equally huge Applebees billboards. The city hates that. For a number of years they simply banned all murals, as the price of keeping billboards out. That became deeply unpopular. A neighborhood or a small business would decide to paint a mural, being ignorant of the city's policy, and pour their heart and soul into creating it, only to have city workers appear and frantically paint it over before the billboard companies and their lawyers found out. This was a sad spectacle, so eventually the city came up with a creative legal dodge instead. You apply to the city if you want to create a mural, and grant the city an easement over the finished mural so it becomes "public art" and part of RACC's mural collection. It is assumed implicitly that your community mural will pass muster, and a mural of Applebees mozzarella sticks won't, whatever their relative aesthetic merits might be.

Curiously the Buckman mural doesn't seem to be on the RACC list, unless I'm missing something. Either it was grandfathered in thanks to the 1982 mural, or whoever maintains their website isn't doing a very thorough job. If it's the latter, it wouldn't be the first time.

SW Shattuck & Vermont

Our next adventure takes us out to the hills of SW Portland, to the busy corner of SW Shattuck & Vermont. A while ago I'd noticed on some map or other that the city owned a ~2.3 acre chunk of undeveloped land at the corner, and I figured it might be another obscure city park or something, so I put it on my seemingly endless todo list. It turns out this is a little wetland area owned by the Bureau of Environmental Services, the agency responsible for both stormwater and sewers. A short stretch of Vermont Creek flows through here, after leaving Gabriel Park. The wetland area is easily visible from Vermont St., but there's nowhere to park nearby on either Vermont or Shattuck. I had the idea I'd turn onto 63rd Ave., which as you can see on the map forms the remaining two sides of the diamond-shaped parcel. It looked like a small quiet street, and I figured I could park there and get a look at the marsh, maybe see a heron or something. It turns out that basically every map you might encounter is inaccurate here; much of the 63rd Ave. right of way was vacated years ago, and the street quickly ends at someone's driveway. The stern "Do Not Enter" sign there sort of indicated I wasn't the first person to be misled by looking at a current map. So I just turned around and got whatever photos I could without parking the car, and that was that.

So what do we know about this place? A BES page lists this spot as a "stream restoration activity", and another lists it among various construction projects they've done here over the years. A BES document about Fanno Creek tributaries mentions that the city's Urban Services Boundary is at Shattuck Rd., such that the creek flows out of the city right here. Maybe this is a last-chance water quality project, so that Beaverton can't sue. Or maybe it's for flood control (a city engineer's drainage plans for a subdivision just across Vermont St. indicate flooding is a problem around here.) Or maybe it's here to compensate for the Alpenrose Dairy just uphill, or it's some sort of mandatory federal wetland mitigation, or it's a water quality project to protect fish downstream in the Fanno Creek watershed. Or some combination of all of these things.

Regardless, I don't think it's really set up for public access. There aren't any "Do Not Enter" signs on the parcel itself, and I didn't see a fence. But there also isn't a "Welcome Birdwatchers! Love, your BES besties." sign or anything else that would welcome visitors. It just sort of looks like a random empty lot with a stream through it, which may explain the occasional illegal mattress dumping issues. So for the time being I wouldn't rank this place very high if I compiled a list of cool secret Portland spots to visit. Oh well.

Jesse A. Currey Bench

This post takes us to Portland's Rose Garden yet again, and once again we're not there to look at flowers. Near the main entrance is an ornate stone park bench honoring Jesse A. Currey, the garden's founder. Its Smithsonian database entry offers a few details:

Inscription:
(Below the relief incised:) JESSE A. CURREY/1873-1927/ORIGINATOR OF PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL/ROSE TEST GARDEN 1917 unsigned
Description:
Long bench with solid side pieces that slope down as arm rests. A proper left profile of Jesse A. Currey's head is in a circular relief on the back center of the bench, with inscriptions below it.
Remarks:
For related article see: The Oregonian (Portland, OR), June 5, 1955.

The entry further notes that the sculptor of the bench is unknown. Its reference to an old Oregonian article practically begged me to dive into the library's Oregonian database, but I think that reference might be in error. In the June 5th 1955 paper there are number of articles about roses, which there always are during Rose Festival. None mention Currey or the bench. There is one, however, from a former president of the Portland Rose Society, scolding Portlanders for not having enough roses in their front yards. Apparently backyard roses didn't count toward keeping up with the Joneses, which was a life or death matter in 1955.

The bench was unveiled on June 11th, 1936 (and was announced April 15th of that year). The articles explain the bench was donated by Herman J. Blaesing, and unveiled by his granddaughter Gretchen, but no sculptor is named in either article.

