25 May 2020

SW 4th And Harrison

3679
The street blade set caught my eye because there is something so pleasantly urban about the way it contrasts against the new-as-new-can-be building behind it. I also like that the block is 1850, not an even number; an address quirk about Portland I'm happy to say that they can't get rid of.


This is in the part of the city center that's south of SW Market St, which is the 1600 block south of West Burnside. SW Harrison St is three blocks south of that, but instead of a full block it only gets a half block; 1850 instead of 1900.

There's a reason for this, and it has to do with the end of canted downtown blocks, which align to the river, and the part beginning at SW Lincoln St, which is the 2100 block, which runs more cardinally east-west and begins the more cardinally-oriented grid south from there. Lincoln was designated 2000; SW Mill St, one south of Market, was designated 1700; SW Montgomery, 1800, SW Harrison, 1850; SW Hall, 1900; SW College, 1950; SW Jackson, 2000; SW Clifton, 2050. These all occupy a wedge of land which starts narrow on the east and widens as you go west at the point there the grid straightens out, and while the streets continued to march southward at the rate of one every 220 feet, the north-south address blocks on the numbered avenues were stretched to fill by 2 every hundred numbers, to even out at 2100 by the time they, either notionally or physically, crossed Lincoln Street.

Not all of these streets exist on the ground, of course; a great many were erased by urban renewal in the 1960s, construction of the Stadium Freeway and, in some places, ground too steep to build a street on. But it's a fun pattern to suss out.

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