Despite Changes, Sullivan's Gulch
Retains Pioneer Spirit

The Hollywood Star - February 2001

By Nancy McCarthy

Richard Anderson remembers catching tadpoles in Sullivan's Gulch. Bonnie Mentzer recalls searching for grasshoppers near the Lloyd Golf Course. Lynne Coward appreciates the urban neighborhood the gulch has turned into, where residents greet each other on the street and stay current on local issues. And Colin James is still amazed at how committed his neighbors are to solving problems that threaten the gulch.

With a history dating back to the beginning of East Portland, Sullivan's Gulch once was a sylvan, peaceful setting that included a waterfall on what is now about Northeast 19th Avenue and a creek that coursed through the ravine that is now Interstate 84.

But these days, Sullivan's Gulch is emerging as one of Portland's premiere urban neighborhoods. Large, grand houses built at the turn of the century stand alongside 3-year-old row houses and modern apartment complexes with hundreds of households. Small, one-of-a-kind bookstores and boutiques compete for customers who also shop at mega-stores in the business district.

In the past 150 years since Irishman Timothy Sullivan took out a Donation Land Claim on the sprawling property that once stretched roughly from Stark Street to Broadway and from the Willamette River to 47th Avenue, the gulch has undergone untold transformations. The first change occurred in 1870 when transportation tycoon Ben Holladay, who controlled all the railroads on the West Coast and built Portland's first streetcar line, bought and platted some of the property and named the streets after his friends. But what remains in the neighborhood that bears Sullivan's name is the pioneering spirit of the residents who live there.

"I see this neighborhood as less conventional than most neighborhoods," said Lynne Coward, who moved to Portland from Cincinnati three years ago. She and her husband live in a new rowhouse just two blocks from Lloyd Center. Coward is the land use chair for the Sullivan Gulch Neighborhood Association.

"People are proud of their diversity here," she added. "But that's not why they moved here. It's the quality of the neighborhood. I think we're talking about the quality of neighborliness. It has the qualities that people long for."

It has taken a lot of effort to create the Sullivan Gulch neighborhood as it is now, and most of the residents who are active in the community would say it is still a work in progress. Bounded by Northeast 15th and 33rd avenues, Broadway and Interstate 84, the community, during the early part of the 20th century, went from being a popular picnic spot with handsome houses dotted here and there, to becoming a haven for Depression hoboes who set up shantytowns in the gulch and called them "Hoovervilles."

Beat Generation poet Gary Snyder, a Reed College graduate who worked on logging crews in the Pacific Northwest in the 1950s, recalled the stories he heard about the Depression and wrote them down. Here is part of a poem contained in the book, "Gary Snyder's Myths & Texts":

"In 1934 they lived in shanties
At Hooverville, Sullivan's Gulch.
When the Portland-bound train came through
The trainmen tossed off coal."

During World War II, Richard Anderson scrambled under the Grand Avenue viaduct and captured tadpoles in the Gulch. He would take them home to the apartment where his family lived on the corner of Oregon Street and Grand Avenue and keep them until they became bullfrogs.

Although he was only 7 years old, Anderson was free to wander the neighborhood, along with his younger brother and sister. Every day they would walk to a small creamery on Broadway to pick up fresh milk. They had to be careful not to drop the bottles on the way home.

"We could go just about any place that we wanted to without parental supervision," he recalled. "I still remember being given permission to go down Grand Avenue and across Sullivan's Gulch to explore the Sears and Roebuck store that was on the south side of the gulch. Our limit until then had been the gulch. We were allowed to go down to the gulch to play in the 'woods' and explore the ponds that were there."

Anderson, who is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, attended Holladay School, which was on the site where Lloyd Center stands now.

"On the way to school, we kids had to walk past a huge old mansion that seemed to cover an entire block," Anderson remembered. "The house sat on a slight rise and was surrounded by a wrought iron fence inside of which was one of the largest Great Dane dogs I ever recall - at least he was to one who was only 6 or 7 years old and looking up at him behind that fence."

