Portland, Oregon Map 1890 Bird's-Eye View - Portland, East Portland, Albina

Pierce & Elliott drew this rare bird's-eye view of Portland, Oregon, in 1890, published by the Elliott Publishing Company in San Francisco, one of three Portland views the firm issued that year. The view was created specifically to promote Holladay's Addition, a residential development in East Portland with lots sold by the Oregon Real Estate Company, making it a piece of real-estate boosterism as much as a topographic record. By 1890 Portland was a thriving city of roughly 46,000 people, its strategic position at the meeting of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers having made it the Pacific Northwest's leading hub for trade and commerce. The view is genuinely rare on the market, unknown even to the standard Reps reference on American city views and unlisted in OCLC, with surviving examples known only in the Multnomah County Library and Portland Archives.

Portland itself appears in the distance across the Willamette River, while Holladay's Addition occupies the foreground within East Portland, and the separate city of Albina is shown to the right, all three municipalities not yet consolidated into the single city Portland would become. Railroad lines thread through the scene, including one running through Sullivan's Gulch, while the Steel, Morrison and Madison Street bridges cross the Willamette, all three later replaced, with the Madison Street span eventually renamed the Hawthorne Bridge. Streetcar lines, some already electrified by 1890 through the Portland General Electric Company, run through Holladay's Addition itself, reflecting the transit infrastructure real estate developers relied on to sell riverside lots. A list of 32 points of interest at the bottom of the view anchors the promotional image in specific, identifiable Portland landmarks rather than generic scenery.

This view makes a fitting gift for a Portland family with roots in the city's East Portland or Albina neighborhoods before consolidation, or for an Oregon transplant drawn to the real-estate boosterism that shaped the city's early growth. Its rarity, with no other examples turning up in published auction or dealer catalog records, gives it real standing for a collector of Pacific Northwest city views. The print ships unframed and is available in the full range of sizes we offer, from a small desk piece to a large-format print for a bigger wall.