// Contributed by Andrew Longeteig

With its rolling landscape, meandering pathways, majestic Doug Firs and unique layout, Woodlawn Park is one of Portland’s most original green spaces. At just under eight acres, Woodlawn Park is part of 12,591 acres of public parkland and open space — 10,000 of that is owned and managed by Portland Parks and Recreation. By comparison, Chicago has 7,300 park acres; Seattle, a mere 6,200.

The park’s many defining features include the amphitheater where the Oregon Symphony performed in August 2005. In 1998 the neighborhood association worked to establish the Community Garden. In 1999, local artist Anne Storrs created “Buckeye Bench,” a stone seating area that celebrates a nearby chestnut tree. The spray fountains, also installed in 1999, are a popular summer destination. In 2002, Woodlawn became one of 35 area parks to receive new basketball hoops and a synthetic surface made out of recycled shoes, courtesy of Nike. And on a clear day, visitors can look north to see snow-covered, slumbering Mount St. Helens.

Our neighborhood may be 109 years old, but the park’s history is much shorter.

Woodlawn Park became Portland’s 138th park in 1975 (the city has over 200 now). Most Portland parks are rectangular, shaped like Utah or Wyoming. Woodlawn Park, with its quirky angles that parallel the neighborhood’s nearby angled streets, is unmistakably unique.

The Woodlawn Improvement Association, overseen by the Portland Development Commission (PDC), formed in 1969. This was driven U.S. President Lyndon Johnson’s Model Cities Program, which provided funding to certain cities to supplement and coordinate existing federal funds, primarily urban renewal money received through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The Woodlawn and Irvington neighborhoods were two of the city’s pioneers to undertake the PDC-staffed Neighborhood Development Program — the legislative companion to Model Cities which handled physical redevelopment projects. Model Cities, which dealt primarily with educational, social and planning services, concentrated on the following neighborhoods: Woodlawn, Irvington, Boise-Eliot, Humboldt, King, Vernon and Sabin. Most of the project spending — about $14 million of federal money — occurred between 1970-75 in Portland.
With Alberta Park being the closest one to the neighborhood, a park the Woodlawn area could call its own became a priority. At that time, the neighborhood had about 6,300 residents. (The 2000 census counted about 4,900.) Then, there were 37 parcels of land on the current park site. About half the land hadn’t been developed. Most of the houses were situated along the former Woodlawn Street, which generally bisected the park’s present configuration and ran in between, and parallel to, Oneonta and Winona streets.

“This site was mostly an area of deteriorated housing,” the Oregonian quoted the park’s co-designer, landscape architect Jim Howell, at a PDC board meeting in December 1971. (The other architect was Robert Perron, who has done numerous projects around the city, and throughout Oregon, most notably the Salmon Street Springs fountain at Tom McCall Waterfront Park.)

HUD agreed to provide federal funds for land acquisition in 1970. At a Woodlawn Neighborhood Association meeting, attended by about 125 people in April 1970, residents selected the park site in a vote.

The Oregonian reported three reasons for the site selection: 1) The possibility of developing new housing around the park; 2) Its connection with the school grounds; and (3) The possibility of future extension of the park.

The city officially adopted a resolution on June 10, 1970, to proceed with the park project. Mayor Terry Schrunk signed off on it. Part of the resolution read:

[It's] found and determined that the Woodlawn Neighborhood Development Project Area is a deteriorating area and that is it detrimental and a menace to the safety, health and welfare of the inhabitants and users thereof … because of substandard housing in the area needing rehabilitation, certain inadequate public facilities needing improvement, and other blighting conditions.

The Urban Renewal Plan provides that the urban renewal agency may acquire properties for purposes of providing needed public improvements and facilities with the cooperation and participation of the residents of Woodlawn Development Project Area, the Development Commission, City Planning Commission, City Parks Bureau, School District No. 1, and the City Traffic Engineer.

To help determine what amenities to include, Woodlawn residents toured other parks in Portland and nearby areas — Irving, Unthank, Marshall (Vancouver) and Blue Lake. Residents also developed a questionnaire in 1971 to gain feedback from neighbors.