Some of the grand houses built for the businessmen, lawyers and politicians who lived in the area during the early 1900s remain today. The five-bedroom house on Northeast 16th Avenue and Halsey Street owned by Bonnie Mentzer, a retired lawyer, was built in 1910. Just one block away - on 15th Avenue, known once as "Senators' Row," Mentzer remembers a house that took up an entire block.

Mentzer was 15 when she moved to her house in 1944. She lived there in the 1950s and moved away until the 1980s. It was a neighborhood then of mostly single family houses, she said. Today, 75 percent of the residents living there are renters.

"I don't remember anyone referring to Sullivan's Gulch until the 1970s," Mentzer said. "I knew it was Sullivan's Gulch, but I always called it Holladay Park Addition."

Mentzer never ventured into the gulch when she was a teenager. By then, some it was overgrown with blackberry bushes and much of it was a golf course, developed by the Lloyd Corporation, which later built Lloyd Center. She does remember scouring a vacant field on 12th Avenue, near the course's English-country style clubhouse, for grasshoppers and insects to use in her Grant High School biology class.

The golf course eventually was buried under the Banfield Freeway (I-84), and the clubhouse became a restaurant and later a credit union.

Vacant lots are scarce in the 204-block area that contains 2,800 residents. Mentzer lives across the street from the 202-unit Lloyd Place apartment complex and a few steps from Broadway and Weidler.

"It's a handy neighborhood - you don't have to have an automobile," she said. "There are few things you can't buy within an area of 10 or 12 blocks."

But, she added, "There isn't as much affordable housing as there was. People pay big prices for houses here, and when you gentrify the neighborhood, the rent is going to go up."

For 20 years, the Lloyd Corporation offered to buy Mentzer's house, but, unlike her neighbors, Mentzer's mother wasn't willing to sell. As early as the 1920s, Ralph Bramel Lloyd, who made a fortune finding oil in California, started buying lots on Portland's east side. Even then, he dreamed of building a large shopping center with a nearby hotel, but his plans were thwarted, first by the Depression and later by World War II.

Throughout the years, Lloyd continued to buy vacant lots and houses until, by the time he died in 1953, he had accumulated 100 blocks. Lloyd's four daughters carried out his dream, and in 1960, they opened Lloyd Center. With 1.2 million square feet, the center was then the largest in the world.

The center's impact continues to affect Sullivan's Gulch. Traffic patterns along Broadway and Weidler present concerns to business operators and residents, who have worked with city planners to improve the area. The addition of the Fred Meyer store on the neighborhood's east side only added to the congestion, residents say.

"We're a long, narrow neighborhood, and we've got traffic," said Lynne Coward. "It's like we're an island surrounded by an ocean."

Sullivan's Gulch has the "potential to be an ideal neighborhood, as long as we don't get squashed by commercial development," she added.

But the commercial development that threatened the community's livability also spawned the formation of an active neighborhood association. The association's meetings often attract audiences with 50 to 60 members, said Colin James, the association's chairman.

Twelve years after Fred Meyer opened, the association remains active. There are still land-use issues to deal with, including the development of the five-acre Albina Fuel property, the redesign of an urban plan for the area, the need for more parking and affordable housing. The association also plans to address how residents can help homeless people who still camp out in the area.

James and his wife moved to Sullivan's Gulch from Wilsonville five years ago. He attended his first neighborhood association meeting when he heard about row houses going up in his neighborhood, and he enjoyed it so much he continued to attend meetings. Residents are interested in maintaining the neighborly feeling, he said, whether it means fighting proposals potentially harmful to the community or planning a giant party.

When 300 people turned out for last year's National Night Out celebration, for instance, the neighborhood's diversity became apparent through the performances, James added. Scandanavian folk music blended with Hawaiian tunes, and reggae mixed with a rock and roll band.

"It's a great neighborhood," James said.

Nancy McCarthy is a freelance writer from Northeast Portland. Her e-mail address is: createxp@teleport.com.