Portland neighborhoods

Portland is a city of neighborhoods, and most of them were built for walking. The streetcar lines of the early 1900s laid out the east side in long grids of bungalows and foursquares, the West Hills filled with houses climbing toward Washington Park, and a few independent towns, St. Johns and Sellwood among them, were folded into the city and kept their main streets. This guide walks nineteen neighborhoods and says plainly what each one is: when it was built, what the houses look like, the streets and landmarks that define it, and who tends to love living there.

It leans toward architecture and history because that is what lasts. For the places worth knowing, see Portland places; for the practical side of Portland houses, from historic districts to property taxes, see the Portland housing guide. For architect-designed and historic homes in California, Debbie Pisaro's practice is at debbiepisaro.com.

Irvington

Irvington, in inner Northeast Portland, grew from the 1851 donation land claim of riverboat captain William Irving and his wife Elizabeth. The plat of Irvington was filed in October 1887, and lots were sold with deed restrictions aimed at an upscale residential market, among the earliest such covenants in the Portland area. The building boom that followed filled wide, tree-lined streets with Victorian, Craftsman and period revival houses.

The Irvington Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 22, 2010, and it is one of the City of Portland's designated historic districts, among the largest in Oregon. Irvington suits buyers who want a large early twentieth-century house, a front porch on a leafy street, and Broadway and Northeast 15th within walking distance.

Ladd's Addition

Ladd's Addition, in inner Southeast Portland, is the city's oldest planned residential development. William S. Ladd and Caroline Ladd filed the plat on October 26, 1891: 32 blocks on a diagonal plan that ignores the surrounding grid, with a central circle and four diamond-shaped rose gardens, Maple, Orange, Mulberry and Cypress, that are still planted today. The plan has survived essentially unchanged since it was platted.

Ladd's Addition was added to the National Register on August 31, 1988, and is a City historic district. Expect bungalows, foursquares and period houses on short, quiet blocks, with Hawthorne and Division a few minutes away on foot. It suits people who want a historic street plan, gardens at every turn and an inner-city address.

Laurelhurst

Laurelhurst was William S. Ladd's Hazel Fern Farm until 1909, when the Ladd estate sold it to the Laurelhurst Company, which laid it out as a garden suburb with curving streets, sandstone entry gates and Coe Circle at its center, where a gilded statue of Joan of Arc stands. Laurelhurst Park, designed in 1912 by park superintendent Emanuel Mische in the spirit of the Olmsted plan, became in 2001 the first city park listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Laurelhurst Historic District was accepted to the National Register in March 2019; most of its houses date from the 1910s and 1920s, in Colonial Revival, Craftsman and English Cottage styles. Laurelhurst suits buyers who want period houses on curving streets, with the park and its pond as the neighborhood's living room.

Places to know on the east side

Eastmoreland

Eastmoreland, in Southeast Portland, was platted in the streetcar era and built out mostly between 1910 and 1961, with half of its houses going up in the boom of 1920 to 1935. Its northern edge wraps around the Reed College campus. Eastmoreland Golf Course, laid out in 1917, and Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden, which opened in 1950 between the college and the golf course, frame the neighborhood.

The Eastmoreland Historic District was added to the National Register on December 7, 2022. The most common styles are English Cottage and Colonial Revival, mixed with Craftsman bungalows and early ranch houses. Eastmoreland suits buyers who want a quiet, period neighborhood with gardens, a golf course and a college for neighbors.

Sellwood-Moreland

Sellwood was its own city before it was a neighborhood: incorporated by the Oregon Legislative Assembly in 1889 and annexed by Portland in 1893. Oaks Amusement Park has operated on the Willamette here since 1905, and the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, established in 1988, protects the wetland between the bluff and the river. The antique shops along Southeast 13th Avenue gave the business district its reputation as Portland's Antique Row.

The housing is mostly bungalows and modest early twentieth-century houses on compact lots, with the river trail at the bottom of the hill. Sellwood-Moreland suits people who want a small-town main street, the river close by, and a little distance from the center of the city.

Alameda

Alameda sits on the Alameda Ridge, a long gravel bar left by the Missoula Floods at the end of the last ice age, and many of its houses look out over the city from the crest. The original Alameda Park plat was filed in 1909 by the Alameda Land Company, a group of Astoria businessmen, and today's neighborhood is stitched together from more than twenty separate plats. Like many Portland subdivisions of its era, the early deeds carried restrictions, including racial covenants that are no longer enforceable.

Expect Arts and Crafts houses, foursquares and period revival homes on winding ridge-top streets. Alameda suits buyers who want views, character houses and an easy walk down to the shops on Fremont and Broadway.

