Parkview Apartments (Portland, Oregon)

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1760 Northwest Irving Street
Portland, OR 97232

National Register of Historic Places #92000085 - Colonial Revival - 1941

The Parkview Apartments are located on a superblock bounded by Northeast Glisan and
Irving Streets, and 16th and 18th Avenues. The site covers 4.5 acres on Blocks 185, 186,
187, and 188 of Holladay's Addition to Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon. The site
has very little slope, and the maximum variation in elevation is only three feet.
This apartment project was constructed between 1940 and 1941. It consists of nine two-
story apartment building, six of which are connected in two groups of three by a "sally
port", or gateway. The siting of the buildings is symmetrical about its north-south axis.
The buildings are in various configurations, four being "L" shaped in plan, two "U"
shaped, and three being linear in plan. These nine buildings contain a total of 92 living
units on their two floors, 72 of which have one bedroom, and 20 of which have two
bedrooms.

The arrangement of the nine buildings is such that none face the street, but instead face
on large interior courtyards. The closest buildings adjoin at the ends 25 feet apart, but
mostly the buildings are separated by 60 to 80 feet, and the large central courtyard is
about 125 feet by 140 feet in extent.

At the center of the east and west sides of the site are two parking areas in which 86
cars are accommodated in individual garages arranged in four rows at each parking area.
No cars penetrate the site beyond these parking areas, so that all apartments are
surrounded by landscaping free of automobiles. Concrete walks of generous width
connect the apartment units and the parking areas.

The apartment buildings are planned with a basic grouping of four living units, two on
each floor, which share a common front entrance and stairway. These same grouping of
four apartments also share a common back entrance on the opposite side of the building,
and separated from the front entrance, so that each apartment unit has two separate
means of egress. Each apartment grouping of four units shares a common basement
area, reached by way of the common back stairway. In the basements are a washer,
dryer, wash trays and clothes lines, as well as four storage cubicles, each 50 square feet
in area. There is also a toilet. The majority of back entrances face on the streets or on
the parking areas.