I scored a hat trick with these trifectas.

Thursday morning in between buses on my commute to work, I walked back over to Pioneer Courthouse Square to check how many flowers remained from the Flower Sale at the end of the Festival of Flowers. I couldn't resist taking a few photos. Here you see a few beauties with the Portland Hotel wrought iron arch in the background, added joy with the pedestrian's placement inside the arch. Then there's the TriMet bus heading north on SW 6th, part of the Portland Transit Mall.



And here's another photo. I wanted to share it because not only is there a TriMet bus, there's a MAX train, too, waiting at the traffic signal in just the right position to be seen through the arch.

Hat trick, three goals scored by the same person; trifecta--excuse my stretching this one--I took these photos with these items in the exact order that I predicted, once I realized what was happening right before I clicked the button on the camera. 1st, Festival of Flowers; 2nd, Portland Hotel wrought iron arch; 3rd, TriMet on the Portland Transit Mall.

Flower Sale Today

Flower buyers showed up at Pioneer Courthouse Square to stock up on the potted plants from this year's Festival of Flowers. Notice in the top right corner, a bit of the wrought iron arch seen in the post earlier this week about the Festival of Flowers.



Selections made, time to pay at the table set up beneath the EZ-Up canopy labeled Pioneer Courthouse Square Portland's Living Room.



I saw this lady with her box of flowers before I walked across the street to enter the square. I wonder if she had a car or if she was heading for a bus? I've seen people on the bus with flowers from the sale.



For some reason this banner really appealed to me. Is it the font? The colors? I don't know.



I walked to the west side of the square and stood on what I call the viewpoint which is above the door to the Visitor Information, also seen in the post earlier this week. Across the square, you see Pioneer Courthouse itself. In front of it, the two-car MAX train and a TriMet bus. That's SW 6th Avenue, the north-bound street that is part of the Portland Transit Mall. SW 5th is the southbound portion. The MAX Yellow, Green, and Orange Lines run north and south on the mall; the Red and Blue Lines cross it on the other two streets that make up Pioneer Courthouse Square--SW Yamhill and SW Morrison. Buses go through the mall, too, spreading out to all portions of the metropolitan area, across three counties. The Portland Transit Mall runs from NW Irving to SW Jackson; it's 1.2 miles long, this couplet of one-way streets, SW 5th and SW 6th. One of these days--well, it'll take me more than one day--I'll be walking those blocks and photographing all along the way. I'll share lots and lots with y'all. We'll have a great time together!



Here's a map TriMet has on their Web site for the Portland Transit Mall. It's on the west side of the Willamette River, the two parallel lines, and there's a closeup of it on the right side of the picture.

I really miss seeing these transit shelters downtown on SW 5th and SW 6th. All but this one, gone but not forgotten.

There's a stalled bus alongside the curb, apropos of the fact that this shelter, back before Portland's Transit Mall was revamped in 2007, would have served many buses throughout the day and the night, for untold numbers of commuters. I used this particular a lot myself when I first started commuting from Northwest Portland to Southeast Portland in October, 2006. Since November, 2006, set records for rainfall totals, it came in very handy.



While I'm glad that at least one of these iconic shelters was saved and turned into a coffee stand, it makes me sad as all get out to think about the many that disappeared, their unique shapes gone forever, replaced by generic glass and tube shelters which do little to protect us from blowing rain. I heard that TriMet did away with these--which always remind me of hats that might have been worn by China-men of yore--because their closed-in design led miscreants to use them for nefarious reasons, as well as others who took advantage of not being able to be easily seen to relieve themselves, hopefully during the night when few commuters were on the streets. I myself never witnessed either activity.

Seen on the street, February 16, 2013, No. 3

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As you can tell by now, I'm having PicMonkey-special-effects fun with several photos from those that I took on Saturday, Feb. 16. I wish I could make it out, but I cannot read the patch on this man's vest--even at its largest size. I took the photo from too far away. It seems to include a MAX train in the center as well as the word "mall" in the yellow border, two things which make me think he's hard at work cleaning the downtown streets under the auspices of the Portland Transit Mall. One thing I know for certain, the streets of downtown are amazingly clean considering the volume of foot traffic any time of the day or night.

A. E. Doyle's Bank of California Building, No. 5

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An eatery, The Original Dinerant, occupies the street level of the building to the north of the Bank of California. The BOC is just out of sight at the right of this building, next to the black-faced wall visible near the current-day TriMet bus shelter you see lit up for the night-time users of mass transit. Someone waits for a bus and appears to have a bicycle to place on the bike rack attached to the front of the bus.
 

Here's the Bank of California, just south of The Original Dinerant--notice the black-faced wall.

Vintage photos, part of the documentation used to place architect A. E. Doyle's Bank of California on the National Register of Historic Places. The application is dated as received on February 15, 1978, and approved on March 14, 1978.
 

Vintage photo shows the Guaranty Building which was adjacent to the Bank of California and north of it. The back of the photo says that it was taken in 1924. Since the grand opening photos are dated 1925, it may not have actually been occupied at the time this photo was taken. I wish I had a photo of the north end of the building, which was exposed with the demise of the Guaranty Building, complete with the drive-up window and the canopy. Below is the next best thing.
 

The north end of the Bank of California, taken during 1977 probably. Note the placement of the older style TriMet bus shelter here on this section of SW 6th Avenue--part of the then brand new Portland Transit Mall. In the second photo on today's post, a bench occupies this spot, put there when the Transit Mall was rebuilt. And you've already seen the style of bus shelter which replaced these iconic ones, in the top photo today. 

