Big Pink from East 60th Avenue

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One thing I have never gotten tired of, having come through life from Silverton to Salem to Portland, is the sight of skyscrapers.

I absolutely love them. Besotted, you might say.

And one of the best things about them is the advancing view one gets from a distance. They seem truly majestic. 

Case in point.

I give you the USBancorp tower here in Portland, At 532 feet in height and 42 stories, it's the second-tallest building in Portland (and, thus, Oregon). Its footprint is that of a parallellogram, the west and east fronts being parallel with SW 5th and 6th Avenues and the north and south fronts with West Burnside. It respects its geography. Since Burnside runs a straight line between the east side and west, and the terrain is advantageous in more than one spot west of the shoulder of Mount Tabor, you get to see it get closer and closer as you do.

This, for starters, is the view down East Burnside from its intersection with E. 60th Avenue*

Straight ahead and on the left is our quarry. The color of the building itself has lent the name Big Pink to it, and since USBancorp really isn't much there anymore, it's a better name to call it, anyway.

This was lensed at about three miles out from ground zero (20 blocks to the mile). The next photo will about halve that.

* Since the directional changes at Burnside, there has, in my personal writings, been a convention to use both directionals, e.g. NE/SE 60th, but I've never liked the awkwardness of it. A convention has developed to simplify it to, in this case, "E 60th Ave", and this is one that TriMet has used for its MAX stations along Burnside for years, and it has a schematic simplicity to it as well as harkens back to when numbered streets east of the Willamette were simply referred to, south of the Burn, as "E", so I too will be adopting it from henceforth. This will be in references to intersections with E Burnside only.