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flaneursFor the September challenge (extended into October), kake suggested starting at the Hair of the Dog brewery. Hair of the Dog is in the eastside industrial district, one of the older parts of Portland, but on the neglected, eastern waterfront (as opposed to the prosperous, western waterfront). The neighborhood is centered around a set of railroad tracks, and if it once had direct access to the water, it doesn't now -- the interstate runs at ground level between the neighborhood and the water. [1] There isn't much through-traffic in this neighborhood, either: every downtown bridge across the Willamette River passes overhead, skipping the neighborhood altogether.
So if you're envisioning a neighborhood dominated by overhead bridges and interchanges, with many older warehouses that were built around the railroad tracks and the waterfront but no longer have proper access to either, and which can't quite figure out if it should remain a working industrial area or if it maybe has a future in post-indusrial lofts, breweries, and art galleries... then you'd be envisioning it about right.
I've spent a chunk of time in the neighborhood throughout the years: the science museum and the opera offices are both at the southern end of the neighborhood, one of Portland's queer centershas had a space not far from Hair of the Dog, I used to have regular professional dealings with various businesses down there, and there was a period that I used to regularly cut through the neighborhood on foot to get to the bridges because I didn't want to pay downtown parking. But even though I'd been in and through the neighborhood many, many times, all that's different than just having a ramble for a ramble's sake.
So, seeing that today was the last day of October, and it was silly to have not gotten around to it for two whole months, today I went down to the Eastside Industrial district and rambled around for a while, filling up the memory card on my camera. I had a perfectly lovely time, too -- thank you,kake!
Hair of the Dog Brewery. You can tell that the front window used to be a loading dock door, yes?
Across the street is Lippman party supplies, all decked out for Halloween.
Good to know SOMEONE sells sexy costumes! They are soooo hard to find! </snark>
Taken from a little farther up the street, looking back at Hair of the Dog from just beyond the railroad tracks. The older warehouse on the right is an office furniture liquidator, a moderately typical business for the area. Downtown skyscrapers (on the other side of the river) are in the background.
I like the architectural details on these older buildings, even the relatively modest ones.
Looking north along the railroad tracks. The nearer set of overhead roadways are access to and from the Morrison Bridge (and possibly I-5? not sure what the nearest roadbed is merging with); the ones in the far distance ought to be for the Burnside Bridge.
However, I went south along the railroad tracks. Largely because these two buildings caught my eye. (More detail for the mural and the ivy.
Once started along the railroad tracks, I mostly stayed on them. In none of my previous visits to the neighborhood had I ever seen the railroad-side of these buildings, and given that the railroad side used to be the raison d'etre for these warehouses, the railroad side was kinda interesting.
For instance, I never did figure out what this sign used to say. (I think maybe we're looking at two layers of signage?)
Not even from a distance did it become clear. Something about America there at the end, I think.
(ETA, courtesy ofdorothean: International Harvester of America. It's on the National Register of Historic Places.)
(Nowadays, by the way, it's the other two sides of that building that are important. The other two sides face the Morrison Bridge, and a telecomm company has painted a building-wide advertising mural on those sides.)
I'd often seen these rooftop mannequins from the Hawthorne Bridge, but had never known who had put them up there. Now I know. They sell store mannequins, among other things.
This is about as scenic as the Eastside Industrial district gets. In the distance are the KOIN Tower (left) and the Wells Fargo Center (right).
This appears to be Pratt and Larson's warehouse; they also have a big showroom building on the uphill side of the neighborhood, directly upstreet from this building. I saw a fair amount of forklift traffic between the two.
What I really liked about this building, though, was the faded sign on the side (Jacobs and Gile, Steel Jobbers, with a whole list of what products they carry), and those windows on the side.
This place would like you to know that they sell magnets. Also, they support the Oregon Ducks. I wouldn't be half-surprised if they were the source of the Oregon Ducks car-magnet-decal-thingies that we see filling I-5 between Portland and Eugene so many weekends of football season.
Brickwork detail from a building somewhere under the Hawthorne Bridge. A lot of the older buildings in Portland have crazy-quilt brick sidings on their non-official sides: apparently once upon a time there was a building boom that far outstripped brick supplies, and people used whatever they could scavenge, whether it matched in size and color or not (and mostly not). At a distance, I thought this was an example of that (although maybe this area predated that boom, because I never did see a true example of it?), but this is a lot more... regular... than that. I spent a while trying to figure out how this stretch of wall came to look like this, and I never did suss it out.
Railroad-track side of a severely run-down but originally somewhat grand building, fronting right against the contemporary approach to the Hawthorne Bridge...