From the paperwork submitted to the National Register of Historic Places:

Since the Bank of California's move to a new building in 1970, the structure has been occupied by The Security Bank of Oregon and, subsequently, the Oregon Bank. In 1977, ownership passed to Bankside Investors for occupancy by Durham and Bates, Inc., an insurance firm of pioneer beginnings in the Portland area. Since its construction, the exterior of the building has remained substantially unaltered, the only significant change being the addition of a drive-up banking window and canopy at the north end of the building. This was made possible by the razing of the six-story Guaranty Building which occupied the property immediately to the north until the mid-or late1950s. At this time, the newly exposed north wall was plastered in a rusticated stonework pattern simulating the west and south building elevations.

The imposing west facade of the bank building has five large arched windows which extend from the ground floor to a height of 28 feet above the sidewalk in recognition of the two-story banking lobby inside. Centered above these arches are smaller rectangular windows which serve the second floor office space almost 35 feet above the ground floor. Window frames are of painted steel. Above the second floor windows is a marble frieze and bracketed cornice which supports the Cordova Terracotta tile hipped roof typical of the Pallazzo style. The imposing rusticated "stonework" of the exterior walls and cornice are, in reality, cast terra-cotta executed with excellent craftsmanship. Only the marble base course and frieze are genuine. 

The entrance to the building is through a handsome bronze portico set in the middle arched window opening at the west facade, and boasts a pair of bronze gates which can be slid in front of the double entrance doors. The original bronze-framed doors were removed a number of years ago and replaced by automatic tempered glass doors.

Recent modifications to the building, made just prior to occupancy by the present tenant, include the removal of the added drive-up window and canopy at the north wall, and the filling in of a door which was cut through to the parking lot.

A new entrance was installed in the northern-most window of the west wall to provide access to a new lobby serving the upper floor
tenant spaces. Presently, theTri-Metropolitan Transit District has contracted for the widening and brick-paving of the sidewalk on SixthAvenue. The brick texture and color, together with soon-to-be-installed trees and street furniture should further enhance the handsome building.

Looking through a storefront in downtown

Today's photo shows the inside of the storefront in the corner section of The Public Service Building at the intersection of SW 6th Avenue and SW Salmon. What I really like about this one is what you can see when you look completely across the empty space and out the two windows. The building you see there is the Multnomah County Courthouse--this is the back side of it, on SW 5th Avenue.

The shape with the slightly curved supports, in the left window, is a newer bus shelter. In the right window, the shape up above the car that looks sort of like a car without wheels is actually the old-style bus shelter, the only one left that I know of on the downtown Transit Mall which is on SW 5th and SW 6th Avenues. I miss those old-style shelters because I liked the quirky look of them. I haven't been by here in a while, but the last time I looked it was still a walk-up sidewalk cafe.

Altered with Picnik, Focal B&W, No. 1

Focal B&W Special Effect. I took this photo on March 12, 2009 with my backup camera, a Coolpix L12.

At the time renovation of the downtown Portland Transit Mall, which goes south on SW 5th and north on SW 6th, nears completion. On this particular day, the lane lines must have been painted; crews had placed bollards alongside the lines to keep vehicles off the paint prior to its drying.

Speaking of lanes, let me explain them to you. Automobiles are allowed in the leftmost lane only and may turn left only (except for one intersection whose location I do not recall). You can tell from the recessed metal tracks that the MAX has priority in either the center lane or the right lane, depending whether it is making time or boarding and/or de-boarding passengers. Buses are the only wheeled vehicles allowed in the right lane, but of course they may not go there if a MAX train is there. All of the bus stops are on the sidewalk beside the right lane. This is SW 6th, looking north in the middle of the block south of SW Madison. I am at this intersection most days after work now that the Mall has reopened.

Slice of life, seen on the street, downtown Portland, January 25, 2012

I've had a terrible cold, felt awful for over a week, and now almost another week later I'm beginning to feel more like I want to feel, like I need to feel. Thank goodness. So, here we go.


When I got on the bus after work, I wished I was on the 4 instead of the 14 because the 4 would mean a shorter walk to my second bus once I had crossed the river to the downtown Transit Mall. The sneezing and strange feeling which turned into a full-fledged cold by Friday morning had started mid-day, and I had little energy left to expend. However, a short-lived rejuvenation struck when I began my longer walk to the next bus because I looked diagonally across SW 6th Avenue and saw the two mounted police and their horses standing in front of the Subway. I walked to a spot out of the wind, set down my backpack on the sidewalk, and got out my camera, the zoom lens still attached from the Blazers' game the night before.

Got myself a fine slice of life photo, the black horse tethered to the lamp post, the tan horse tethered to the bicycle post, the officers dining al fresco. That's a woman on the right, by the way. I could tell that she was a woman before I even took the photo--stance is a dead give away, isn't it? But I certainly didn't notice the unusual color combination on the tan horse until I had downloaded the photo.

Festival of Flowers, Pioneer Courthouse Square, downtown Portland

From the Pioneer Courthouse Square Web site:
6/3 - 6/17
Festival of Flowers

This year’s design, You Are Here, created by local artist Bill Will, will encourage visitors to look beyond our own geographic borders with the installation of a colossal map of the world using more than 20,000 colorful potted flowers. The two-week display at the Square will culminate with the annual flower sale kicking off June 15th offering a wide variety of plants including salvia, impatiens, lobelia, begonias, vegetables, herbs, grasses and more starting at only $.83 a piece! (To view a rendering of this year's installation, see it below. I found it when I followed a link on their Web site.)

In partnership with Portland Mall Management, Inc., this year’s Festival of Flowers will also include two satellite displays along the Portland Transit Mall at Unico Plaza and the Congress Center. In addition to providing bright spots along the transit mall, these sites will also serve as backdrop to the weekly Monday on the Mall event series. For additional information on the free events and activities taking place along the transit mall every Monday visit portlandmall.org.

More tomorrow!