Portland’s Slabtown – An Historic Look at Inner Northwest Portland - Encore Presentation!

When it was first named “Slabtown” in the 1870s, this Portland neighborhood was an isolated community filled with lakes, streams, sawmills, and working class houses. It is located north of Lovejoy Street and stretches from the Willamette River, west to the hills of Forest Park. This program explores the rich history of Slabtown through a wonderful collection of historic images.

Please join us as AHC volunteer Norm Gholston and BMF/AHC board member Dr. Tracy J. Prince discuss the origins of Slabtown. The program will cover the earliest days of white settlement through the reconfiguration of the landscape to make room for the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition, to the arrival of the mail order giant Montgomery Ward, and forward through the war years and beyond. You’ll learn about the diverse immigrant populations that lived and worked in Slabtown, the buildings (like Vaughn Street Baseball Park) that were or are still community landmarks, and how freeway construction in the 1960s and 1970s tore the neighborhood apart. In recent years the neighborhood has made a wonderful comeback as Slabtown’s story continues to unfold.

Gholston and Prince are co-authors of the book Portland’s Slabtown (Arcadia, 2013). Slabtown uncovers, for the first time in any Portland history, a century of Native American life in Portland, more extensive Chinese vegetable gardens than previously known, and rediscovery of the now-infilled Johnson Creek Gulch. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing.

This lecture program is held at the Architectural Heritage Center - 701 SE Grand Avenue

Parking is on-street (free on Saturdays) or in the parking lot on the west side of Grand Avenue between SE Yamhill and Belmont Streets - just to the north of the Grand Marketplace. Do not use the lot where Dutch Bros. Coffee is located. Thank you to Bolliger and Sons Insurance for sharing their lot with us for our evening and Saturday education programs.