Portland, Oregon: The Impossible City

In February 1939, photographer Minor White set up his camera on Front Avenue in Portland, Oregon, to record a row of cast-iron buildings before they were demolished. In one negative the date on the Kamm Building reads 884. In another, taken the same year, it reads 1884. This is the first of two episodes on the old photographs, maps, and census records of Portland, and on the decade in which an entire city is supposed to have been built. What this episode covers: the two Minor White photographs of the Kamm Building and the archive numbers you can look up yourself; the confused record of who designed Portland's finest buildings; the 1858 street photo against the 1939 demolition photos; the 1890 bird's-eye map and the buildings on it that were not supposed to exist yet; the census figures from 1850 to 1900 and what they mean for construction labor; the 1873 fire and the "From the Ashes, Venice" entry; the photographs from the 1870s and 1880s that do not look new; the one photograph that contradicts all of this; and the 1845 map that places Portland four years before a painting shows the valley empty. Part 2 : Coming Soon Sources referenced: Oregon Historical Society digital collections (Minor White negatives, OrgLot52); the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum (x1980-160); City of Portland Archives (A2004-002.6715, A2004-002.7837, A2011-014.120); the 1890 bird's-eye view of Portland; Sidney E. Morse's 1845 map of the Willamette Valley; Paul Kane, Willamette Valley, c. 1849; U.S. Census figures for Portland and Salem; the Oregon Historical Society timeline; Wikipedia's Timeline of Portland, Oregon. Every item in this episode comes from a public archive. If you can reach something I could not, the comments are the research desk for this channel. #Portland #Oregon #OldPhotos #LostHistory