Southeast Portland
Mount Tabor
USS Blueback
The Bagdad Theater
The Ladd Addition

Southeast Portland stretches from the warehouses along the Willamette through historic Ladd's Addition to the Hawthorne and Belmont districts out to Gresham. Southeast Portland has blue-collar roots and has evolved to encompass a wide mix of backgrounds. The Hawthorne district in particular is known for its hippie/radical crowd and small subculturally oriented shops.

Between the 1920s and the 1960s, Southeast was home to Lambert Gardens. Southeast Portland also features Mt. Tabor, a cinder cone volcano that has become one of Portland's more scenic and popular parks. Peacock Lane is a street known locally for lavish Christmas decorations and displays.


Southeast

Portland, OR.

Mount Tabor

Portland's Mount Tabor, a volcanic cinder cone, was named by Plympton Kelly, son of Oregon City pioneer resident Clinton Kelly, after Mt Tabor in Israel, six miles east of Nazareth. In 1894, the city built two open reservoirs on the site (two other open reservoirs were built in 1911). By 1900, Portland's growing eastside population demanded park space; in 1903 landscape architect John C. Olmsted recommended the city obtain more land at Mt Tabor. In 1909, the Board of Park Commissioners used voter-approved bonds to buy approximately forty lots on Mt Tabor for $366,000.

Portland Parks Superintendent Emanuel Tillman Mische, who had worked with the Olmsted Brothers' landscape design firm in Massachusetts, developed a naturalistic design for the park. The plan included long flights of stairs, gently curving parkways, numerous walking trails, and a nursery yard. It also showcased native plants. In 1912, construction workers discovered volcanic cinders which were later utilized in surfacing the park's roads.

Vintage Mount Tabor park
Arial view of Mount Tabor 2015 Hut at the top of Mount Tabor
USS Blueback at OMSI Vintage USS Blueback in action
USS Blueback at OMSI with Hawthorne Bridge in background

USS Blueback

USS Blueback was the last non-nuclear powered submarine built by the U.S. Navy, and the last to be decommissioned after serving her country for 31 years. Blueback and her sister ships of the Barbel class utilized radical new concepts in post World War II submarine design, the most important being the teardrop hull and a single propeller.

The new teardrop hull design was a critical feature which increased underwater speed dramatically and enabled submarines to be almost as maneuverable underwater as airplanes of similar dimensions in the air. Other innovations included sail-mounted control planes and advanced mechanical, sonar and navigation equipment.

Blueback participated in Pacific Fleet operations, including transiting of the Panama Canal. In September 1961, she set a record by traveling 5,340 miles from Yokosuka, Japan to San Diego entirely submerged. OMSI took possession of Blueback in February 1994. She is currently the most modern submarine on public display.

The Bagdad Theater

Universal Pictures spent $100,000 for the Bagdad, which opened in 1927. Thomas and Mercier, a Portland architectural firm, designed the Bagdad, which was built by Christman and Otis Development Company. The theatre's exotic exterior and its huge neon-lit marquee competed with other movie houses, drive-in restaurants, and billboards of the 1920s in attracting customers' attention. Moorish, Egyptian, and Mayan motifs appeared here and there on movie houses across the city.

The theatre's interior included a large stage, a fountain, and Middle-Eastern decor, and its female ushers wore uniforms meant to appear Arabian. Early shows featured silent films, talkies, a theatre orchestra, live stage shows, and vaudeville. Noted performers in the past included Sammy Davis Jr., and the Will Mastin Trio.

In 1975, Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, and Michael Douglas appeared at the Bagdad for Oregon's first showing of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. My Own Private Idaho opened at the Bagdad in 1991 after McMenamins renovated the theatre.

In recent years, the theatre has hosted regular film series, like the "Midnight Movie" series organized by the hosts of cortandfatboy, in addition to book tours hosted by Powell's Books. In 2013, McMenamins renovated the theater, which included a larger screen, a digital projector, new seats, and an upgraded sound system.

Vintage Bagdad Theater
Bagdag Theater at night 2016 Inside of Bagdad Theater 2015
Rose garden with mansion in the Ladd Vintage horse drawn carrige in the Ladd
The Ladd Addition round-about

The Ladd Addition

Ladd's Addition is named after William S. Ladd, a merchant and mid-19th-century Portland mayor who owned a 126-acre farm on the land. In 1891 (when the city of East Portland was merged into Portland) Ladd subdivided the land for residential use. Rather than follow the standard orthogonal grid of the surrounding area, Ladd, inspired by the L'Enfant Plan for Washington, D.C., created a diagonal "wagon wheel" arrangement, including four small diamond-shaped rose gardens and a central traffic circle surrounding a park. It is also one of the few areas in Portland with alleys, that have street elevations mostly uninterrupted by curb cuts.

The homes in the district, mostly developed between 1905 and 1930 (after Ladd's death), have been called a "architecturally rich mix of compatible early 20th century styles", notable for their "continuity of scale, setback, orientation, and materials." Architectural styles represented include bungalow, craftsman, American Foursquare, Mission, Tudor, and Colonial Revival.