Historic Photo Archive

09/02/2020

09/02/2020

Portland’s first Black policeman.
George Hardin wearing his badge shortly after his appointment as a Multnomah County Deputy Sherrif in March, 1915. A Kewpie doll is attached to his radiator cap.
Since 1896, Hardin drove the Portland Police patrol wagon and had been a jailer. In 1914, Oregon voters approved a liquor prohibition law, and in March 1915 Multnomah county hired 20 additional deputies, inclucing Hardin. Prohibition in Oregon took effect beginning 1916, three years before the rest of the nation. Prohibition enforcement kept Hardin busy with liquor raids and smuggling busts.

07/11/2014

Moving the photo archive to the Sellwood neighborhood from St. Johns. The office, drum scanners and collection of Portland city directories are now in a remodeled storefront at 8326 SE 17th. Over the course of this month all the filing cabinets, shelves, library and of course the darkroom are moving. I expect we will be fully functional by August.

04/18/2014

Lost Oregon Live on Film event last night.
At the Hollywood theater last night, old movie films of Oregon from the collections of event organizer Dennis Nyback, Gary Lacher and myself were projected to an enthusiastic audience. Byron Beck, Brian Libby and Ted Kaye were the commentators, who along with the audience, identified numerous scenes as they passed by on screen. This frame is from a Kodachrome 16mm home movie of the Front Street buildings before they were demolished in June 1941 to make way for Harbor Drive, a six lane highway which is now Waterfront Park. In this frame, the Dodd building is on the left, on the right is the Cook block. this is the general area of Front and Ankeny where the Steel Stage is. the Burnside bridge would be to the left and Skidmore fountain is behind the photographer.

04/14/2014

Over the weekend we remodeled our gallery in Wheeler Station, the largest vintage store on the Oregon Coast. Wheeler is on the Nehalem Bay six miles south of Manzanita. The location is thirty miles south of Cannon Beach, or the same distance north of Tillamook. For the last six years we’ve showcased our best Oregon Coast photos here. The remodel has doubled our capacity to show prints and we are now exhibiting historic photos of Washington State, Oregon, California and the American West. The Portland selection has unpublished photos of the Beatles, Elvis and many other famous people from the original negatives of newspaper photographers. Regular size photos are ten dollars. Cathie Stimac took this photo yesterday.

01/04/2012

1930s Oregon Mountain Climbing photos used to decorate Ralph Lauren store on Madison Avenue at 72nd Street in New York in the mens department for their winter clothing area. Historic Photo Archive supplied twelve prints which are currently on display there. The prints were made from glass plate and nitrate negatives dating from the first half of the twentieth century. They were photographed on Mt. Hood and Mt. Jefferson.

12/30/2011

Pagoda Restaurant. June 4, 1952. 3839 NE Broadway. Pagoda closed December 31, 2008 after 68 years in operation. The building was stripped of its facade and remodeled as a Key Bank. The facade was colored by lead based paint and could not be preserved because of the hazards

12/19/2011

Polite way of saying NO TRUCKS is soo Portland.
April 2, 1953. Terwilliger Boulevard.

12/19/2011

Portland's oldest structure in 1950
According to a caption published in Oregonian January 22, 1950 pg. 23: "This two-story brick building, 320 SW 1st avenue, built in 1869, is believed oldest commercial structure in the city." and in the text: "Courthouse records do not show who built and owned the building at 320 SW 1st avenue in 1860. But Title & Trust company records show that in 1865 it was acquired by Jacob H. Seller." (

12/04/2011

What happened to Portland's Oldest House? in 1950, the Oregonian was celebrating their 100th birthday. As Portland's oldest business, they did an article considering what other old establishments were in Portland. They also looked at the oldest buildings. According to documents they examined, this house at 936 SE Pine was the oldest in the city. "In 1860 the property was owned by James B. Stephens, who then owned the entire block on which it was situated, and that in 1862 it was sold to William S. Ladd, pioneer Portland merchant and banker."
Of all the buildings this article mentioned that predate the Pioneer Courthouse (1875), as far as I can tell none of them are in existence anymore.

11/03/2011

This is a photo taken in 1949 showing the interior of Portland's venerable burlesque house, the Star Theater, on NW 6th. Avenue. The audience is watching Hermie Rose and The Pepperbox R***e, a collection of st*****rs and comedians. What surprised me is the diversity of the audience of about a hundred people. Approximately 20% are women. There are at least three Black people, showing that this theater was non-segregated. There are many youngsters who appear underage, the one boy standing in the aisle looks to be about five years of age. The show featured at least six women st*****rs and three male comedians.
The Star is now reopened, its been remodeled and restored. Its probably one of the longest running burlesque houses in the region, starting just before the outbreak of World War 2 and continuing until the late 1980s. Tempest Storm and Courtney Love are among the more famous st*****rs to appear there. The building itself is exactly 100 years old this year.
Segregation was common in Portland theaters during the 1940s. Some like McElroys Ballroom would have alternating nights for Blacks and Whites. I remember when I used to work as a sound engineer that whenever we would do a concert at the old Fox Theater on Broadway, we would pick the lock to a door on the second balcony and go up a steep stairway to the the then-entombed "colored" seating section. It was so high up that the seats were raked nearly vertical. The men's room had tin troughs to urinate in. The ticket booth for the colored people was still there at the bottom of the stairway. It looked to me like the colored seating section was walled off and entombed by a false ceiling below it during the 1954 remodeling.
The photographer was Al Monner, staff photographer for the Oregon Journal. He and reporter Larry Howes were doing a story about the Star Theater. I did check the microfilms to try and find this, but as fate would have it, the story was never published because all of Portland's newspapers were struck by the printers union and for two weeks afterwards no newspapers were printed.

11/03/2011

This is a suitable example of what is wrong with the Willamette River. Taken in 1967, it shows the Port of Portland dredge sucking up material from one of the most contaminated points on the entire river, and piping the material over to virgin wetland on Mock's Bottom. This is when Portland was filling the wetland to make it an industrial park. Mock's bottom is now contaminated with PCBs, asbestos, hydrophobic contaminants and lead from the ship repair yards at the end of Swan Island. The land will probably never be clean since buildings, parking lots and roads cover it. (aerial photo by Hugh Ackroyd, August 25, 1967)