by Geon, Bryan
Irvington, Sabin, and the Lloyd District
Neighborhood Associations: Irvington, Lloyd District, Sabin, Sullivan’s Gulch
Stately Irvington (www.irvingtonpdx.com), a fashionable residential neighborhood in inner Northeast Portland, started its development in the late 19th century, when Portland’s streetcar system expanded to the Eastside; the neighborhood was essentially completely built-up by the end of the 1930s. The neighborhood’s first residents were generally middle-class tradespeople. (The city’s upper classes mainly lived on the more established Westside.) For many of these early residents, the house they built or bought in Irvington was the first home they had ever owned. Urban decay and rising crime in the 1960s and 1970s threatened the neighborhood’s livability, but a renaissance that began in the 1980s and gathered steam in the 1990s is now essentially complete. Irvington is no longer a starter-home neighborhood by any stretch of the imagination. The average home costs more than twice the average in the city as a whole. Despite the high prices of even a fixer (if you can find one), Irvington is so desirable that some developers are demolishing existing houses to put one (or usually two) brand-new houses on the lot.
Along with the standard Eastside assortment of bungalows, “Old Portlands” (foursquares), barn-like Dutch colonials, and English cottages and Tudor-style homes, Irvington has fine examples of other early late-19th- and early-20th-century styles: Spanish colonial pseudo-villas, Victorians, large arts-and-crafts mansions, prairie-style homes, and plantation-style colonial revival homes. The annual Irvington Home Tour (www.irvingtonhometour.com) held each May shows off a selection of the neighborhood’s historic houses. Not surprisingly, given the area’s high property values, most homes here have been renovated, and nearly all have been well-tended. The area between Northeast 7th and 15th Avenues, which tends to have slightly more modest homes, was once considered a bit dicey, and revitalization has occurred more slowly there; it is perhaps the only part of Irvington with a more than negligible stock of fixers. (The area is rumored to have been “redlined” by real estate agents for years.) Many of Irvington’s larger homes were turned into boarding houses for shipyard workers during the Second World War; most houses reverted to owner-occupied status after the war, but west of 15th Avenue many homes remained divided into two or three apartments. In addition, several apartment buildings, including lovely prewar walkup buildings but also some unattractive concrete structures, occupy the blocks just north of Northeast Broadway along the neighborhood’s southern fringe.
The reasons for Irvington’s popularity are obvious. It is a neighborhood of sidewalks, well-kept yards, gracious street trees, and attractive homes, yet it is remarkably close to downtown Portland—parts of Irvington are scarcely more than a mile away from the central business district. Much of the neighborhood is reasonable walking distance from the MAX stop at Lloyd Center or from the Moda Center arena. Few major streets run through the core of Irvington, and those that do, like Knott (which also boasts some of the neighborhood’s grandest homes) mainly carry neighborhood traffic, not commuters. These characteristics appeal to a wide range of buyers, from affluent empty nesters to families with children, who like the old-fashioned neighborhood vibe and the good-to-excellent set of public schools that serve Irvington. There is, however, only one park, Irving Park, in the neighborhood. The Irvington area has also become a popular choice for gay and lesbian couples in recent years.
Irvington
Although most of Irvington proper is residential—a few retailers on 15th Avenue and Fremont Street and a smattering of B&Bs notwithstanding—the neighborhood is within walking distance of several shopping districts. Northeast Broadway, which forms Irvington’s southern boundary, offers a dazzling array of shops, restaurants, bars, and services, ranging from independent bookseller Broadway Books to old-timey Helen Bernhard Bakery (since 1924, www.helenbernhardbakery.com). Although the Northeast Broadway strip is not as trendy as certain other shopping districts—we’re looking at you, Pearl District—it has a fair number of hip nightspots, such as the modernistic Pour Wine Bar & Bistro (www.pourwinebar.com) and the hip tiki bar (not a contradiction in terms, in this case) Hale Pele (www.halepele.com). The area just south of Broadway also includes the Lloyd Center mall and surrounding stores (see below). Moreover, the western half of Irvington is close to the burgeoning scenes on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Russell Street, the eastern half is within striking distance of Hollywood and Beaumont Village, and the northern tier is a short hop away from Alberta.
