Illuminating Interstate
Interstate Avenue, the evening of December 2, 1964; the neon lights were on but the cars were gone. Earlier that afternoon, the Minnesota Freeway opened. Traffic raced through North Portland in a trench, three blocks west of the Highway 99W surface route. At service stations, restaurants and motels along "the Avenue," implications were setting in. The era of interstate travel on Interstate Avenue was over. 
Three quarters of a century earlier, in the logged over patchwork of woodlots, dairies and small farms on the Peninsula, two roads, Myrtle Street and Maple Street were platted parallel to each other in the North Albina Addition. The new subdivision, near the station stops of Ockley Green and Arbor Lodge on the steam rail line to St. Johns, was one of many staked out in the area, soon to be annexed by the city of Albina.
"Street scene on the Peninsula, Portland Oregon" circa 1900.The cities of Albina and East Portland were consolidated into Portland in 1891. The following year Myrtle Street was renamed Patton Avenue and Maple renamed Maryland (portions of both would be combined to make Interstate). Neighboring Oak was changed to Montana, Cedar to Minnesota and Hemlock to Michigan. The changes were made either to conform with other street names in the area, as in the case with Patton, or to remove duplication (in Albina alone there were other Myrtle and Cedar streets).
At the same time, area residents began to advocate for a road west of Mississippi Avenue to reach down the bluff towards Lower Albina and downtown Portland.
"Interstate Avenue? Wasn't such a thing when I was a boy. Where Interstate is now there was nothing but a wide stretch and a few houses, a fire station and a wooden schoolhouse. We called it Patton Avenue. It didn't deserve any name at all. That street had the biggest damn hoes in it you ever saw. You could go swimming in them." -Clifford Nelson in the Oregon Journal, October 24 1977. The desire for a new road south likely influenced a local movement to combine the north end of Patton with the south end of Maryland to form Interstate Avenue, with the goal of connecting downtown to the new Interstate Bridge. The south end of Patton was to be renamed Massachusetts, adding another M state name to the area. The motion was passed by the city council on December 16 1916.
North Portland of the future, circa 1919. Interstate is still referred to on the map as Patton. Although a decade from continuing down the bluff, it was already noted as part of the Pacific Highway. The Heusner car line, on the alignment of Tri Met's Yellow Line, was a planned electric interurban to cross the Interstate Bridge (built with dual gauge track to accommodate it) and continue to Seattle by knitting together existing systems with new segments. Miles of right of way in Washington had been purchased before the plan was killed by World War I and the automobile. (Click on pictures to expand)Despite grand arterial aspirations, "the Avenue" was still a local street that stopped at the edge of the bluff that overlooked Lower Albina. In 1923 a new effort was mounted by the Greater Peninsula Association to cut a grade down the hillside. The cost would be split by the city, county and local property owners. In 1928 the grading was complete. Shortly thereafter Interstate was extended again by renaming Delay and Larabee south to the junction with Broadway.
The extension to Lower Albina in 1930. The partially visible sign to the far right likely advertises the Interstate Auto Camp on Columbia Blvd. -City of Portland Archives.As part of West Side Pacific Highway #3 (designated US 99W in 1930) Interstate Avenue began to take on the accoutrements of a highway: service stations, auto camps and billboards.
In 1939, Interstate lit up.
"For seekers of new beauty in Portland, a drive at night on Interstate Avenue has possibilities. The simple symmetry, the sweeping curves, the new overhead lights, caused a child to say, "Its like on the way to fairyland."
One gets the first glimpse of this novel charm, from the city side, after passing the junction with Greeley Avenue and starting up the hill. From here on Interstate is different. That's because the lights hang higher than the conventional, and shaded and uniform in the distance.
Up the hill and around the first curve, the beauty unfolds. Great numbers of lights, so accurately spaced, are individually visible. The street is remarkably free of signs and illuminated business places. The street lamps are shaded so they pour their soft brightness on the pavement. Houses are left in shadow. One is aware only of light - a path of light through the darkness. Ingenious little devices, like the eyes of a night creature, set in the raised portion, one after another scrutinize the passing car and passes it on. Mysterious sentries on watch."
