Portland's Lost Waterfront

Harry and Annie Lynch, a Couple of the Portland Waterfront's Obscure (and Comparatively Gentle) Crimps From the 1882 Portland Directory  Not everyone in the business of shipping sailors operated in a nefarious manner. When Jim Turk stopped using the name “Sailor’s Home,” H. J. Lynch, the hosteller who operated the old Keystone House on Front Street decided to enter the sailor’s boardinghouse business, changing the name of his establishment to “The New Sailor’s Home.” Harry Lynch was a well-liked, amiable fellow who was one of the fortunate males of the area—he had a woman. A woman didn’t have to be a beauty to be desirable in the far west, when they were greatly outnumbered by men, but judging from the commotion she caused, Annie must have been of somewhat above average looks. Harry and Annie managed to stay in business for over twenty years without ever bringing the wrath of the law down on them for shanghaiing, or any other illegal activity connected with sailo...

The Claire in 1951, Ben Maxwell Collection, 7990, Salem Public Library From time to time one hears the indescribably lovely sound of a steam whistle echo from the river to the West Hills. Usually this is a vintage railroad locomotive, or, if it is the month of December, the Columbia River Sternwheeler pulling away from the dock at Caruthers Landing (by OMSI) for a holiday cruise. Of course I am prejudiced, but I think the most beautiful of all the whistles is the one on the steam tug, Portland , the home of the Oregon Maritime Museum—rarely heard, but a real treat. Now consider this, around the year 1900 there were riverboats arriving from (or embarking to) all points on the Willamette and Columbia Rivers throughout the day and night. At that time Union Station had about 100 trains passing through every day. Portland was alive with the sound of steam whistles, the same way the area around the Brooklyn rail yard is treated to the constant blasts of switch engine horns t...

Oregon Ozone (Recycled)  1 My grandfather, Reuben Blalock was born in 1869 “up a holler” in the great Smokey Mountains of North Carolina. He did some “book learning,” and memorizing scripture, and when he was still a youngster he loved to join in the hot debates that raged in the hill country following the War Between the States. The debates he loved the most were of an ecclesiastical nature, dealing with the “signs of the true church.”  Thomas, his older brother, had taught him to look for the “landmarks of faith” that distinguished the “true Baptists,” from the worldly imposters—like those of the Southern Baptist Convention. Thomas then went to China, leaving Reuben to hold fast to the things he had received. Around 1890 Reuben came west to see if he could work for his uncle Niles, who was a big rancher in Walla Walla.  He also owned an island in the Columbia River, and a ranch, up a canyon in the Gorge, that both bare his name. It seems that Niles (or N.G. as he li...

When I first started working on the waterfront, back in the 1970s, I didn’t realize I was coming into a scene that was rapidly disappearing. With the exception of the automobile docks in Saint Johns and Rivergate, Portland docks did not have much in the way of guards at the gate. I should mention, Terminal 4 had a guard gate, but it was rarely occupied, and when it was, no one stopped to be checked in. This means that one of the regular sights was some vehicle—either a taxi cab, or a Cadillac, or an old beater—filled to the brim with prostitutes headed for the ship. A regular visitor (and one who took the bus) was a pitiful woman, known as “Penny dirty legs.” Her mother had been a prostitute, or so it was told, who brought her daughter with her on the job. It is hard to say how old Penny was, somewhere between 30 and 50, but it was obvious she was mentally undeveloped—probably from being abused her entire life. By the 1970s the great majority of the vessels were Liberian flag, ow...

Where: Portland Museum of Modern Art, 5202 North Albina (located in Mississippi Records)  When: Now through November 24, 2013 http://portlandmuseumofmodernart.com/Mr-Otis-October   “The man who made Grandma Moses blush.” (Joseph Rambo) “Van Gogh had one ear, Mr. Otis has two.” (Bennett Cerf)“I am convinced this character uses a brush while painting.” (Therese Pol, L’Art Magazine) The Portland Museum of Modern Art I have written about Stuart Holbrook in this blog before, and some may have the idea that I don’t hold him in admiration. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just because I am opposed to writers of history taking his fictional folk tales as fact does not mean I didn’t enjoy reading them. The man was, above all, a caricaturist, and the hyperbole he poured out on Portland—past and present—was very entertaining, and meant with a sly wink and a nudge (figuratively speaking). It is highly unlikely that anyone would have heard of Joe "Bunko...