...but when you go up onto the bridge, this is what you see on that building -- gargoyles! That's the second story, by the way. From what I could see, the first story was fairly grand, too, but I never did get back down under there to see properly.
(ETA, also on the National Register of Historic Places.)
Random roof detail of an unknown building, this one also fronting right against the bridge.
More rooftop mannequins. Different building. Just counting which roofs have mannequins, that store seems to have three buildings: a showroom and two warehouses.
Almost everyone with a wall or rooftop sign visible to drivers on the Hawthorne Bridge has sold the space to advertisers. Except these people.
The other side of the same sign. I tried later to figure out whose roof this sign was on, but they've got nothing at street level to identify who the occupants are. There's just an absolutely ancient "Mr. Formal" sign stuck in a dirty window.
Okay, this photo is going to interest none of you at all, but it was my big find of the day. This is the office that runs the downtown bridges! (Most of them -- Hawthorne, Morrison, Burnside, Steel, and Broadway -- open and close for boat traffic, and thus are staffed 24/7.) It's right underneath the Hawthorne Bridge. It amuses me that most other buildings can barely be bothered to tell you who the occupants are, but this one is plastered with signage telling you how to do everything.
If you go peek in that gaping wide doorway, you see this: a rigging board full of sample knots, right next to the fall protection harnesses. (Yes, when I go on a walk, I take pictures of knots and bricks. What can I say, I'm that kind of geek.)
While most of the neighborhood is very clearly industrial in origin -- even the spaces that have been converted into art galleries and the like -- every once in a while you run across something like this. Private apartments, I think.
Sanderson Safety's back stoop. That's three pallets and one shopping cart full of fire extinguishers. Not long after arriving in the neighborhood (when I had been photographing the mural, I think), I had remembered that I should have brought my fire extinguisher down for Sanderson to refill, darn it.
And no, I totally did not stand on the railroad tracks and take a photo of an oncoming freight train. I totally did not. And if my parents or my wife ask, I SUPER SUPER ESPECIALLY DID NO SUCH THING.
[1] "The" interstate, hah! This district is where I-5, the Seattle-to-California route, and I-84, the main route east out of the state, meet up. Once upon a time, the western side of the river was also dominated by a freeway, but that freeway was taken out and replaced with Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Some years ago, a multi-use path was put in on the east side of the river, too -- the Eastbank Esplanade, designed to link up with the westside park for a waterfront multi-use loop -- but the presence of I-5 makes it tricky to access the Esplanade from this neighborhood, even though it's just a hundred yards away. (return)
kake suggested starting at the Hair of the Dog brewery. Hair of the Dog is in the eastside industrial district, one of the older parts of Portland, but on the neglected, eastern waterfront (as opposed to the prosperous, western waterfront). The neighborhood is centered around a set of railroad tracks, and if it once had direct access to the water, it doesn't now -- the interstate runs at ground level between the neighborhood and the water. [1] There isn't much through-traffic in this neighborhood, either: every downtown bridge across the Willamette River passes overhead, skipping the neighborhood altogether.So if you're envisioning a neighborhood dominated by overhead bridges and interchanges, with many older warehouses that were built around the railroad tracks and the waterfront but no longer have proper access to either, and which can't quite figure out if it should remain a working industrial area or if it maybe has a future in post-indusrial lofts, breweries, and art galleries... then you'd be envisioning it about right.
I've spent a chunk of time in the neighborhood throughout the years: the science museum and the opera offices are both at the southern end of the neighborhood, one of Portland's queer centers
So, seeing that today was the last day of October, and it was silly to have not gotten around to it for two whole months, today I went down to the Eastside Industrial district and rambled around for a while, filling up the memory card on my camera. I had a perfectly lovely time, too -- thank you,
kake!Hair of the Dog Brewery. You can tell that the front window used to be a loading dock door, yes?
Across the street is Lippman party supplies, all decked out for Halloween.
Good to know SOMEONE sells sexy costumes! They are soooo hard to find! </snark>
Taken from a little farther up the street, looking back at Hair of the Dog from just beyond the railroad tracks. The older warehouse on the right is an office furniture liquidator, a moderately typical business for the area. Downtown skyscrapers (on the other side of the river) are in the background.
I like the architectural details on these older buildings, even the relatively modest ones.
Looking north along the railroad tracks. The nearer set of overhead roadways are access to and from the Morrison Bridge (and possibly I-5? not sure what the nearest roadbed is merging with); the ones in the far distance ought to be for the Burnside Bridge.
However, I went south along the railroad tracks. Largely because these two buildings caught my eye. (More detail for the mural and the ivy.
