It’s a nice weekend for zombies, robots, and rooftop gardens.

Do you have a roof?

One proposal for the Rose Quarter is to transform it into Memorial Park, with some boring parts and one very interesting part.

If you’re interested in Portland’s history, and fond of vintage photos, the blogs Cafe Unknown and Lost Oregon are probably already familiar to you. You’ve probably also perused the fantastic archive of post cards and ephemera at PdxHistory.com. But you may not yet be aware of another photo-rich Portland history blog, the nascent Vintage Portland: Exploring Portland’s Past.

Charles Phoenix is bringing his Retro Holiday Slide Show to Portland once again this year.

Portland Fire Department firefighters intentionally burnt down a house today in North Portland as part of a training exercise.

The best part starts at about 1:45.
Bruce Ely of the Oregonian photographed the building site ever day for two years to piece this together.

Tom Moyer is halting construction on the putative 32 story tower, Park Avenue West (at this stage it’s just a really big hole in the ground).
Moyer announced today that construction will stop for nine months, a troubling sign of just how far the economy and the financial markets have fallen. Law firm Stoel Rives had [...]

The eclectic shu and joe blog gives us a glimpse of how the Portland Building might have been quite different.
The original plan included much more dramatic decorative garlands along the sides of the building and a collection of public arcades and shops on the rooftop.

Dan Hackenow has a great post up on Cafe Unknown about 19th century Portland Banker John C. Ainsworth, the bank he founded, and the beautiful Victorian gem he built, that, in the 1950s, was deemed less important (i.e. lucrative) than a parking lot.

For fifty-nine years, the northwest corner of Third and Oak has been the [...]