Page 69 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Pacific Northwest

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q Portland w Portland Building
Streetcar 1120 SW 5th Ave. Map 3 C1. Gallery:
East- & southbound on NW Lovejoy St Tel (503) 823-5252. @ Transit Mall.
& 11th Ave, north- & westbound on Open 8am–5pm Mon–Fri.
10th Ave & NW Northrup St. Map Closed major hols.
1 A2–3 B2. Tel (503) 222-4200. Open
5:30am–11:30pm Mon–Fri, 7:15am– The Portland Building, designed
11:30pm Sat, 7:15am–10:30pm Sun. by New Jersey architect Michael
& ∑ portlandstreetcar.org Graves, has been featured on
the covers of both Time and
Horse-drawn streetcars began Newsweek and was called The landmark Portland Building, home
running in the 1870s. By the Portland’s “Eiffel Tower” by to City of Portland offices
early 20th century, electric the city’s former mayor Frank
streetcars were rumbling Ivancie. The building has been practicality and a lack of
all across Portland, bringing controversial pretension, as befits the
downtown within reach of ever since home of government offices.
newly established residential it was More ostentatious is
neighborhoods. Cars had put completed in Portlandia, a 36-ft- (11-m-) tall
the streetcars out of 1982. Displaying statue fashioned from 6.5 tons
service by the 1950s, an experimental of copper that emerges from a
but in the late 1990s, combination of second-floor balcony above the
city planners turned architectural main doors. The figure crouches,
to streetcars again as styles, this first with one hand extended and
part of a scheme large-scale post- the other brandishing a giant
to reduce modern office trident. Completed by sculptor
congestion and building in the US Raymond Kaskey in 1985,
ensure the vitality has been hailed as a Portlandia is modeled on Lady
of the central major innovation in Commerce, the symbolic figure
business district. contemporary urban that appears on the city seal
The Czech- and design and a credit to and that supposedly welcomed
Oregon-built street- Portlandia watching from the forward-thinking traders into the city’s port. After
cars travel along Portland Building Portland. It has also New York City’s Statue of Liberty,
three lines. The first, been denounced Portlandia is the largest copper
the North/South (NS) line, runs as just plain ugly. The use of statue in the US.
from NW 23rd Avenue to the muted colors and ornamental A small gallery on the second
South Waterfront, where it swags and pilasters lends floor of the building displays
connects with the Aerial tram a certain playfulness to the public art of the region. There
to Oregon Health and Science exterior, while the 15-story are also plans and models
University. The other two lines building’s relatively modest related to the design and
run in loops around the Central height and multiple rows of construction of the building
City, connecting the four small square windows suggest and the Portlandia statue.
quadrants over the Broadway
Bridge and the new Tilikum Portland the Green
Crossing. Single rides and
day passes can be purchased, Justifiably, Portland’s abundant parks and gardens are often described
including via a smartphone app. in superlatives. The city can make claim to one of the largest forested
city parks in the US, 8-sq-miles (21-sq-
km) Forest Park, and the smallest park
in the world, 452-sq-inch (0.3-sq-m)
Mill Ends Park (see p69). The city
boasts some of the nation’s largest
and most extensive rose test gardens
(see p76), one of the world’s most
renowned rhododendron gardens
(see p78), one of the finest Japanese
gardens outside Japan (see p76), and
the largest classical Chinese garden
outside China (see p58). Many of the
other parks and gardens included
in the city’s 56 sq miles (145 sq km)
of green space have no such claims
attached, but they are nonetheless
pleasant places in which to enjoy Mill Ends Park, the world’s
Portland streetcars, environmentally the great outdoors. tiniest park
sound transit

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