Grant Park

Grant Park is Beverly Cleary country. The author grew up nearby and played in the park, and Klickitat Street, home to Henry Huggins and Ramona Quimby, runs a few blocks north. The Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden, bronze figures of Ramona, Henry and his dog Ribsy by Portland artist Lee Hunt around a splash fountain, was dedicated on the west side of the park on October 13, 1995.

The surrounding streets hold Craftsman, foursquare and period revival houses. Grant Park suits families who want a big neighborhood park and a classic Northeast Portland street.

Faces of Portland: the people behind the neighborhoods

Hawthorne and Richmond

Hawthorne Boulevard was known as Asylum Avenue from the 1860s into the 1880s, after Dr. J. C. Hawthorne's Oregon Hospital for the Insane, and later took his name. The Bagdad Theater, designed by Lee Arden Thomas, opened on Hawthorne on January 14, 1927, and still anchors the boulevard. Richmond, to the south, runs down to Division Street, another of the east side's busy main streets.

The houses are mostly bungalows, foursquares and Old Portland-style homes on a tight grid, mixed with small apartment buildings along the corridors. Hawthorne and Richmond suit people who want to walk to vintage shops, restaurants and a neighborhood movie house.

Alberta Arts District

The Alberta Arts District runs about a mile and a half along Northeast Alberta Street, from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to 33rd Avenue. In the 1990s, residents and artists organized to revive the street; the first art walk was held in 1997, and Last Thursday, the monthly street gathering of art and makers, grew from it. Long a center of Portland's Black community, the street has also been at the center of the city's conversations about gentrification and displacement.

Around the street are bungalows, foursquares and small cottages, with newer infill. The Alberta Arts District suits people who want galleries, murals and restaurants at the end of the block.

Mississippi and Boise

The Boise neighborhood, named for Reuben P. Boise, was part of the city of Albina, which joined Portland in 1891. From the 1910s on, Boise and the wider Albina area became home to much of Portland's Black community, with Black-owned businesses, churches and institutions along North Williams and Mississippi Avenues. In recent decades North Mississippi Avenue has become one of the city's busiest restaurant and shopping streets, a change that has displaced many longtime residents.

The Mississippi Conservation District is one of the City's six conservation districts, all created under the 1992 Albina Community Plan, and its older houses and storefronts carry neighborhood-level historic protections. Mississippi and Boise suit people who want a lively main street, older cottages and bungalows, and fast access to downtown.

St. Johns

St. Johns was an independent city from 1903 until 1915, when voters in St. Johns and Portland approved its annexation, which took effect on July 8, 1915. The St. Johns Bridge, designed by David B. Steinman, opened on June 13, 1931; Cathedral Park, on the riverbank below it, is named for the pointed Gothic arches of the bridge's piers.

St. Johns still feels like its own town, with a compact downtown, older bungalows and cottages, and the North Portland peninsula all around. It suits people who want a small-town center, river access and a bridge that never gets old.

Kenton

Kenton was developed from about 1909 by Swift and Company, the meatpacking firm, as an industrial community for its workers near the stockyards. The Kenton Commercial Historic District along North Denver Avenue, built mostly between 1910 and 1949 and known for its ornamental concrete block buildings, was listed on the National Register in 2001 and is a City historic district; the surrounding blocks form the Kenton Conservation District.

The 31-foot statue of Paul Bunyan at the end of Denver Avenue went up in 1959 for the Oregon Centennial Exposition. Kenton suits buyers who want a small main street, modest early twentieth-century houses and a quick ride on the MAX Yellow Line.

Nob Hill and the Alphabet District

In Northwest Portland the cross streets run in alphabetical order, Burnside, Couch, Davis and on north, which gave the Alphabet District its name. The Alphabet Historic District, roughly between West Burnside and NW Marshall from NW 17th to NW 24th, was added to the National Register on November 16, 2000, and is a City historic district. Its significant buildings range from the 1870s to the 1940s: Queen Anne houses, Craftsman homes and early apartment buildings.

Nob Hill centers on NW 23rd Avenue, with NW 21st as its second main street, and Forest Park rises behind the neighborhood. It suits people who want Victorian architecture, apartment living and shops and restaurants at the door.

Pearl District

The Pearl District grew up beside the rail yards as a district of warehouses and light industry, and since the 1980s has become a neighborhood of galleries, restaurants and condominiums in converted warehouses and new buildings. The NW 13th Avenue Historic District, with its loading docks and warehouse facades, is one of the City's historic districts.

Powell's City of Books fills a full city block at West Burnside and 10th, and Jamison Square's stepped fountain draws families in summer. The Pearl suits people who want a walkable, urban condominium life close to downtown and the streetcar.

