Previous Portland Neighborhood Tours…
Sellwood/Westmoreland///Hosford-Abernethy///Irvington
Goose Hollow///Buckman///Multnomah Village
St. Johns is a neighborhood in North Portland, at the tip of the peninsula formed by the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. It was a separate city from its founding in the mid 1800s until it was annexed by Portland in 1915.
It is connected to the west side of Portland by the St. Johns Bridge across the Willamette. The bridge actually touches down in the Cathedral Park neighborhood. There doesn’t seem to be much of a distinction between the Cathedral Park and St. Johns neighborhoods, aside from neighborhood association boundaries, so I included both hoods in this thread (in fact, the neighborhood now known as Cathedral Park was a part of the city of St. Johns before the 1915 annex).
Housing in the neighborhood is mostly single-family (and not all that attractive - though there are some exceptions), with some condos and apartments. Lombard St. is the main street through the center of St. Johns and is lined with retail for several blocks. A large portion of the land area in the neighborhood - basically the entire western half - is industrial (shipping terminals, etc). I didn’t take any pics in that area – it was either not interesting enough to photograph or had gated access… or both.
There are four large parks here – Cathedral Park surrounding the St. Johns Bridge landing, Kelley Point Park at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia, Pier Park, and Smith and Bybee Lakes Wildlife Sanctuary.
Here’s a map showing the proximity to downtown (St. Johns is in green, downtown in red). It looks like huge compared to the size of downtown, but the industrial and Smith & Bybee Lakes portions account for most of the land area.
I’ll start with my favorite bridge in the Portland area – the St. Johns Bridge. This is looking toward St. Johns/Cathedral Park. The rainbow looked a lot brighter two minutes before I took this pic, but I had nowhere to stop my car to photograph it.
These pics are from the St. Johns side of the river. The tree-covered hills on the other side are part of Forest Park.
I walked out on the bridge a bit to take a couple pics… I was planning to walk all the way to the middle of the bridge, but I’m not real good with heights, and there is no guardrail between the 4’ wide sidewalk and the traffic… oh well.
You can see downtown Portland in the distance
Houses in the Cathedral Park neighborhood.
Tallest building in Cathedral Park/St. Johns
Do you really need all that water?
Guess I couldn’t stop taking pics of the bridge!
One more bridge photo…
The rail line separating St. Johns from University Park, the neighborhood to the east.
Shops along Lombard St., “Downtown St. Johns.” The sidewalks don’t look too busy in these photos, but there were plenty of people walking around, especially when it was sunny.
There’s a small plaza at the center of the Lombard St. strip
There seemed to be a fairly significant Mexican population here, especially by Portland standards, although I checked stats for the neighborhood online and saw only about a 15% Hispanic population in 2000.
The Library
Pretty impressive looking high school
Houses in the interior of the hood.
Pier Park. This is one of my favorite parks in the city (so far anyway). The trees are beautiful, and it was very quiet, at least when I walked through. Thanks to Portland forumer cab for the mention of this park in the last thread I did.
“He frolfs – he scores!” I saw several people playing Frisbee-golf – looked like a tough course!
Kelley Point Park. That’s the Columbia River.
The Willamette is on the left; the Columbia is on the right (kind of).
Hope you enjoyed the tour.
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