-From Beauty in a Street, the Oregonian, December 30 1939.
Interstate in the area of Prescott and Failing in 1947. The Little Waldorf drive in and Walt's Associated service station (both pictured below) are visible along the curve where Interstate jogs from the Patton to Maryland alignments. As now, electric powered transit served the area, then in the form of Portland Traction's Interstate trolley bus line. The current I-5 trench cuts through the blocks immediately to the left of the Patton Home (brick building, top, right of center). -City of Portland Archives. (click on images to expand).
After the war "the Avenue" glowed with neon. For two decades, restaurant, motel and service stations were lit late into the night, enticing travelers to stop, eat, stay or fill up.
Walt's Associated service station on Interstate between Mason and Prescott, and behind it, the Little Waldorf car hop drive in. The building still exists as Interstate Automotive. In 1958 there were twenty three service stations on Interstate between the Broadway Bridge and Kenton. Today there are four.
- Photo courtesy of Gary Larson.In 1933 there were already thirteen service stations on Interstate. In the postwar years the number reached into the twenties. Stations such as Vern's Signal, Overlook Enco, Interstate Texaco, Interstate Shell, Vic's Veltex and Jenson's Union clustered at major intersections, sometimes one to each corner. Upholstery shops, tire stores, auto painters and the Rocket Ambulance and Towing Service were also located to serve highway traffic.
The Alibi, Wongs, the Nite Hawk, Nohlgrens, the Frosty Snack Bar and Howard Finch's Hamburger Palace; restaurants lasted for decades or closed in weeks. At the Killingsworth intersection during the war years there was the 100 to 1 Restaurant, aka "The Siberian," named for its owner, Si Berry. Will-Yum's In & Out, George's Corner Tavern, the U & I Tavern and Parker's 24 Flavors were favored by both locals and travelers. 
The Little Waldorf drive-in, circa 1949. Much remodeled, today the building houses the Interstate Bar and Grill. The house in the background, on the ill-fated block recently cleared for now absent development, was used as a practice burn for the Portland Fire Department in September.
-Photo courtesy of Gary Larson. 
The Palms, the Sands, the Westerner, the Viking and the Crown; Motel signs on Interstate glowed and flashed with Vegas inspired intensity. Some, like Mel's Motor Inn had their own restaurants attached. Swimming pools were de riguer despite a short season. Throughout the two postwar decades their numbers held consistently around fifteen.
A postcard from the Copper Clock Motel. On the back: "Dear Mom, we found a nice motel and are having a good time" wrote Larry to his mother in Heppner Oregon on July 3 1959.
The Cummings Motel was directly in front of Overlook Park on the site of today's Kaiser Interstate complex.
Mel's Motor Hotel, with its Jantzen inspired sign, a swimming pool and Mel's Top Deck Restaurant.
The Knickerbocker Motel at Interstate and Wygant.
A Frieghtliner truck climbs the bluff above Union Pacific's Albina Yard on an idealized Interstate Avenue in the early 1960s. The Fremont Bridge is still a decade away.-From Oregon - Bright Land of Promise by the First National Bank of Oregon.
On March 17 1959 Portland's City Planning Commission agreed with the Oregon State Highway Department to route the new federally funded "Interstate Freeway" on a Minnesota Avenue alignment, in a trench through North Portland. When work was completed and the new "Minnesota Freeway" freeway opened on December 2 1964, traffic on Interstate dropped immediately, heralding a long period of decline.
"It is too early to determine just what effect reduced traffic volumes will have on Interstate Avenue business establishments, however a number of vacancies have occurred in gas stations and some motels are converting to apartment hotels."
-Urban Renewal Minnesota Study, Portland Planning Bureau, 1964.
