The Ziggurats From Four Miles Out: NE 57th And Sandy

3698Portland is a city which, to the Oregon mind, sprawls, but is still personal-sized. Herewith another example.

Portland's got an angle. It's not an insider's angle though, and it's easily findable by anyone on any map; it's called Sandy Boulevard. Starting at SE 7th and Washington and through the Parkrose district, where it more aligns with the Columbia River, Sandy Boulevard is a great diagonal. Rising from the east side center of town to what was once merely the northeast corner at about 30 degrees, it cuts through all walks of Portland life; from the affluent to the merely prosperous, it connects all.

It's more than five miles worth of fork intersections and small flat-iron shaped buildings, has one television studio, it's main-street Hollywood District, its a small clutch of Asian restaurants up near 72nd, the Pirate's Cove with the huge jug-shaped building, it's the good, the bad, the ugly, it's as iconic as any Portland arterial.

Portland's Wilshire Blvd, really, in a way.

It also surmounts the comparatively flat eastside's actually-rather-undulating geography. As one moves east from the Hollywood District's business center, you go up a very long climb, which levels out at NE 57th Avenue. Here, at the crest of the Alameda ridge, you look back the way you came, and you have an extraordinarily interesting POV on Portland's City Center. Thus:

This is just about four miles away from that red rocketship-shaped building. Iconic Portland landmarks you can see from here is that rocketship (the KOIN Center), and the stalwart Wells Fargo Tower on the right. Visible in front of the KOIN Center is the new Multnomah County Courthouse. Just to the right of that, recognizable by its tilted chapeau, is the Edith Green/Wendell Wyatt Federal Building. Right and alongside that is the bland striped buffness of One Main Place. That's the south side of downtown.

To my right here, out of shot, is a lawn and within that lawn is a plinth in front of the German-American Society, and at one time upon that plinth was a statue of George Washington, but then the protests came and began serious iconoclasm. The statue, pulled down, has been pulled off the field of play. We wish it well.