Northeast Fremont Street forms Irvington’s northern boundary. This area was somewhat derelict little more than a decade ago, but today a small commercial district has sprung up at 15th and Fremont. Here you’ll find a Whole Foods supermarket and a clutch of small shops and restaurants, such as County Cork Public House and, a few blocks to the east, the specialty nursery Garden Fever. These businesses are also represent the southern edge of the pleasant neighborhood north of Fremont, Sabin, which occupies the southern slope of Alameda Ridge. Both culturally and geographically, Sabin is a transition zone between Irvington and the funkier precincts of the Alberta Arts District. Homes in Sabin tend to be more modest and thus somewhat more affordable than those in Irvington, with a higher concentration of bungalows, foursquares, and English cottages, but average per-square-foot prices are only slightly lower. “Upper” Sabin, the area where the Alameda Ridge begins to rise, is dominated by the city’s enormous Vernon water tank; nonetheless, some homes in the tank neighborhood have good views of downtown Portland, and the area surrounding the tank has been turned into a small “hydropark.” The eastern part of the neighborhood blends fairly seamlessly into the lower part of the Alameda neighborhood. Sabin has a nice community feel and attracts many young families—Sabin School, the local elementary, is well-regarded—as well as straight and gay couples and some singles.
Sabin
The Lloyd District is sort of an auxiliary downtown on the east bank, tucked between Northeast Broadway and Interstate 84. The center of the neighborhood is Lloyd Center, the city’s oldest mall, which shelters the usual range of middlebrow stores. New mid-rise office buildings and hotels dominate the area to the west of the mall. Many of these hotels cater to attendees of events at the nearby Oregon Convention Center; the Moda Center arena (home court for the NBA’s Trail Blazers) and Memorial Coliseum are in the western portion of the Lloyd District, known as the Rose Quarter. Some condos and apartments, including new multistory buildings with views, along with the odd stranded house, provide residential options. There is plenty of construction going on in this area, and much more multifamily rental housing is on the way. While many Lloyd area residents love the convenience, some complain of high levels of perceived crime. (While you are unlikely to become a victim, for some reason the Lloyd District is a favorite locale for gang members to shoot each other.) Indeed, the Lloyd District has one of the highest crime rates in the city, but its predominantly commercial character perhaps unfairly causes the per-capita crime numbers to skew higher.
Lloyd District
To the east of Lloyd Center, the colorfully named Sullivan’s Gulch neighborhood is squeezed between Northeast Broadway and the bluff overlooking Interstate 84 and the adjacent train tracks. (Interstate 84 was built in the actual gulch during the 1950s.) The neighborhood offers a melange of old and new condos and apartment buildings, mixed with bungalows, foursquares and other older single-family homes, many of which have been beautifully restored. Some of the apartments stand on the edge of the gulch with the freeway and train tracks essentially in the backyard. The buildings a bit farther north tend to be quieter, and offer quick access to the shops and services along Broadway. Most residents here are renters, and Sullivan’s Gulch has some of the more affordable close-in rentals in town. As in other convenient Eastside neighborhoods, development has picked up here and new buildings are on the rise.
Sullivan’s Gulch
The southern half of this swath of Northeast Portland is ex
tremely well connected to the rest of the city, both by road and by transit. The Eastside MAX line runs through the Lloyd District, and connects with the Interstate MAX line at the Rose Quarter Transit Center. The CL streetcar line runs from downtown over the Broadway Bridge, and loops through the Lloyd District before heading south to OMSI. Bus lines run along Northeast Broadway, Fremont, MLK, 15th Avenue, and 24th Avenue. Access to downtown Portland by road is 5 to 15 minutes, depending on traffic, via the Broadway Bridge or the Steel Bridge. These neighborhoods also have easy access to Interstate 5 and Interstate 84.