Goose Hollow

Goose Hollow, one of Portland's oldest neighborhoods, takes its name from the hollow carved by Tanner Creek, which got its own name from Daniel Lownsdale's tannery of 1845. The creek was buried long ago and the gulch filled, and Providence Park now stands on part of its old course. The Vista Bridge, built in 1926, still spans the remaining canyon to King's Hill.

The neighborhood mixes older apartment buildings, condominiums and houses on the slopes, with MAX light rail running through it. Goose Hollow suits people who want to walk downtown and to a match at Providence Park.

Arlington Heights and King's Hill

Arlington Heights is bordered by Washington Park and Hoyt Arboretum, and the park, which began with land the city bought from the King family in 1871, holds the International Rose Test Garden, founded in 1917 and the oldest continuously operated public rose test garden in the United States, and the Portland Japanese Garden, which opened in 1967. The first house in Arlington Heights was built in 1911.

Just below, the King's Hill Historic District, between West Burnside, SW Canyon Road, SW 21st and the park, was added to the National Register on February 19, 1991, and is a City historic district; most of its houses and apartment buildings date from the boom after the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition. These neighborhoods suit buyers who want hillside houses with a world-class park as the backyard.

Portland Heights

Portland Heights climbs the West Hills south of Washington Park, and in its first years the easy way up was a cable car on Vista Avenue, running by the 1890s. In 1906 the streetcar company extended its Portland Heights line in a loop to the top of Council Crest, and in 1907 it opened an amusement park at the summit, with a merry-go-round and a scenic railway, that operated until 1929. Streetcars kept climbing the hill until the middle of the century.

The houses came in two building booms, the first in the early 1900s and the second in the 1920s, on irregular hillside lots that allowed a wide range of shapes and styles. Around Vista Avenue and Montgomery Drive, Tudor and Georgian-influenced houses from the late 1920s and 1930s sit in deep, well-kept gardens. Council Crest Park, at about 1,073 feet one of the highest points in the city, looks east to the Cascade peaks on a clear day. Portland Heights suits buyers who want an older hillside house, winding streets and a view.

Portland 411: parks, services and city basics

Mount Tabor

Mount Tabor Park sits on an extinct volcanic cinder cone, part of the Boring Lava Field, and its open reservoirs date to 1894 and 1911. Park superintendent Emanuel Mische consulted with John C. Olmsted on the park's naturalistic design. Mount Tabor Park and its reservoirs were added to the National Register in 2004, and the City lists both the Mount Tabor Park and Mount Tabor Reservoirs historic districts.

The streets around the butte hold bungalows, foursquares and mid-century houses, many with western views from the slopes. Mount Tabor suits people who want a volcano for a park, stairs and trails for a workout, and quieter residential streets.

Multnomah Village

Multnomah Village, in Southwest Portland, grew around a station of the Oregon Electric Railway, which began service between Portland and Salem in January 1908 and named the stop Multnomah. The village along SW Capitol Highway developed its own post office, shops, school and bank, and was annexed into Portland piecemeal beginning around 1950.

The village keeps a small-town main street, with bungalows, mid-century houses and wooded lots on the hills around it. Multnomah Village suits people who want a village center, trees and a short drive downtown.

How to choose among Portland neighborhoods

Start with the house you want, then find the neighborhood that built it. Victorians and early apartment houses are in the Alphabet District and King's Hill. Craftsman bungalows and Old Portland foursquares fill Irvington, Laurelhurst, Hawthorne, Richmond, Grant Park and Alameda. English Cottage and Colonial Revival houses are strongest in Eastmoreland and Laurelhurst. Warehouse lofts and new condominiums are in the Pearl.

Then think about daily life. Nob Hill, the Pearl, Hawthorne, Alberta and Mississippi are walkable and busy; Eastmoreland, Laurelhurst, Arlington Heights and Portland Heights are quieter. In historic and conservation districts, exterior changes and demolitions can require City review, which protects the streetscape and is worth understanding first. The City's historic, conservation and National Register districts page lists every one.

Coastline 840 is the California brand Debbie Pisaro founded for house-by-house work across the state. Read more on coastline840.com, or see selling a Portland home: what to know.

Debbie Pisaro, California real estate agent, DRE #01369110. Coastline 840 is a DBA of Side, Inc., CA DRE #02014153, responsible broker. Debbie is not licensed in Oregon. A 24-year California real estate veteran and Inman Luxury Leader. Read more about Debbie or get in touch. CA DRE #01369110 · Coastline 840 · Side, Inc. CA DRE #02014153 · Not licensed in Oregon