Author's Entries

• Albers Brothers Milling Company

  Bernard (or Bernhard) Albers emigrated from Lingen, Germany, to Indiana in 1887 and moved to Portland two years later to work as a driver for a feed merchant company—a business he had trained for with his father. At the time, wheat and flour were two of Oregon’s largest and most …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Bing Sheldon (1934-2016)

  For fifty-two years, George Crosby “Bing” Sheldon Jr. made lasting contributions to Portland’s architecture, planning and design, historic preservation, and social and cultural environment. His legacies as a Portland visionary, designer, and preservationist are on a par with earlier luminaries such as Abigail Scott Duniway, Thomas Lamb Eliot …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Daniel Lownsdale (1803–1862)

  Daniel H. Lownsdale was an early Portland townsite settler who served in the Provisional Government legislature. As a real-estate investor, he owned much of the land that became Portland's central city, and he led the effort to build the Great Plank Road, the city’s first major infrastructure project. Lownsdale …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Francis Pettygrove (1812-1887)

  Entrepreneur and Portland co-founder Francis W. Pettygrove was born in Calais, Maine, in 1812. After being educated in his home town, Pettygrove entered into a number of independent business activities in his native New England. In 1842, he contracted with a mercantile company to ship a stock of general merchandise …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Henry Failing (1834-1898)

  Prominent early Portland businessman and politician Henry Failing was born in New York City on January 17, 1834, to parents Josiah and Henrietta Failing. Attending school only until the age of twelve, Henry became interested and actively involved in the business world during his teenage years. On April 15, 1851, …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Josiah Failing, (1806-1877)

  Portland businessman, mayor, and philanthropist Josiah Failing was born in Montgomery County, New York, on July 9, 1806, to parents Henry Jacob and Mary Failing. While there is little record of his early years, Failing was noted as a motivated and engaged student during his childhood education. After being trained …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Olmsted Portland Park Plan

  In the late nineteenth century, Portland's City Park (soon to be named Washington Park) offered visitors grand views of the "emerald compass," the mountains and volcanic buttes that encircled the city. The park provided a pleasure ground in the spirit of nineteenth-century cemeteries and parks—a sense of closeness to …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Portland Park Blocks

  While America's premier landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, traveled the country in the mid-nineteenth century, encouraging mayors and town councils to add parks to their growing cities, early Portlanders were already setting aside land for parks. In 1852, a year after incorporation, Portland accepted a dedication of a row of …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• Portland Penny

  The Portland Penny is an 1835 American copper penny that was used in an 1845 coin toss to name the new town of Portland.  By 1843, two New Englanders—Asa Lovejoy of Boston, Massachusetts, and Francis Pettygrove of Portland, Maine—had established a land claim approximately fourteen miles upriver from the …

  Oregon Encyclopedia

• William Sumio Naito (1925-1996)

  William “Bill” Naito was born in Portland in 1925. His parents, Hide and Fukiye, had emigrated in the 1910s from Japan, and Hide ran a successful retail and wholesale business. Naito liked to remind people that, because no one would hire Japanese men for a “real” job, they had to …

  Oregon Encyclopedia