I also came across a June 5th, 1966 article about a collection of early and rare books about roses Currey willed to the Multnomah County Library. As the story goes, both the British Museum and the Library of Congress had tried unsuccessfully to obtain these books, but our little old hometown library ended up with them instead. Or at least they had them as of 1966. In any case, the article doesn't mention anything about a bench.

Anyway, a recent AP article that's been making the rounds explains that the garden has its roots in World War I. Apparently Currey's notion was that Europe was slaughtering itself, and the fighting showed no sign of abating any time soon, but perhaps some of the continent's roses could be saved, at least, whisked away to a new life in the distant, peace-loving New World. That's a rather profoundly pessimistic vision if you ask me, but at least we got an enormous rose garden out of it.

So the Rose Garden has a monument to its founder, another to the city's dorky rose-themed greeters, and a third to Shakespeare, who had a few choice words to say about roses. The whole thing is a bit silly, sure, but so long as we're already going down that path, let me put in a plug for yet another statue. Portland's annual Rose Festival is considered to be the invention of Harry Lane, the city's mayor from 1904-1908. He's appeared on this humble blog once before due to his unsuccessful fight to stop the railroads from tearing their way through North Portland. He seems to have been the closest thing the city's ever had to a genuine left-wing mayor, and he later went on to serve in the US Senate, casting one of the very few votes against US entry into World War I. Lane was already in failing health at that point and died shortly after the vote, and was buried with a simple, modest marker in Lone Fir Cemetery. Personally I think we owe him a statue for all of this other stuff, but inventing the Rose Festival is what he's usually remembered for (if he's remembered at all), and that's certainly a key event in Portland rose history, so a monument of some sort would absolutely be appropriate here.

Povey Glass Plaques

I was in Old Town recently and noticed a some bronze plaques attached to the outside of a building at NW 5th & Flanders. I took a few photos in case they turned out to be Art, and set to googling once I got home. It seems this building was once home to Povey Brothers Studio, a renowned maker of stained glass windows during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 2010, the building's owners decided to commemorate its history and commissioned the pair of plaques you see here. The building itself is a listed historic structure, designed by local architect Emil Schacht, and installing the plaques required city planning permission. It's not really a public art project, and they aren't obligated to document it on the interwebs for all and sundry to see. Thus, so far I haven't come across anything that names the artist who created the plaques or anything that explains exactly what they're depicting. If you happen to know, or you have an interesting theory or something, feel free to leave a note down in the comments. Thx. Mgmt.

Shakespeare Relief

In one relatively quiet corner of Washington Park's Rose Garden is a small "Shakespeare Garden", which the city describes:

In 1945, the Shakespeare Garden, located at Crystal Springs Lake in southeast Portland, was moved to Washington Park to allow for expansion of Eastmoreland Golf Course. Designed by Glenn Stanton and Florence Gerke, it was originally intended to include only herbs, trees, and flowers mentioned in William Shakespeare's plays. The garden continues to honor the Bard with roses named after characters in his plays. The focal point of the garden is the Shakespeare Memorial, a brick wall with a plaque featuring Shakespeare’s image and his quote, "Of all flowers methinks a rose is best." Donated by the LaBarre Shakespeare Club, it was dedicated on April 23, 1946 - the 382nd anniversary of Shakespeare's birth. In 1957 the club added a sundial to the garden.

We're here to see the marble Shakespeare plaque right now, and it happens to have a Smithsonian art database entry:

The relief is part of an exedra that was designed by Glenn Stanton, that includes two flanking marble-top benches. Relief is in the Shakespeare Garden which was designed by Florence Gerke and is a gift of the LaBarre Shakespeare club. IAS files contain transcriptions of inscriptions on benches and nearby sundial. IAS files contain a related article from The Oregonian (Portland, OR), June 5, 1955; and a July 19, 1970 article from the Rose Garden Society.

Gerke was a prominent landscape architect, first with the parks bureau and later in private practice. Stanton was a well-known local architect who also co-designed Portland's Civic Auditorium. (In the second link, about the auditorium's 1968 dedication ceremony, a dedication speaker imagines people digging through the rubble of long-vanished Portland three centuries from now, finding Civic Auditorium, and realizing what a grand and gracious age it must have been. It was a sign of the Cold War times that it was just a given the city would be a forgotten rubble pile in the year 2268.)

The aforementioned June 5th 1955 article explains the little Shakespeare Garden, for people who had never heard of it. Apparently it was not yet the famous, highly desired wedding spot it is today. The article explains that, as you might imagine, it was the brainchild of a group of local high society ladies, who had formed a Shakespeare appreciation club. This club was founded by, run by, and named for Julia LaBarre, who also wrote "Stories of Shakespeare's Popular Comedies Told in Rhyme", a long-out-of-print children's book.

