First off, thanks to all of you who commented or emailed me with ideas on where to track down the historic streetcar maps. The maps from the City of Portland site, which includes the 1890 streetcar network and several other snapshots, can be found at the Oregon Historical Society. If you do a search under "Transportation Network 1890" you can find them easily. They are actually hand drawn maps, done in 1973, by a city employee and they are quite large. In conjunction with Richard Thompson's fantastic website, we've been able to start overlaying the streetcar lines onto a current Portland map.
OHS has other good maps, but they are essentially not duplicable. So be prepared to bring some paper and sketch away (its what I did).
The image in the top right corner is just our first attempt to digitize the streetcar network in 1890. Click it to see a larger image. I'll keep you posted...
2 comments:
very cool. I'm really excited about this project. Just the other day I was talking to the owner of the building at the corner of Killingsworth and Greeley. He was telling me that the reason his building has on side in the shape of a radiused curve is because of the turning lane of the street car. ...And I see it illustrated plainly on your map. Thanks for your hard work and I look forward to meeting you in person.
After following your link to the PDOT Transportation History page, I just spent over an hour scouring the photos. Amazing history. Keep up the research and blogging. I would love to chat with you more about your research over the summer.
Danielle
Post a Comment