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before I delve into this 1920 geography and its aged delights, I wanted to show you all what I found in the inside front cover and also the front endpaper.
The owner and location of the book lovingly inscribed thereupon is what appears to be a light green ink in classic penmanship of the day:
The script parses as follows:
Marian Frances Milne
1317 E. 12th St North
Corner of Holman
Portland ore
Telephone: Walnut-1279
The addressing would seem quite nonsensical to a modern-day Portlander, but as I've pointed out, long long ago, the address system in Portland was quite different before the 1930s. Today, an address on NE 12th Avenue at Holman would be in the 6300s, and the expression of the street name would be much different: East 12th Street North reflects its location north of Burnside and on the east side of the river, but in those days, numbered streets outside of downtown were prefixed east and suffixed north if they were north of the Burnside baseline. The comparative small magnitude of the house number came from that there were only 20 house numbers to the block in those days.
But whether or not you grok how Portland laid out its house numbering prior to the Great Renaming of 1933, the careful penmanship is actually rather heartbreakingly beautiful. One can picture the nib varying the flow of ink with pressure.
Truly, art.
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