Category: history
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Historic Depave Portland
As previously mentioned, the main drag along the Willamette was formerly a multi-lane highway named Harbor Drive, which was removed in the mid-1970’s to make way for the current resident along the river, Tom McCall Waterfront Park. :: image via Portland Mercury :: image via Flickr – William200549 Text, from the article ‘The Dead Freeway…
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Ghost Highway: Mount Hood Freeway
It’s fascinating to dig into some of the historical legacies that have existed throughout planning over time. Some seem like missed opportunities – while others show that perhaps sometimes cooler heads will prevail, and we think of the awfulness of what might have been. Nowhere in Portland’s planning history is this more evident than the…
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Historic Portland Maps: 1866 Portland Map
The last in this particular era of maps, this survey map highlights the tracing of ‘disappeared streams’ throughout the urban area, which requires research and layering of a number of historical maps onto the modern urban form. One map that has some interesting waterways is a Map of the City of Portland, Surveyed and drawn…
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Historic Portland Maps: 1852 Cadastral Maps
Probably the most detailed and broad ranging of these early maps are from the collection from the Public Land Survey System (or Cadastral Maps). These were generated throughout the 1850s in the Portland metro region, with the main portion of Portland encompassed in two maps, which were obviously the base material for the 1852 Survey…
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Historic Portland Maps: 1852 Downtown Survey
A focused companion in the same vintage as the 1852 Survey Map (which includes the entire city area) comes from the early Portland 1852 Downtown Survey, a more detailed account encompassing the downtown area adjacent to the Willamette River (oriented with north to the right). One interesting pattern is the street grid running right into…
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Historic Portland Maps: 1852 Survey Map
Following up on the previous post, one of my all time favorite maps is the reproduction of the 1852 Survey Map offers not only development and trails, but information on soils, disappeared streams, topographic and other natural features. The map used to be available via a link to the BES website, but I can’t seem…
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Historic Portland Maps: 1845-1852
The discussions of Portland Urban Form (here, here) got me thinking about a series of posts I originally posted to Free Association Design of a collection of historic Portland maps that I thought worthy of reposting here. It’s great to see the origins of the urban form begin to take shape, and it provides a…
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Remembering Lawrence Halprin (or at least some of his projects)
In the blogosphere, this is old news now. It’s been a week since I heard about the death of landscape architectural icon Lawrence Halprin – actually the day after while in a meeting where part of the topic was discussing the iconic nature of his park sequence in Portland as inspiration for a small plaza…
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A Short History of America
Perhaps an homage to a weekend of bbq’s and fireworks – this panel progression from the fantastic R.Crumb highlights the long (or really, actually quite short) road from nature to excess that we like to call development in America… anyone care to refute this vision? The interesting part, to see where this leads in future…
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World Map of Shrinking Cities
Showing that the idea of shrinking cities is not a localized, unique, or recent phenonomenon, a great video spotted via synchronicity from shrinking cities. World Map of Shrinking Cities from 1kilo on Vimeo.