Connections

The announcement that Tucson Arizona has placed an order for seven streetcars from Oregon Iron Works is another significant step in the establishment of the Portland region as the leader in a new American streetcar manufacturing industry. Cincinnati, Houston, Denver, Salt Lake City and Charlotte are known to be considering following suite, but another recent news story has implications that, if pursued, could bring Portland's modern streetcars forefront on the national stage.





On May 24th, New York City began a pilot project that removed automobile traffic through Times Square on Broadway between 47th and 42nd streets, and again at Herald Square between 35th and 33rd, to form large pedestrian plazas. It creates an opening for a modern streetcar line that would enhance the pedestrian experience at the same time maintaining through traffic on the Great White Way.

A streetcar line added to the mix, say from 47th to 33rd, would serve both as a pedestrian circulator within the plazas and as a connector between Times and Herald Squares. A new, clean surface transportation option would emerge in the center of Manhattan. To do it, two-way traffic would have to be restored on the isolated portion of Broadway, bracketed by the plazas between 42nd and 35th.

It could be the start of something much larger. Additional improvements, already planned, include separate bike lanes and pedestrian promenades between Columbia Circle at 59th and a new plaza at 23rd. They hint that changes have only started on Broadway and that the street, always outside the grid, has a very different future than its conforming neighbors. It's easy to foresee a super-Ramblas between Central and Battery parks. Tied together by a modern streetcar line, it would be the world's ultimate green boulevard.

I know where they can get the streetcars.



The prototype Oregon Iron Works streetcar, the first modern streetcar built in the United States, at the Portland Streetcar's shop complex where it has joined the 10 Czech built cars in the fleet. May 31 2009.




Third Avenue Railway car #562 on the Broadway Line through Times Square in 1946. A 1930's edict by Mayor LaGaurdia's administration stipulated that buses would replace streetcars by 1960. No new streetcars were purchased by the Third Avenue Railway thereafter. Ironically, Portland's 1932 order of Brill-built streetcars, nicknamed "the Broadway cars" for the line of their initial use, were more modern than anything that ever ran on its much larger namesake.

Third Avenue Railway's Broadway line intersected with short, busy "crosstown" lines that crossed Manhattan like rungs on a ladder at 42nd, 59th, 125th, 138th, 149th, 163rd, 167th, 180th and 207th Streets. It was abandoned in 1948, the same year as Portland's Broadway line.

Twitter 1915

Dorothy S. We are expecting a friend to dine here with us this evening.
July 11 1915 4:30 PM from postcard.





A proto-tweet! (59 characters) sent by Dorothy S. from Portland Oregon's Hotel Multnomah to Miss Ertie Baily, 1311 Somerset Ave, Windber Pennsylvania on July 11 1915 at 4:30 in the afternoon.

Klamath Falls Oregon, June 26 1927

CARNIVAL PIGMY DIES

King Dodo Dies in Show Tent at Klamath Falls.

KLAMATH FALLS , Or June 26 - The king is dead! And now there is no king. The monarch in question was King Dodo, a pygmy 19 inches tall and 56 years old. He died last night in the arms of the sword swallower under the big top of a carnival company showing here. He was stricken just as the show was starting.

King Dodo, whos real name was John Taylor, 56, had been a side-show attraction all his life. His home was in Los Angeles and his body will be sent there for burial.

-Clipping from an unknown newspaper dated June 27 1927, found in a book.

What Happened in Vegas...

From the back of this postcard, dated November 2nd 1951:

The new Thunderbird Hotel, five minutes from the heart of Las Vegas, Nevada, Americas newest and most luxurious desert hotel, a miracle of modern comfort in the heart of the scenic west.

"Dear Greta and Al:
We arrived home last night after a two days business trip to Las Vegas. Stopped at this very modern- and swank hotel and night club- but Larry was all business for the bank. We were well shocked and shaken by the Atomic Bomb Blast yesterday at 7:20 am before we left the hotel. Saw the cloud later in the sky. The weather was ideal in the desert..."

Favorite Pictures of 2008

The start of a new year seems as good a time as any to revive this project. With that in mind I borrowed, no, I stole a page from Alexander Craghead's playbook and chose ten of my favorite photographs to share.

As an organizational framework or a unit for reflection, a calendar year is arbitrary but it is more or less shared by everyone.
I can't pretend that I left 2008 happier than I entered it.
I'm not alone.

Photography wise 2008 marks a return of sort. It is the year I went truly digital by purchasing a Canon Rebel XSI. It allows the flexibility I have missed since my film Canon Elan and Canon AE-1 cameras were supplanted by my digital Sony Cybershot point and shoot.
I like to think I will still shoot film with my two older Canons.
Yes, I like to think that.