"I remember how quiet it got that afternoon when the last link of the freeway was opened. This was the main line to Seattle. All of a sudden there were no trucks going by."
-George LaDu, What ever happened to Interstate Avenue?, the Oregonian, May 20 1984.
King Arthur meets the Jet Age at the Crown Motel. Successful preservation of this sign would bode much for the future of Interstate's roadside past.Forty five years after the travelers were diverted; Interstate Avenue is still in flux. Higher density development along the transit corridor holds promise for more life on "the Avenue." New business, markets, restaurants and offices are tangible sings of revitalization. It is likely that interstate traffic will someday return to Interstate in the form of light rail to Vancouver.
With revival come challenges. How to meet concerns in long established neighborhoods of being towered over by new infill. How to humanize high density big box mixed use residential units? How to build transit oriented development that is somewhat respectful of an areas scale and character? How to keep and maintain what makes neighborhoods unique through times of transition?
Its said people hate their parent's architecture and love their grandparent's. It is probably not coincidental that fifty years is the general threshold for a structure to be included on the National Register of Historic Places. What was once seen as garish, common or disposable can viewed in a generation as evocative, unique and worthy of preservation. So it was with Victorian architecture, then craftsmen bungalows and now the mid-century era.
Nearly a decade ago during the planning of Tri Met's Yellow Line, local input was sought for the theme of public art at the Prescott Street stop. A neon-themed idea to celebrate Interstate's past and play off the surviving motel signs received no official attention. Instead a dead stream motif was chosen and a large ships screw placed across the street from the station. It was too soon to appreciate what was then still considered a sign of blight.
Today neon is part of the design guidelines for the Interstate urban renewal zone, a "neon district" to highlight the area's uniqueness. Will it come to pass, or is it just a sop to drum up support for the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal planned zoning goals? 
The fate of the Crown Motel sign, presently stored for restoration after the motel was demolished to build Patton Park Apartments, will show how serious Portland is about integrating preservation with transition. Supporters, associated with the Mid Century Modern League, are searching for a site on Interstate. One in particular, enigmatically nicknamed the "pork chop," is a small unused median parcel owned by the Portland Department of Transportation. With the "pork chop" comes a chicken verses egg dilemma: to marshal a plan and resources, the signs advocates need a site. To consider awarding a site, PDOT needs a plan and resources.
Could there be a public / private partnership? An inspired piece of solar powered public art? A larger than life community bulletin board? Imagination is not in such short supply as shared initiative and cooperation.
A positive outcome for the Crown Motel sign and the preservation of the other landmarks in the area, from the Palms to Paul Bunyon, will help determine if Interstate will be a vital residential and transit corridor in the next century, or a tree-lined canyon between residential big boxes, with all the historicity of a corporate office park. Success in integrating what makes an area unique with a future that will contain greater population density will have implications, not just for North Portland, but city wide.
If done right, "the Avenue" will remain lit for a long time.
Names, Lights and Links
A portion of North Portland after the 1891 consolidation of Portland, East Portland and Albina. (click on images to expand).Prior to the wave of annexations that lead to the consolidation of 1891, the naming of streets outside city limits was the parvenu of each local developer. As streets were plated and scraped across the landscape, each new subdivision followed its proprietor's sense of naming aesthetics. Proper names, numbers, letters, trees and states, all were used. The ensuing chaos lead to such oddities as another Broadway, plated somewhere in the gulch now occupied by Going Street on the way to Swan Island.
Segments of the same road could have different names, such as the case of Patton, Myrtle and Multnomah, depending on which addition: Patton, North Albina or Good Morning, that it passed through. In Illuminating Interstate, I focused in on Myrtle Street because it had the earliest dated reference I could find on a predecessor of Interstate, but it is likely all three names existed simultaneously.
Just what was the Oregonian referring to in the 1939 article, Beauty in a Street? What was meant by "ingenious little devices, like the eyes of a night creature, set in the raised portion? What were the "mysterious sentries on the watch"?
