Posted because I found them in my photo ‘stash. I love downtown Portland as the sun goes down. Always has been thus; pretty, shimmery, glimmery, ephemeral. Never more than recently.
All copyright me. Don’t steal ’em, okay? If you want a copy, contact me for terms.
Taken this morning near Portland International Airport. The colors are much hotter than the weather and just as memorable.
2240.Fellow street sign blogger Eric Fischer, whose San Francisco work I’ve praised, has done me a definite solid and dropped a very beautiful thing my way.
As I may have alluded to in another post somewhere, Portland’s street blades have looked different. From, I’d estmate, around 1900 through the middle third of the 20th Century, PDX Street blades where these indesctructable iron things, with white and enamel paint, which looked like this:
As you can see, it’s very utilitarian. Blocky, almost-military letterforms – not graceful, but very very readable.
In a recent comment to the Cyclotram’s P13 Stark Street Milestone, fellow street sign blogger from San Francisco (whose work I enjoy) Eric Fischer pointed me to a most amazing publication, in the public domain and available in its entirety on Google Books. It was in this book, Municpal Engineering Practice, by A. Prescott Folwell and published in 1916 by Wiley and Sons (a book generally about designing and laying out cities), that I found the following view – the inside of Portland’s sign shop, ca. 1915 or so:
Lined up along the bottom there are signs for E. 70th ST. N (today’s NE 70th Avenue), E. 72nd ST. N., 50th AVE. SE (today’s SE Raymond Street), and 41st AVE SE (today’s SE Gladstone Street). I also see a rather big blade, reading (on two lines) PATTON ROAD/COUNTY ROAD, and there are signs for CRYSTAL SPRINGS BLVD, WISTARIA AVE, and possibly a deprecated style for WASHINGTON ST.
To go over it real quick again, before the Great Renaming of 1933, numbered streets east of the Willamette and north of Burnside not only carried the East prefix because of that but also the North suffix to extend west-side naming practice east in a uniform way; therefore 11th Street east of the Willamette and north of Burnside would be EAST 11TH STREET NORTH. The avenues suffixed SE were in the area south of Powell and east of E. 39th Avenue which, for reasons even not yet clear, had number congruent to today’s street blocks going out in both directions, though avenues ran east-west and streets north-south: therefore, 1916’s 50th Avenue SE would be today’s SE Raymond Street, which is the 5000 block (50th standard street name south of East Burnside) and 41st Avenue SE would be SE Gladstone Street – today’s 4100 block (41st standard street name south of East Burnside).
The viewer can no doubt find some things that I’ve missed, and it’s all interesting and good.
Thanks Eric … you definitely da man!
To view the page directly and download your own PDF of this book, surf to the following:
Technorati Tags: sign design, street sign design, vintage PDX, PDX Geography, PDX Street Blades, Portland Oregon, Portland history
2152.Another thing we did on a day simply pointing the car in whatever direction and taking whatever picture we felt was there are, as everyone knows, great places to get long-view skyline photos of Portland.
Visual Portland is a treat. If you could eat the view, it would taste like your favorite food and would never get you fat and never give you heart disease. And we have great viewpoints that we can take our leisure at. Here’s a few we found, and if you want to view them embiggened, then click on the words “Posterous Link” that should appear beneath each photo. If you want to see my whole Posterous stream, it’s at http://zehnkatzen.posterous.com.
One great place is the University of Portland. The very cheerful campus, located in north Portland, is located at the lip of a cliff called Waud’s Bluff. It affords a commanding view of the working harbor of Portland, Swan Island, and the Swan Island lagoon:
If you move just a schoshe to the west, you have a handy-dandy, neato-mosquito ready-made visual frame made out of foliage:
In the first, you get a great view of the harbor and Swan Island. In the second, you get a layered effect; nature, Island, and bustling city in the distance.
I’ve got to say also at this point that the UP is a very welcoming host. Me and The Wife™ wandered onto campus with a camera and just started pointing and shooting, and as soon as Campus Security realized we were just takin’ landscape snaps, they let us be. Thank you, UP security. You rock.
At the other end of town there’s a bluff which I don’t know the name of, which overlooks two very special Portland places. One is the wetland known as Oaks Bottom, which is an urban wildlife paradise, and the other is the Oaks Amusement Park, one of the last of that old-fashioned breed, 104 years old and just as popular as ever, with a legendary roller rink.
At the lip of the bluff overlooking the bottom, there’s a shortish street called SE Sellwood Blvd. Narrow, pleasant, and lined with homes that are so very modest and charming you just know they cost more than $500,000 each, even in this economy.
