An Exhibit of Historic and Modern Photographs of
Irvington
In the Historic Ballroom of the
Irvington Tennis Club
To celebrate the 40 years since the founding of the ICA, at the 2005 Irvington Home Tour we staged an exhibit of historic and modern photographs of the neighborhood. This set of pages contains views of the historic photographs and explanations about the homes depicted. (The modern photos were drawn from among the 500+ photos of Irvington homes displayed on this web site.) Some of the historic homes pictured remain as part of our historic legacy, but, sadly, some of the grandest are gone (the thumbnails to the left bordered in black highlight homes we've lost). Preservation of our neighborhood has not been "automatic". It took lots of hard work from countless residents to build the wonderful neighborhood we see today. Here's a bit of the story:
In 1965 Irvington was at a low point. Redlining by area banks blocked investments in updating our homes. Rising crime was driving families out to the suburbs. Worse yet, City Hall was making plans to bulldoze the western half of the neighborhood and turn it into an industrial park! Not only were great mansions being destroyed, but older homes of all sizes were threatened. South of Broadway, an area once considered part of Irvington, Holladay Park (now Sullivan's Gulch) had recently been cleared of its magnificent homes for construction of the Lloyd Center shopping center -- threats of demolition had to be taken seriously.
In that year an emergency meeting of residents at the Westminster Presbyterian Church drew over 400 attendees. They soon formed the Irvington Community Association – with the mission of helping the community pick itself up by the bootstraps.
The ICA launched an effort to stop redlining and encourage home owners to stay and preserve their homes. We think that you’ll agree that effort has been a success – while our history reminds us that Historic Preservation, in reality neighborhood preservation, is a continuing battle.
In addition to the photographs at the exhibit, two regional historic preservation organizations provided information on researching old houses and on their efforts to preserve Portland's historic building heritage: