Lisa and I decided one after­noon to check out some of the notable build­ings along the newly opened tran­sit mall.

TriMet, the Port­land area tran­sit author­ity, recently opened the new North/South light rail route in the down­town area. After a lengthy period of con­struc­tion, traf­fic snarls and busi­nesses strug­gling to deal with the tur­moil, a free-ride day opened the new route.

It is inter­est­ing to sense the con­trast between the mod­ern electric-powered tran­sit infra­struc­ture and the clas­si­cally inspired buildings.

Replac­ing all but one lane of auto­mo­bile traf­fic on two major down­town streets is an exam­ple of the self con­scious deci­sion Port­land made about it’s trans­porta­tion future. And yet it could be argued that Portland’s grow­ing net­work of light rail is, if any­thing, a les­son learned from the past.

The sleek new MAX light rail train

There was once an exten­sive net­work of elec­tric trol­leys through­out Port­land. Like so many other Amer­i­can cities, the auto­mo­bile led to the even­tual aban­don­ment of most of that legacy.

It’s per­haps ironic to con­tem­plate the fact that some of the the ear­li­est Port­land trol­ley lines were set up as real estate pro­mo­tion lines although this is not true of the trol­ley shown below.

Mt Tabor Trol­ley — PDXHistory.com

The PDXHistory.com web site has an inter­est­ing page of early street­car his­tory in Port­land which includes the photo above — Mt. Tabor Car No. 438 near 65th & Belmont.

Our habit of tak­ing the occa­sional walk­ing tour of Portland’s archi­tec­ture was rewarded on this par­tic­u­lar day by the beau­ti­ful light that often fol­lows a bit of rain while there’s still water on the ground.

I enjoy that brief time between the soft light of a over­cast day and the chal­leng­ing light of a cloud­less sky when things seem espe­cially vibrant. We seized the moment and strolled along to take in some less famil­iar build­ings from the city’s past.

Bet even here were reminders of the trou­bled economy.

It was a nice dis­trac­tion from the Bun­galoft project.

We’re think­ing it would be cool to have a small group of peo­ple who would like to do archi­tec­ture walks. Maybe a Meetup group is in the works …