Well, you do get quite a view for your coin, especially at sunset:
If you let the land dominate, rather than the sky, you get this view:
These two shots demonstrate a certain thing that I always had a feel about but didn’t really realize solidly until I saw it. It’s true in the University of Portland shots but it really jumps out to you in the Oak Bottom pair. The upper shot, containing just the sky and the skyline, is very warm, very dreamy – almost ephemeral. The new buildings in the Portland skyline almost make it a truly-futuristic thing. But when I let the land dominate, it changed the color balance entirely, making it very cool and less Brigadoon like.
On the UP photos, including the nature in the foreground softened up and gave the view a boundary. But with the Sellwood/Oaks Bottom photos, it goes between dream and reality.
Such is the magic of composition. No matter what camera you got, you can choose for effect.
And Portland makes a very cool model. I frigg’n love my hometown.
Technorati Tags: PDX, PDX landscapes, portland landscapes, rose city views, Portland Viewpoints
I am, of course, talking about Beau Breedlove.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Sorry. The iconic Made In Oregon sign, sorry about that. My bad.
That I called it iconic says something right there. A lot of people look on it and, since it’s in public view, a lot of people have feelings about it. It’s certainly unique as a sign, and there’s been some sign in that area designed as a landmark since the early 20th Century, when the Apostolic Faith Church used a building in that area as a meeting hall.
In short, it’s part of the warp and woof of the way Portland looks and feels (if you’ll excuse the Apple-esque termage). It may be as simple as a great assemply of steel, supports, glass, and electroluminescent gas, but it matters to people; people care. We all notice when a tube goes dark. We all look every year for the placing of the red bulb, the transformation of a simple abstract leaping dear into Rudolph The Red Nosed Rubicon, which has become as painfully Portland as meeting under the Meier & Frank clock or listening to the Cinnamon Bear on KEX used to be.
Enter the University of Oregon. The old Norcrest China building, once capital of the Naito Empire and home to the flagship Made In Oregon store, has been nicely reborn into something that stops just short of actually being the U of O Portland campus – store, offices, classrooms. And, with the building goes the sign. It’s a package deal.
In that view, it’s entirely reasonable that the U of O get to remake the sign with whatever message it wishes. It’s part of the brand, and what a brand that is! We should all be so luck as to be gifted with that store of good will.
If it was just a sign, then that would have been the end of it.
Since the leaving of the Made In Oregon store, and belieing the pure corporate history of the sign itself (from White Satin sugar to White Stag sportswear to Made In Oregon), the three-word legend has gone from business name to generic tag. I myself was fortunate enough to have actually been made in Oregon. A lot of people I know who came here wish they could say the same. Oregon and all her intangibles are still desirable and seductive, even in our highly cynical age.
It’s not just a sign.
Think more of When Worlds Collide.
The crack-up is so far kind of messy. Dread Lord Frohnmayer refuses to talk or deal in any way shape or form, reputedly (and I do mean reputedly; we’ve got PR coming out the gazonga on this) so intractable on this as to put off Randy Leonard. This, my friends, is no small feat.
Commissioner Leonard, for his part, is doing something typically Leonardesque. Don’t want to discuss changing the sign to something less UO-specific? Fine. David Frohnmayer is finding out that when you go balls-to-the-wall with Randy Leonard, he’s only too happy to oblige. The ace-in-the-hole; eminent domain.
If Buckaroo Banzai doesn’t want to give up the Overthruster, then we’ll just have to take it from him! In the, ah … national interest, of course.
By this time next week, the sign and roof which supports it will be city owned and leased, respectively, most likely. UO Prez Frohnmayer, for his part, had threatened to let the sign go dark if he wasn’t given his way. The City of Portland has the trump card here, or may well–as near as makes no difference.
Both sides understand the power of Branding.
Ironically, the illustrative photo (nicked from Commissioner Leonard’s blog) juxtaposes the MIO sign with another icon, the Old Town rooftop watertank on the same building, which also resembles the logo of the adjacent Pearl District’s business association ((pictured right) proving also that distintive architecture easily becomes a branding unto itself).
U of O would like nothing more than its brand on an icon, stamped in brilliant lights on the skyline of the state’s principal city (because who ever heard of Portland State University?)
The City of Portland (as personified by Commissioner Leonard) would like something more universal,as befits the scope of the state’s largest city (which includes both Duck fans and Beaver fans) such as the simple word “Oregon”.
Both sides cannot see eye-to-eye.
Let the Battle of the Brands commence.
And so it goes.