Once started along the railroad tracks, I mostly stayed on them. In none of my previous visits to the neighborhood had I ever seen the railroad-side of these buildings, and given that the railroad side used to be the raison d'etre for these warehouses, the railroad side was kinda interesting.
For instance, I never did figure out what this sign used to say. (I think maybe we're looking at two layers of signage?)
Not even from a distance did it become clear. Something about America there at the end, I think.
(ETA, courtesy of
dorothean: International Harvester of America. It's on the National Register of Historic Places.)(Nowadays, by the way, it's the other two sides of that building that are important. The other two sides face the Morrison Bridge, and a telecomm company has painted a building-wide advertising mural on those sides.)
I'd often seen these rooftop mannequins from the Hawthorne Bridge, but had never known who had put them up there. Now I know. They sell store mannequins, among other things.
This is about as scenic as the Eastside Industrial district gets. In the distance are the KOIN Tower (left) and the Wells Fargo Center (right).
This appears to be Pratt and Larson's warehouse; they also have a big showroom building on the uphill side of the neighborhood, directly upstreet from this building. I saw a fair amount of forklift traffic between the two.
What I really liked about this building, though, was the faded sign on the side (Jacobs and Gile, Steel Jobbers, with a whole list of what products they carry), and those windows on the side.
This place would like you to know that they sell magnets. Also, they support the Oregon Ducks. I wouldn't be half-surprised if they were the source of the Oregon Ducks car-magnet-decal-thingies that we see filling I-5 between Portland and Eugene so many weekends of football season.
Brickwork detail from a building somewhere under the Hawthorne Bridge. A lot of the older buildings in Portland have crazy-quilt brick sidings on their non-official sides: apparently once upon a time there was a building boom that far outstripped brick supplies, and people used whatever they could scavenge, whether it matched in size and color or not (and mostly not). At a distance, I thought this was an example of that (although maybe this area predated that boom, because I never did see a true example of it?), but this is a lot more... regular... than that. I spent a while trying to figure out how this stretch of wall came to look like this, and I never did suss it out.
Railroad-track side of a severely run-down but originally somewhat grand building, fronting right against the contemporary approach to the Hawthorne Bridge...
...but when you go up onto the bridge, this is what you see on that building -- gargoyles! That's the second story, by the way. From what I could see, the first story was fairly grand, too, but I never did get back down under there to see properly.
(ETA, also on the National Register of Historic Places.)
Random roof detail of an unknown building, this one also fronting right against the bridge.
More rooftop mannequins. Different building. Just counting which roofs have mannequins, that store seems to have three buildings: a showroom and two warehouses.
Almost everyone with a wall or rooftop sign visible to drivers on the Hawthorne Bridge has sold the space to advertisers. Except these people.
The other side of the same sign. I tried later to figure out whose roof this sign was on, but they've got nothing at street level to identify who the occupants are. There's just an absolutely ancient "Mr. Formal" sign stuck in a dirty window.
Okay, this photo is going to interest none of you at all, but it was my big find of the day. This is the office that runs the downtown bridges! (Most of them -- Hawthorne, Morrison, Burnside, Steel, and Broadway -- open and close for boat traffic, and thus are staffed 24/7.) It's right underneath the Hawthorne Bridge. It amuses me that most other buildings can barely be bothered to tell you who the occupants are, but this one is plastered with signage telling you how to do everything.
If you go peek in that gaping wide doorway, you see this: a rigging board full of sample knots, right next to the fall protection harnesses. (Yes, when I go on a walk, I take pictures of knots and bricks. What can I say, I'm that kind of geek.)
While most of the neighborhood is very clearly industrial in origin -- even the spaces that have been converted into art galleries and the like -- every once in a while you run across something like this. Private apartments, I think.
Sanderson Safety's back stoop. That's three pallets and one shopping cart full of fire extinguishers. Not long after arriving in the neighborhood (when I had been photographing the mural, I think), I had remembered that I should have brought my fire extinguisher down for Sanderson to refill, darn it.
And no, I totally did not stand on the railroad tracks and take a photo of an oncoming freight train. I totally did not. And if my parents or my wife ask, I SUPER SUPER ESPECIALLY DID NO SUCH THING.
[1] "The" interstate, hah! This district is where I-5, the Seattle-to-California route, and I-84, the main route east out of the state, meet up. Once upon a time, the western side of the river was also dominated by a freeway, but that freeway was taken out and replaced with Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Some years ago, a multi-use path was put in on the east side of the river, too -- the Eastbank Esplanade, designed to link up with the westside park for a waterfront multi-use loop -- but the presence of I-5 makes it tricky to access the Esplanade from this neighborhood, even though it's just a hundred yards away. (return)