In a 1946 article about the current garden's dedication, we learn it was also a pet project of C.P. Keyser, the city's longtime parks superintendent, which would certainly have helped grease the skids for getting it approved. Keyser, now retired, asserted the garden was still incomplete, and what it really needed was a collection of porcelain figurines of characters from Shakespeare's plays, displayed under a plastic dome. That sounds tacky as all hell, and we can count ourselves lucky that it never came to pass (as far as I know). Or if it did, at least it didn't last long.

Lewis & Clark Column

Here's a slideshow of the Lewis & Clark Column at the east entrance to Washington Park, just uphill from the Lavare Lions. I've lost track of how many times I've been nearby and taken photos of the column, but somehow it didn't occur to me to do a post about it until just recently. The column was built for the 1905 Lewis & Clark Exposition, a quasi-World's Fair held here to mark the centennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Other than this column, almost nothing survives from the fair; the fairgrounds were built around Guilds Lake in what's now the industrial part of NW Portland, and afterward almost everything was demolished, and then they filled in the lake and built on top of it.

Some details, from the column's Smithsonian database entry:

Description:
Shaft crafted as a Classical column with a sphere on top. The shaft stands on a square base. Seals for the states of Oregon, Washington, Montana and Idaho, which once comprised the Territory of Oregon, are installed on the sides of the base.
Remarks:
Commissioned by the Lewis & Clark Exposition Commission for approximately $10,500 as a gift of the people of Oregon in memory of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, first explorers of what is now the states of Oregon, Washington, Montana and Idaho. The first cornerstone was laid by President Theodore Roosevelt on May 21, 1903. The path leading to the work is lighted. IAS files contain the text of a commemorative plaque and a related article from the Oregonian, Feb. 11, 1967, which details a drive to restore the monument.

Thanks to the library's Oregonian database, I can link to the original newspaper story about Theodore Roosevelt laying the cornerstone, during a brief whirlwind visit to the city. Intriguingly, the article briefly mentions some sort of copper box sealed up inside the monument. I've actually heard this story before; I'm not sure where I saw it, and I don't have a link to share, but supposedly in recent years the city looked for this box and couldn't find it. Furthermore, legend (i.e. a story I don't have a link for) indicates the box may have contained Lewis & Clark gold dollar coins. At one point there was an effort to use proceeds from the sale of these coins to fund construction of the memorial, but I'm not sure whether that came to pass or not. (That link refers to a "memorial building", and I'm not sure whether that refers to the column, or some other, possibly unbuilt, structure.) I caution that I'm recalling a lot of this from a vague memory about something I read years ago, and the source material may or may not have been correct. All we can say for certain is a.) there may or may not have been a box; b.) this hypothetical box may or may not still exist; and c.) if it exists, what's inside is anyone's guess.

The February 1967 article isn't helpful in this regard. It discusses a letter by Francis J. Murnane, prominent longshoreman and civic activist, pointing out that the column was then suffering from vandalism and general neglect, and pestering the city to do something about it.

So I have a theory, based on the fact that laying a cornerstone was just the beginning of construction, which continued on for several years. (Here's a 1906 status update, claiming it was almost done, and then an October 1907 story announcing it really was finally done, for real this time.) I figure the box was either removed by officials right after the ceremony, or later by some underpaid construction worker who quietly pocketed it and its contents at some point during the four years it was under construction. A third possibility is that the anonymous city worker who later searched for it actually found it, claimed not to, and scored a few grand for it at an out-of-town coin dealer. Perhaps you've concluded by now that I tend to be a cynical person. It's not just that, though. I'm partial to the theories that don't lead people to go digging for gold in the middle of a public park, possibly toppling a historic (and heavy) column onto themselves in the process. To be on the safe side, I would like to add another detail to the legend, namely that there's a really gruesome Indian curse that falls on anyone who digs up the Lewis & Clark gold. I mean, it seems only reasonable that there'd be a curse attached, considering everything that happened to Indians later on as a result of the Lewis and Clark expedition. And if there isn't one, well, technically speaking I do have one Indian great-grandparent (albeit not from a Northwest tribe), so I totally have the power to place this Indian curse myself, as far as you know. And I can come up with some rather creative curses if need be. So, basically, why risk it?

Anyway, I have one random bit of column trivia to pass along, regarding a strange 1911 publicity stunt. Automobiles were new back then, and they tended to be rather underpowered, or at least that was the public image. A manager at the local Buick franchisee wanted to show his company's delivery trucks had power to spare, so he drove one up the steps to the monument, to prove it could be done, so long as you had a manly-man Buick truck at your command. Which just goes to show that truck commercials have changed very little in the past century.