Technorati Tags: Made In Oregon Sign, University Of Oregon, David Frohnmayer, Randy Leonard
I am, of course, talking about Beau Breedlove.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Sorry. The iconic Made In Oregon sign, sorry about that. My bad.
That I called it iconic says something right there. A lot of people look on it and, since it’s in public view, a lot of people have feelings about it. It’s certainly unique as a sign, and there’s been some sign in that area designed as a landmark since the early 20th Century, when the Apostolic Faith Church used a building in that area as a meeting hall.
In short, it’s part of the warp and woof of the way Portland looks and feels (if you’ll excuse the Apple-esque termage). It may be as simple as a great assemply of steel, supports, glass, and electroluminescent gas, but it matters to people; people care. We all notice when a tube goes dark. We all look every year for the placing of the red bulb, the transformation of a simple abstract leaping dear into Rudolph The Red Nosed Rubicon, which has become as painfully Portland as meeting under the Meier & Frank clock or listening to the Cinnamon Bear on KEX used to be.
Enter the University of Oregon. The old Norcrest China building, once capital of the Naito Empire and home to the flagship Made In Oregon store, has been nicely reborn into something that stops just short of actually being the U of O Portland campus – store, offices, classrooms. And, with the building goes the sign. It’s a package deal.
In that view, it’s entirely reasonable that the U of O get to remake the sign with whatever message it wishes. It’s part of the brand, and what a brand that is! We should all be so luck as to be gifted with that store of good will.
If it was just a sign, then that would have been the end of it.
Since the leaving of the Made In Oregon store, and belieing the pure corporate history of the sign itself (from White Satin sugar to White Stag sportswear to Made In Oregon), the three-word legend has gone from business name to generic tag. I myself was fortunate enough to have actually been made in Oregon. A lot of people I know who came here wish they could say the same. Oregon and all her intangibles are still desirable and seductive, even in our highly cynical age.
It’s not just a sign.
Think more of When Worlds Collide.
The crack-up is so far kind of messy. Dread Lord Frohnmayer refuses to talk or deal in any way shape or form, reputedly (and I do mean reputedly; we’ve got PR coming out the gazonga on this) so intractable on this as to put off Randy Leonard. This, my friends, is no small feat.
Commissioner Leonard, for his part, is doing something typically Leonardesque. Don’t want to discuss changing the sign to something less UO-specific? Fine. David Frohnmayer is finding out that when you go balls-to-the-wall with Randy Leonard, he’s only too happy to oblige. The ace-in-the-hole; eminent domain.
If Buckaroo Banzai doesn’t want to give up the Overthruster, then we’ll just have to take it from him! In the, ah … national interest, of course.
By this time next week, the sign and roof which supports it will be city owned and leased, respectively, most likely. UO Prez Frohnmayer, for his part, had threatened to let the sign go dark if he wasn’t given his way. The City of Portland has the trump card here, or may well–as near as makes no difference.
Both sides understand the power of Branding.
Ironically, the illustrative photo (nicked from Commissioner Leonard’s blog) juxtaposes the MIO sign with another icon, the Old Town rooftop watertank on the same building, which also resembles the logo of the adjacent Pearl District’s business association ((pictured right) proving also that distintive architecture easily becomes a branding unto itself).
U of O would like nothing more than its brand on an icon, stamped in brilliant lights on the skyline of the state’s principal city (because who ever heard of Portland State University?)
The City of Portland (as personified by Commissioner Leonard) would like something more universal,as befits the scope of the state’s largest city (which includes both Duck fans and Beaver fans) such as the simple word “Oregon”.
Both sides cannot see eye-to-eye.
Let the Battle of the Brands commence.
And so it goes.
Technorati Tags: Made In Oregon Sign, University Of Oregon, David Frohnmayer, Randy Leonard
Coming in from the north on SE 92nd Avenue–our destination being the Oriental Food Value market on SE Insley just east of SE 82nd, and at that time of the day, coming in the “back” way rather than down 82nd is just the smarter thing to do–the SE Ellis Street blade presented itself with a visual shout, which is probably why they settled on this design:
Notable here is the way the new street blade for Ellis was perched atop an old street blade for SE 92nd Avenue (note that it’s the extruded blade, and not a sheet, as the new design is).
I was somewhat disappointed that there was no new 92nd Avenue blade until The Wife™ pointed across the intersection, on the Lents Little League field side of the street:
The visual difference is obvious. These blades are so easy to spot and find, which is proved every time we find a new one like this.
Here’s the money shot:
It’s interesting to see a new named-street blade that doesn’t say “SE Division St”, for now we have some idea of how the rest of the city will look once these blades are the standard.