Long after miles of continuous street lighting became commonplace, the median reflectors and lights installed on Interstate in 1939 survived until the building of the Yellow Line in 2002, albeit in disrepair and often painted over. Lonnie Currier photographed some of them and managed to salvage a piece during demolition (above).
Photos courtesy of Lonnie Currier.
A revitalized Historic Preservation League of Oregon has returned to continue their good work on state wide preservation issues.
Portland Preservation is a new blog by the Bosco-Milligan Foundation that provides up to the minute news and issues on preservation in Portland.
Council Crest car #509 at Union Station in the 1930s.
Portland Vintage Trolleys has a new route and a new web address. Details, schedules and a incredible amount of history can be found there.
December 6 2009.
The Marco Polo, Interstate and Shaver.Sarah Mirk's article in Preservation Magazine about the efforts to save the Crown Motel sign.
Peripheral Explorations
It shows up in the background of old photographs of the Dekum Building: a stylishly inexplicable structure, only partially visible, with a fortress like cornice and towering twisted peaks that loomed over the intersection of Fourth and Washington. Overshadowed by its larger neighbor to the east, the angled views provide more questions than answers. What building was it? What style? Who built it? When?
What happened to it?
The distinctive roof line appears behind the Dekum Building and above the City and Suburban Railway streetcar in this circa 1893 view looking west from the intersection of Third and Washington. (click on photographs to enlarge)
A similar view, ten years later, after the construction of the Third Street arches.When I finally came across a view from a different angle, of Fourth Street in the 1920s, it provided no further clues, other than the fact that it had made it into the decade. Over the years "the building with the towers" proved elusive, always on the peripheral, never the direct subject of a photograph. How could anything so apparently elaborate pass undocumented?
Fourth Street in the 1920s. The towers are visible near the Pacific School of Advertising billboard. The train is a Southern Pacific "Red Electric" interurban that ran as far south as Corvallis on the west side of the Willamette Valley.The breakthrough came in a booklet on Portland published in 1890 by the Oregon Immigration Board. Featured among the years new buildings, such as the Hotel Portland, the Marquam Grand, the Worchester Block, the Thompson-Burrel Block (New Market Annex) and the Union Passenger Depot (under construction) was the wildly exuberant Washington Block, so unlike its more reserved contemporaries.
I had a name and a face, but no less of a mystery.
Thus began a quest for the Washington Block that shuttled between the Central Library's microfilm readers and the John Wilson Special Collections rare book room, the Oregon Historical Society, the research library at the Architectural Heritage Center and a visit with architect / historian William Hawkins. Slowly bits of information came together to the story of an extraordinary Portland building. Even the inevitable parking lot ending took an unexpected turn.
The New Market Annex, built in 1889.Portland was in the midst of an architectural transformation in 1889, the year the Washington Block was built. The final three cast-iron buildings in the city: the Blagen Block (1888) on First and C (later Couch Street), the Dodd Block (1889) and Glisan's Building (1889, the home of Kell's Irish Restaurant and Pub) were completed just as a new trend was sweeping the country.
Overnight cast-iron was passe in Portland, in favor of the mass of brick and stone that characterized a Romanesque revival, often called "Richardsonian" for its most influential practitioner, Henry Hobson Richardson (see Portland Romanesque).
The new style, the architectural equivalent of the transformation from Victorian to Arts and Crafts aesthetics, stressed simplified lines and highlighted material over ornamentation. Arches and stonework were prominent, a romantic nod to the pre-Gothic medieval. Brick was often (but not always) left exposed. Massive bases allowed taller building heights in the years just before steel beam construction. The Washington Block broke with as many of those conventions as it followed."The imposing five-story structure at the southeast corner of Fourth and Washington is one of the most ornamental buildings erected in 1889. It contains every improvement known to modern architectural art. The cost of this structure was about $75,000 all told." -The Oregonian, January 1 1890.