Alameda, Grant Park, and Hollywood
Neighborhood Associations: Alameda, Grant Park, Hollywood
Between 18,000 and 12,000 years ago, glacial Lake Missoula (in present-day Montana) formed behind a tongue of the ice sheet that covered much of the inland Northwest. Periodically, the lake broke through this ice dam, unleashing massive floods, each of which carried the volume of about 60 Amazon Rivers. These floods repeatedly scoured the Columbia Basin and flowed downstream to the sea past the future site of Portland, carrying and depositing massive amounts of debris. (Eddies of the Missoula Floods reached all the way up the Willamette Valley, burying much of the land in hundreds of feet of silt.) One of the many effects of these floods was to create the rock-filled escarpment that is now known as Alameda Ridge.
The west end of the ridge rises in the Sabin neighborhood, and the crest runs east, just north of Fremont Street, eventually turning southeast to cross Fremont; it finally peters out in the Rose City Park neighborhood. The ridge’s southern slope is fairly steep—most streets wind up the ridge rather than tackling the grade head-on—while the more gentle northern slope descends gradually toward the Columbia River. The highest section of ridge, west of Northeast 33rd Avenue, is the heart of the Alameda neighborhood. The neighborhood features a mix of older houses—bungalows, English Tudors, colonial revival, and stucco-sided, tile-roofed mission revival homes—on tree-lined streets with sidewalks. The houses on the ridge itself or high up on the southern slopes tend to be grand, genre-busting homes (what do you call an enormous arts-and-crafts home with half-timbered details and stucco siding?), often with rich architectural detailing, and most offer tremendous views over the city to the south and west (and in some cases of the Cascades to the southeast). These houses rarely go on the market, and when one does it usually sells for a princely sum.
Alameda
Off the brow of the ridge, most Alameda houses are smaller (if not necessarily modest) and less expensive, although only compared to their ridgetop brethren; houses in Alameda in general are on average nearly twice the citywide figure, although prices are not rising as fast here as they are in some other neighborhoods. The houses north of the ridge tend toward the tidy bungalow model; some of these homes have views of Mount St. Helens from the upper floors. South of the ridge, housing styles are mixed, but English Tudors are more common, and homes on the southern slope are likely to have at least “territorial” views. More than 80% of Alameda residents own their homes, and houses are generally well-maintained and yards well-tended. Moreover, Alameda has a very low rate of violent crime; in some years, there are no reported violent crimes at all. The neighborhood is overwhelmingly residential, but most homes are within a reasonable walk of the shopping districts at Beaumont Village, further east on Fremont; Hollywood, about a half-mile south, or the Alberta Arts District, about a half-mile north of the ridge. While the area has numerous long-time and in many cases elderly residents, Alameda Elementary School, on Fremont Street, is one of the most sought-after grade schools in the city, and the area attracts young families who can afford to live here.
Adjacent Grant Park, at the southern foot of Alameda Ridge, is a similarly family-friendly neighborhood, also filled with bungalows, English Tudors, cottages, Dutch colonials, and the like (albeit generally smaller than those in Alameda, and on smaller lots). The neighborhood takes its name from the large park at its center, which offers a playground, tennis courts, off-leash dog park, and picnic tables; thanks to the presence of Grant High School, there is also a quarter-mile running track, tennis courts, and a swimming pool. Children’s author Beverly Cleary lived in the Grant Park neighborhood for much of her childhood, and several of her stories are set here. (Ramona “The Pest” Quimby lived on Klickitat Street.) Near the playground in Grant Park, a collection of bronze statues of several Cleary characters is set amid a children’s play fountain (a popular gathering place for neighborhood families on hot summer days).
Grant Park
Grant Park has tended to attract white-collar professionals in recent years, especially professionals with families: it has one of the highest concentrations of families on the Eastside, due not only to its quiet, walkable streets and the amenities of Grant Park, but also to the traditionally desirable cluster of schools that serve the neighborhood, culminating at convenient Grant High. (A bit of history: the former Hollyrood Elementary, at the north end of the park, barely survived threats of outright closure in 2006, despite having the highest standardized test scores in the entire metropolitan area during the 2005–06 school year; it emerged controversially in rump form as the K–1 campus of the former Fernwood K–8 school, which was renamed the Beverly Cleary School in 2008.) The school cluster has become so popular that the Hollyrood and Fernwood buildings are coping with student numbers substantially in excess of their design capacities.
