A house in Ladd's Addition (photo by Brian Libby)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
Multicultural Portland Tour
While today Portland is known for having one of the smaller minority populations among major American cities, its multicultural and immigrant communities have a rich and storied history. This tour from Know Your City will uncover our multicultural past, and offer the opportunity to learn about the remarkably diverse Old Town/ Chinatown community in particular. The tour includes Portland’s old and new Chinatowns, home to the second largest Chinese population in the US; the site of Portland’s first African American community, including hotels, jazz clubs and barbershops prior to integration; and Nihonmachi, Portland’s Japan Town, and its sudden disappearance after Japanese internment during World War II. Tour departs from the Know Your City kiosk, Ankeny Alley, 200 SW Ankeny Street. 3:30PM Friday, August 1. $17.
Dirty Side of Portland bus tour
Although the Portland area is recognized for its environmentally sustainable infrastructure, the Portland Harbor Superfund Site is an important reminder of our city and region’s legacy of questionable environmental policy. More than a century of industrial use along the Willamette River has heavily contaminated the river bottom with many hazardous substances harmful to human health and to the environment. Limited regulation has resulted in polluted properties located throughout all Portland-metro neighborhoods, but are disproportionately concentrated in low-income areas and communities of color. This Know Your City bus tour will view important sites, orient participants to health and environmental impacts and show what citizens and policymakers can do to make our city safer. Along the way, attendees can meet with policymakers, activists and stakeholders to hear a variety of perspectives on environmental health and safety. Departs from Union Station, NW Sixth Avenue & Broadway. 11AM Saturday, August 2 and 1PM Sunday, August 3. $10-25 suggested.
Ladd's Addition Historic District walking tour
Enjoy a leisurely stroll through this leafy enclave of early 20th century homes, churches, and businesses in an Architectural Heritage Center tour. This National Register Historic District is Oregon’s oldest planned community and in 2009 the American Planning Association honored it as one of America’s Great Places. Unlike any other neighborhood in Portland, Ladd's Addition is laid out as a series of traffic circles filled with rose gardens, with the largest Ladd Circle in the middle and a series of smaller gardens to the north, south, east and west. The district is also home to one of Pietro Belluschi's acclaimed churches, St. Philip Neri catholic church. 10AM Saturday, August 2. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
Pearl District walking tour: Preservation In the Midst of Change
Over the last 20 years, the Pearl District has been transformed from industrial enclave and rail yards into one of Portland’s most popular residential, cultural and retail districts. A century ago, the area went through a similar transformation, from a working class housing area at the edge of a marsh to the city’s biggest industrial and warehousing area. Many of Portland’s best known architects of the period designed buildings for important local and national companies. Most of these buildings remain, with their exteriors intact, and new uses inside. But as the pending demolition of the Pacific Northwest College of Art's Feldman Building (a renovated old warehouse) reminds us, the current wave of development could threaten more hisotric buildings. 10AM Saturday, August 9. $20 ($12 for AHC members).
Buildings and Places: A Walking Tour of Portland's Architecture
Sample more than a 100 years of classical beauty, modern marvels, pioneering firsts and the newest in contemporary and sustainable design. This AIA/Portland-produced downtown walking tour highlights the most significant styles, architects and stories of the 20th & 21st centuries. Featuring individual works by Whidden & Lewis, AE Doyle, Pietro Belluschi, and Michael Graves, the tour also spotlights the modernist contributions of SOM, the contemporary designs of ZGF, TVA and SERA as well as special, less well-known gems. This two-hour tour starts at 11 AM at the Center For Architecture (NW 11th Avenue and Flanders Street) in the Pearl and ends near the Portland Building at SW Fifth Avenue and Main Street. 11AM Sunday, August 10. $20.
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