In 2001, the Irvington Home Tour Committee of the ICA, decided to launch a web site to publicize the Tour and promote Irvington generally to the larger community. A webmaster was found to build the site on a volunteer basis, and in the fall of 2001, the homes from that year were documented and displayed on this web site: www.irvingtonhometour.com
Most of the photos in that first year were supplied by the home owners, but in 2002, photographs were taken at each home specifically for the website in the weeks immediately following the Tour. This practice was continued in subsequent years.
While the demands of a web page for detail and image resolution are very modest, it was decided to make high resolution images of the homes so that the home owners could have good printable digital images for their own as souvenirs of the Tour. These could then be reduced in size and compressed for web site use.
In the years since 2001, we have accumulated a record of over 400 images of Irvington homes on the web site. There is nothing else like this in Portland, and it is a great display of the quality of life that Irvington people have built for themselves by a combination of sweat equity and serious investment… in a neighborhood once considered for demolition and conversion to an industrial park! It is from this treasure store of images that we selected a sampling for this exhibit.
The About the Photographs page of this web site contains the technical details of the photography.
It was decided not to repeat the display of the modern photographs in this section on the Photo Exhibit, since they are all found already in their respective annual Home Tour areas.