West of 33rd Avenue, the Dolph Park area, while nominally part of the Grant Park neighborhood, is essentially a transition zone between Irvington to the west and Grant Park proper to the east. Spiffy new street signs identify the neighborhood, although the term is not widely used or recognized outside (or necessarily inside) the Dolph Park area. Homes here are generally larger than those in Grant Park, but date from the same era and come in a similar range of styles. This sub-neighborhood is on the whole somewhat quieter than Grant Park proper, mainly because of its greater distance from the high school.
With the exception of a few small professional offices and the QFC supermarket on Northeast 33rd Avenue, Grant Park is primarily residential. The library, shops, and restaurants of nearby Hollywood, however, are a short walk away. Cinematic-sounding Hollywood was named after the Hollywood Theatre (www.hollywoodtheatre.com), a 1926 movie palace that still stands (and still screens films and hosts special events) on Northeast Sandy Boulevard, Hollywood’s main drag. Sandy slices through Hollywood diagonally from southwest to northeast, creating oddly angled intersections where cross-navigation is difficult and building footprints go beyond squares and rectangles. As one of the city’s few grid-busting arteries, Sandy carries fairly heavy traffic. Perhaps partially for this reason, Sandy was once a notorious haunt of streetwalkers; that element has mostly vanished from Hollywood, and the street is rapidly improving. Sandy now features several cafés, shops, restaurants, and other (legitimate) service providers, as well as a hulking new mixed-use Whole Foods supermarket/condo combo. The streets south of Sandy have an increasing number of retail stores and other businesses, too, including a relocated Trader Joe’s; the Hollywood Farmers’ Market (www.hollywoodfarmersmarket.org) is held in the Grocery Outlet parking lot every Saturday morning from May through November, and twice a month through winter.
Hollywood
Several restaurants and other businesses cluster within a block or two to the north of Sandy; Fleur de Lis Bakery, in the old library building at 40th and Hancock, is a favorite neighborhood gathering place. The new, mixed-use Hollywood Library on Northeast Tillamook, which includes a Beverly Cleary–themed wall, stands in this area, as do a few smallish-scale condo and apartment buildings, including some nondescript 1960s-era apartments. Otherwise, the blocks between Sandy Boulevard and the foot of Alameda Ridge are filled mainly with 1920s-vintage bungalows, many of which have been restored beautifully. The homes tucked under the brow of Alameda Ridge north of Sandy Boulevard are shady in summer but can be a bit dark during winter. Hollywood has more rentals than in adjacent neighborh
oods; it is also busier and has a somewhat higher crime rate, although the neighborhood becomes progressively more quiet as one moves north from Sandy.
The neighborhoods of central Northeast Portland have generally good bus service along North Broadway, Fremont Street, 33rd and 42nd Avenues, and Sandy Boulevard; eastbound and westbound MAX service is available from the Hollywood/Northeast 42nd Avenue Transit Center. By car, these neighborhoods are a 10-minute drive from downtown Portland at off-peak hours, and the airport is only 15 to 20 minutes away.
Beaumont Village
Beaumont Village, Wilshire Park, and Rose City Park
Neighborhood Associations: Beaumont-Wilshire, Rose City Park
Although the name is often used for the surrounding neighborhood as well, Beaumont Village refers to the three-quarter-mile stretch of Northeast Fremont Street between 33rd and 50th Avenues, on the plateau just north of Alameda Ridge. The street is lined with upscale (and a few downscale) boutiques, several restaurants, a brew pub, a hardware store, and Beaumont Market, a high-end but well-loved neighborhood grocery. While Beaumont Village lacks the high hipness quotient of some other eastside neighborhoods, it has variety enough to suit most non-hipster needs. (The area surrounding Beaumont Village has more families with young children than, say, the Alberta area, and neighborhood businesses in general tend to be less edgy and more family-friendly.) Traditional one-story storefronts mix with oddities like the so-called Swiss House—a Tudor-style half-timbered building from the 1920s—and dramatic architectural statements like the hulking rust-colored block that is home to a Grand Central Bakery.