And here’s a shot of the new-look cross including the 92nd Avenue blade:
And the documentation continues. If anyone who passes this way by these humble blog missives and lives in Portland (obvious point, yes) sees these new-look blades anywhere else in town, won’t you clue me in? I’d like to get some idea of how far these are going.
Technorati Tags: Street Blade Gallery, PDX Street Blades, street blades, street blade design, sign design, Portland Street Blades
Coming in from the north on SE 92nd Avenue–our destination being the Oriental Food Value market on SE Insley just east of SE 82nd, and at that time of the day, coming in the “back” way rather than down 82nd is just the smarter thing to do–the SE Ellis Street blade presented itself with a visual shout, which is probably why they settled on this design:
Notable here is the way the new street blade for Ellis was perched atop an old street blade for SE 92nd Avenue (note that it’s the extruded blade, and not a sheet, as the new design is).
I was somewhat disappointed that there was no new 92nd Avenue blade until The Wife™ pointed across the intersection, on the Lents Little League field side of the street:
The visual difference is obvious. These blades are so easy to spot and find, which is proved every time we find a new one like this.
Here’s the money shot:
It’s interesting to see a new named-street blade that doesn’t say “SE Division St”, for now we have some idea of how the rest of the city will look once these blades are the standard.
And here’s a shot of the new-look cross including the 92nd Avenue blade:
And the documentation continues. If anyone who passes this way by these humble blog missives and lives in Portland (obvious point, yes) sees these new-look blades anywhere else in town, won’t you clue me in? I’d like to get some idea of how far these are going.
Technorati Tags: Street Blade Gallery, PDX Street Blades, street blades, street blade design, sign design, Portland Street Blades
Didn’t I get that wrong just there? Yep. So did whoever put up the street blades.
Also, I’ve been remiss. In my excitement over the apparently-revised look of the standard Portland street blade, I’ve left out mentioning there’s apparently an entire new look for the major intersections, as well. Let’s look:
The difference is of a class. Instead of having one type size handle the directional and the specific and smaller one for the generic on the Street blade and one type size for all type on the Avenue blade, we have one size for the directional and generic and a larger one for the specific on all blades.
This has the distinctive characteristic, via the design concept of hierarchy, to make the specifics (the street/avenue names themselves) come up front and center. While the supporting information is now smaller, it’s uniformly so, but not so very small; moreover, these signs are about 20 per cent larger than the old design, so everything is large.
Also, due to what has to be some error (or perhaps a rift in the fabric of space that happened that I missed), Northeast Glisan Street at the corner of Glendoveer Golf Course is crossed, improbably, by Southeast 148th Avenue.
Going down to 148th and Stark, in the shadow of the 7-Eleven store, we have the same anomaly:
Also:
The mistake at the southwest corner of 148th and Stark was repeated over on the southeast corner as well. Just looking at the signs is kind of mind-bending.
Can the city sign shop get rewrite on this? Or, put another way … can we fix this in “post”?
Technorati Tags: Street Blade Gallery, Portland Street Blades, SE Stark Street, Street Sign errors, street blades
Didn’t I get that wrong just there? Yep. So did whoever put up the street blades.
Also, I’ve been remiss. In my excitement over the apparently-revised look of the standard Portland street blade, I’ve left out mentioning there’s apparently an entire new look for the major intersections, as well. Let’s look:
The difference is of a class. Instead of having one type size handle the directional and the specific and smaller one for the generic on the Street blade and one type size for all type on the Avenue blade, we have one size for the directional and generic and a larger one for the specific on all blades.
This has the distinctive characteristic, via the design concept of hierarchy, to make the specifics (the street/avenue names themselves) come up front and center. While the supporting information is now smaller, it’s uniformly so, but not so very small; moreover, these signs are about 20 per cent larger than the old design, so everything is large.
Also, due to what has to be some error (or perhaps a rift in the fabric of space that happened that I missed), Northeast Glisan Street at the corner of Glendoveer Golf Course is crossed, improbably, by Southeast 148th Avenue.
Going down to 148th and Stark, in the shadow of the 7-Eleven store, we have the same anomaly:
Also:
The mistake at the southwest corner of 148th and Stark was repeated over on the southeast corner as well. Just looking at the signs is kind of mind-bending.
Can the city sign shop get rewrite on this? Or, put another way … can we fix this in “post”?
Technorati Tags: Street Blade Gallery, Portland Street Blades, SE Stark Street, Street Sign errors, street blades
The ZehnKatzen Times 