The office building was the project of Portland Pioneers William Fliedner (1832-1914) and Edward Holman (1850-1920). William Fliedner was born in Germany, Edward Holman in Brooklyn New York. Both arrived in Portland via ship and an overland crossing of Nicaragua, Fliedner in 1851, Holman in 1863. Both rose from modest circumstances, Fliedner was a barber, Holman an undertaker (Holman Funeral Services is in business to this day on Hawthorne), before investing in real estate later in life. They would sell the Washington Block in 1906 for $200,000.
The architect they chose, Swiss borne Henry J. Hefty, created an eccentric, extravagant structure that contrasted with prevailing fashion. To the usual Romanesque arches and stonework he added bay windows tucked between pilasters and Gothic styled dormers above the roof line. The building was topped by two large ridge like cornices made of zinc, capped with swirling peaks, as if inspired by the same Wagnerian fairytale landscape that the Modernisme architects in Barcelona were drawing from at the time.
The West Shore Magazine of March 1 1890 noted in approval:"More attention has been given to the ornamental in architecture by Portland builders in the past two years than formerly. Rather plain structures, excellent in their way, but lacking much in architectural beauty and in business conveniences have been the rule in this city until the last year or two. Now the new buildings are taking on much of ornament and contrast strongly with their predecessors. One of these recently completed is shown in the engraving on page 273." (above)To anyone who has ever looked at the lions and Libertys of the Blagen Block (1888) it is a puzzling statement that perhaps refers to the simplified lines of buildings such as the New Market Annex.
The walls of the Washington Block were cement, a material used on some Romanesque revival buildings in Seattle and on the Skidmore Building (now included in the White Stag Block) on First to the north side of the Burnside Bridge. The cement was finished so as to recall stone. The West Shore noted that the Washington Block's foundations were the largest yet in Portland. The building was lit by electricity and had an elevator.
A post card found at the Architectural Heritage Center's research library provides a rare street level photograph from the west side of the Washington Block.
The First Congregational Church (1891).
Architect Henry J. Hefty is best known in Portland for the First Congregational Church on the South Park Blocks. He also designed the New Grand Central Hotel (named after the original intended name for Union Station) that once stood on the site of the Portland Classical Chinese Garden, as well as his own home in the Holladay Addition. In 1890 he was selected to design Portland's city hall, but his huge building was deemed too expensive and "Kremlin like". Construction was halted shortly after the foundation was laid. In each of his Portland buildings he incorporated towers.
Henry J. Hefty's never completed Portland city hall.
A portion of a panoramic view from the book the Oregon Souvenir (1892) taken from the town of the new Oregonian Building at Sixth and Alder. The Washington Block can be seen to the left. Next to it on the right is the Louvre Saloon and Cafe, beyond that, the Holton House hotel (later the Belvedere), one of Portland's furthest west cast-iron buildings. Both are described in detail in the next post below. Behind the Washington Block, overshadowing it literally and figuratively is the back of the Dekum Building, still under construction. (click on pictures to enlarge).The most audacious buildings of an era are often the quickest to show their age. The Washington Block was slated for demolition in 1931, but the plan was thwarted by the Great Depression. Three years later a new course of action was chosen, a radical remodel that removed the top four floors and added a new second story. The retention of the first level was perhaps to take advantage of the two foot thick walls and three inch by by eighteen inch floor joists as well as the enormous foundation, all mentioned in the Oregonian article that described the project. As often was the case in the 1930s, the building was described as a landmark, but with no mention of a impulse for preservation.
The former Washington Block in 1935.
When the work was completed, what remained of the Washington Block was renamed the McGuire Building for long time Portland real estate broker Frank L. McGuire, who moved company there. It stood until 1963, when the entire half block on Fourth, between Washington and Alder, was torn down to make a parking structure.
Does the foundation of the Washington Block lie beneath?
