South Park Blocks

Prior to European settlement in the mid-19th century, the Willamette and Columbia rivers supported Native villages and fostered a vigorous trade network throughout the basin and beyond. Indigenous groups made significant contributions to the land since time immemorial. Despite the harm that has been done to these communities, Indigenous people in Portland continue their cultural practices and sacred connections to the land today. The proximity of the South Park Blocks to the Native American Student and Community Center (NASCC) at Portland State University provides a great opportunity to reconnect to this history and weave these stories and cultural practices into the urban park.

By the 1840s, Indigenous populations had been devastated by epidemics of introduced European diseases as settlers started to encroach the land that would become downtown Portland. In 1852, one of these settlers Daniel H. Lownsdale designated eleven narrow blocks at the western edge of town for public park space. Between 1852-75 the park was an unimproved roadway on the outskirts of the city center; the southern portion up to Jefferson was part of the Great Plank Road. During the 1870s the area became a residential neighborhood with large Italianate mansions, schools, and churches. In 1877 the first landscaping of these blocks occurred when the City Council authorized florist and landscape designer Louis G. Pfunder to plant 104 Lombardy poplars and elms between Salmon and Hall. The Ladd School opened on the present Portland Art Museum site in 1879. In 1885 the city's first parkkeeper was appointed and a more formal park began to develop. The development of the South Park Blocks reflected Eurocentric spatial organization and design details that were popular in U.S. cities since the mid-1800s. When the park was first planted with a grid of trees in 1877, inspiration for the South Park Blocks may have included Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue Mall (built 1858-1870s) and other park designs inspired by tree lined Parisian boulevards.

By the 1880s many lots were subdivided for smaller residences; by the turn of the century, apartment buildings were developed. Lincoln High School was located at Park and Market. Following the VanPort flood, the VanPort Extension School was relocated to the Lincoln High School building and grew to become Portland State University. The campus from Market to Jackson was established in the 1950s. In 1973 the campus was redesigned and streets closed off.

Today there are twelve South Park Blocks stretching through the heart of downtown Portland. Public art can be found throughout the South Park Blocks but is historically limited in what or whose stories are told. Potential replacement and new public art should represent more diverse cultural identities and histories. On the block between Hall and Harrison is the most recent addition. Installed in 2004, this work made of white Indiana limestone by Oregon sculptor Donald Wilson is entitled Holon. The word comes from the Greek holos which means whole, entire, complete in all its parts - something that has integrity and identity at the same time as it is a part of a larger system. A block north at Montgomery is the 1973 bronze statue and fountain Farewell to Orpheus by Frederic Littman (1907-79).