My ten favorite photographs from 2008? Not really. Like on Spinal Tap, this one goes to eleven...





Portland Oregon, Fuller's Coffee Shop, April 3, 2008.

Every time I walked by Fuller's (established in 1947) at night, I would think to my self that this Hopperesque scene would make a good picture. One night I had I happened to have the point and shoot with me.





Port Townsend Washington, October 12, 2008.

Why haven't I been to Port Townsend before? Scenic and architecturally frozen in the 1890s, it is also a true sister city to Portland (co-founded by Francis W."tails we name it Portland" Pettygrove).
We stayed in room #15 the Water Street Hotel in the 1889 N.D. Hill Building, which had a deck facing east. I woke up at sunrise to see the ferry Steilacoom II arriving from Whidbey Island with the North Cascades in the distance. I got out of bed, grabbed the camera and ran out on the deck. Outside it was thirty two degrees. I had no shoes on.




Portland Oregon, The Paul Bunyon Statue, April 3, 2008.

Paul Bunyon, so close and yet so far from ever seeing the tiny naked ladies across Interstate Avenue at the Dancin' Bare (not Bear as the sign so succinctly explains).




Portland Oregon, Gus J. Solomon Courthouse, December 5, 2008.

It was very quiet in the little known art deco styled post office inside the Gus J. Solomon courthouse. At first, I thought the Bush and Cheney portraits and the pop machine muddied the scene, which has the feel of times slow, steady march into history. At first.





Lincoln City Oregon, June 20, 2008.

We had no idea that this would be our last trip to the coast with Robin. I like to think of the good years we had with her rather than being sad that she is not around. I am not always successful.




Portland Oregon, Albina Yard, October 26, 2008.

The smokestack was built by the Northern Pacific Terminal Company in 1887, which became under control Oregon Railway & Navigation Company (Union Pacific) in 1890. Albina then was a separate city which would merge along with East Portland into Portland in 1891. The cabooses were built in 1979. In 29 years that followed, Union Pacific expanded through mergers from 9,807 miles to 33,141 miles and the caboose has been all but vanished from railroading. The locomotives were built in 2002 and 2005. One picture, three centuries on the Union Pacific.






San Francisco California, Vesuvio Cafe, July 22, 2008.

Beer at Vesuvio! The Beats, City Lights Bookstore, the Tosca Cafe across the street. A warm night, live jazz from multiple directions. The cryptic "We are itching to get away from Portland Oregon" painted over the entry way. Time is paper thin, it can almost be crossed over at will. Perfect- except for Jack Kerouac Alley. Kerouac saw Adler Alley, we see history labeled for rubes and squarejohns. Disney, meet the Beats. Still, it was Vesuvio, and the beer was good.




Buellton California, The Dining Cars Cafe, July 20, 2008.

I saw it for a second and a half at 70 mph on Highway #101. An abandoned diner made from old Los Angeles Railway streetcars. How on earth did they get there? I passed a exit that could have lead us back and continued on toward Morrow Bay. Minutes and miles later I was still thinking about it.
A diner made of old streetcars, how cool was that?
I would have to come back later. Then I realized; for all intents and purposes, there would be no later.
"We have to go back..."
Jill was fine with that.





Portland Oregon, the Blagen Block, November 30, 2008.

I have been interested in Portland's cast-iron architecture for a long time, but 2008 was the year I honed in on the what is essentially a lost city hidden in plain site: Portland's original riverfront downtown of the 1870s through early 1890s; a place very different than any other city in the Northwest of the time.
Out of this interest grew the possibility of a book that places what is left of that city in context with what is gone, a tour through time as it were, which I am sketching out.
Then I heard about development plans that would change zoning heights in the district. This lead to involvement with a ad hoc citizens group to protect the Skidmore Old Town National Historic District, and to my post "Stewardship" on my Portland history blog, Cafe Unknown.





Portland Oregon, the Samjohn Amity, November 30, 2008.

A half mile from where Captain John H. Couch declared "To this very point, to this exact point I can bring any ship than can get into the mouth of the Columbia River, And not, sir, a rod further." thus placing Portland on the worlds commercial map, ships still call.
The Samjohn Amity is seen loading grain at O Dock, taken from the Steel Bridge, directly across the river from Couch's Addition, where once John H. Couch lived and shot ducks in the marsh from his front porch at the present site of Union Station.





San Simeon California, Hearst Castle, July 21st 2008.

We rode the tour bus up the winding road into the Santa Lucia Range to William Randolf Hearst's mega-folly overlooking the Pacific. The castle was shrouded in morning fog as the tour began, but by the time we reached the Neptune Pool the sun was breaking through the mist which cast everything in an unearthly glow. I was like a fruit fly circling around the tour group as I tried to capture it.