Parisian Nights
Two doors down from the Washington Block, at Fourth and Alder, was a hotel, the Holton House, (later the Belvedere) in one of the few cast-iron buildings as far west as Fourth Street. When it was built in 1885, the neighborhood was largely residential but was changing rapidly as downtown moved inland. Prior to the opening of Union Station in 1896, the hotel was the arrival and departure point for Southern Pacific's steam passenger trains on the West Side line to Beaverton, Hillsboro, McMinnville and Corvallis via a right of way down the center of Fourth Street.
Tucked between the hotel and the Washington Block was one of the city's fine dining establishments; The Louvre. 
The Louvre was opened in 1892 by Frederick Strobel, who had worked previously at the Quelle Saloon on Second and Stark.
A description in the Oregonian's Handbook on the Pacific Northwest (1892) gives a glimpse of late nineteenth century Portland nightlife, where office workers, travelers and after show crowds from the nearby Marquam Grand gathered for food, drink and entertainment.
"Among Portland's places of amusement there is no resort which enjoys so high a reputation in its line as The Louvre, located on Fourth Street, between Washington and Alder. To all intents and purposes The Louvre takes the place of a well equipped club, with advantages not possessed by the later institution. Fine meals are served here during the day, at a reasonable price, and the best of spirituous and malt liquors and cigars are dispensed to patrons at the bar, or at private tables. Leading magazines and periodicals are kept on file at The Louvre for the accommodation of guests.
In the evening at this popular resort, first-class concerts are given, free of charge, for the benefit of patrons who may be desirous of passing a few hours of pleasant relaxation. These concerts are varied occasionally by entertainments of a high order. The Louvre is conducted as a pleasant resort, which enjoys a high reputation, and is well worthy of the large patronage it receives."
A menu at the Oregon Historical Society shows a wide range of dining options: seasonal pheasant, grouse, quail, goose, chicken, turkey, squab, five kinds of duck and superior snipe. Oysters (Toke Point or Eastern, Shoalwater Bay and Olympia) were prepared sixteen ways. Steak options included plain, sirloin, tenderloin, porterhouse and chateaubriand. Welch rarebit, mutton, spaghetti, frog legs and many more selections rounded out the fare.
Wines from France, Germany and California's Napa-Sonoma Wine Company were offered as well as a large mixed drink and cordial list. Beer could be purchased by the pint or quart and included Guinness Stout, Bulldog (ale or porter), Budweiser, Olympia, Schlitz and Weinhard's Columbia. Four imported German beers were on tap. Locally brewed Gambrinus cost fifteen cents a pint, while Pabst Bue Ribbon went for a princely twenty five cents.
The Belvedere Hotel and The Louvre. The building to the left was built on the original site of The Lourve and would later be home to The Circle Theatre. The entire half block between Alder and Washington Streets on Fourth was demolished in 1963 to build a parking structure. The Louvre moved next door into the first floor of the Hotel Belvedere in 1897. Fritz Strobel continued to run the enterprise until 1907 when Theodore Kruse took over. After a run of twenty two years, The Louvre closed in 1914, perhaps as the idea of serving French food with German beer was losing its plausibility.
An advertisement in a 1906 Portland city directory from the central library.
The extension to Lower Albina in 1930. The partially visible sign to the far right likely advertises the Interstate Auto Camp on Columbia Blvd. -City of Portland Archives.
Walt's Associated service station on Interstate between Mason and Prescott, and behind it, the Little Waldorf car hop drive in. The building still exists as Interstate Automotive. In 1958 there were twenty three service stations on Interstate between the Broadway Bridge and Kenton. Today there are four.
The Little Waldorf drive-in, circa 1949. Much remodeled, today the building houses the Interstate Bar and Grill. The house in the background, on the ill-fated block recently cleared for now absent development, was used as a practice burn for the Portland Fire Department in September.
The Knickerbocker Motel at Interstate and Wygant.
A Frieghtliner truck climbs the bluff above Union Pacific's Albina Yard on an idealized Interstate Avenue in the early 1960s. The Fremont Bridge is still a decade away.