Meanwhile, city planners recommended to demolish all buildings — mainly residential housing — and rough grade the site.

Woodlawn residents have a different recollection of Woodlawn Street’s “deteriorated” houses.

“I could only think of one or two houses that were like that,” said Martha Burnett, who has lived on Oneonta Street since 1927. “Most of them kept up their houses nice. You could tell it was an older neighborhood. A lot of people wanted to keep their homes. They were shocked.”

Willie Ranson, who has lived in her house on 7th Avenue since 1956, agrees. “My brother lived on Oneonta and he had a pretty nice house,” Ranson said. “The people across from them had a pretty new house, maybe built in the 1960s. They kept it up pretty nice over there.”

The original proposal called for Claremont Avenue, Woodlawn Street, Winona Street and Bellevue Avenue, to be closed to cars. As it turned out, Claremont avoided closure as a bridge was constructed for auto traffic. Sections of the affected streets — or in Woodlawn Street’s case, all of it — were dug up. The concrete chunks were used to build walls in the park, such as those around the two basketball courts.

And so went the old houses on Woodlawn Street.

“Some people actually died because they were heart-broken,” Burnett said. “There were a lot of old-timers on Woodlawn Street. When you’ve been someplace all that time it really upsets people.”

There were other construction obstacles to overcome. There was initial concern whether a baseball field would fit in the proposed configuration. Howell’s pencil sketches determined it would fit in the provided space.

Harry Buckley, the parks superintendent, also had reservations. Buckley wrote a letter to the PDC in May 1970. “We are concerned with the adjacent private property and the odd size and shape of the park, but we feel these problems can be solved and the project should not be delayed because of them.”

The city’s operations director, Roland Hall, then addressed a letter to the parks department:

“The principle glaring error apparent to both of us was that the park was separated from Madrona Street [note: Hall meant Winona Street] on the west by multiple units. This arrangement will, as you know, provide a constant source of annoyance to the residents and park users alike since this residential property will either prevent direct easy access to the park from the street or the persons in the park will annoy the residents to a purple distraction.”

(Hall appears to be referring to the vacant area that eventually became Woodland Park Condominiums in the early 1980s.)

In response to this, perhaps hoping to avoid “purple distraction,” Howell wrote to PDC, “We feel that the Bureau of Parks’ experience with housing next to parks has been primarily with single family dwellings and not with the type of multiple family dwellings which is being proposed here.”

Nonetheless, the Model Cities Citizens Planning Board approved the first-phase construction plans on March 8, 1972. Construction officially began in the summer of 1972.

The park originally was to be about 11 acres — and potentially larger. The PDC wrote in a letter to the park’s planning engineer: “There is also a good possibility for a second phase expansion of this park site, if federal funds are available, which would increase the area to about 15 acres.”

The Woodlawn Neighborhood Plan in 1974 had the park continuing on the other side of Dekum and along 13th Avenue all the way to Holman Street, dubbed the “13th Street Greenway.” That plan failed.

In addition to the existing buildings, there were quite a few trees removed as well. Fortunately, there were 700 to 800 new trees planned, according to a December 1971 article in the Oregonian. Woodlawn Elementary School students helped plant some trees, too.

First, about $200,000 was spent on the demolition and grading. About $300,000 more was spent to add benches, tables, lighting, basketball courts, walkways, the amphitheater and even a portable swimming pool on the north side of the Claremont Avenue bridge. (The pool went away with the 1999 park bond measure improvements.) Federal funding accounted for about two-thirds of the $500,000 price tag. In today’s dollars, that’s nearly $1.9 million.

At first, PDC managed the newly built Woodlawn Park. On April 28, 1976, the PDC officially transferred jurisdiction and control to the city.

In the early construction phases, bishop H.B. Daniels, who preached at the Church of God in Christ on Alberta Street, proposed the new park be named after another local bishop, W.L. McKinney. He sent his proposal to city commissioner Neil Goldschmidt, future Portland mayor and Oregon governor, who responded: “I agree with your assessment of his contribution to the community and I know it will be considered by the parks department and the commissioner of public affairs when the park is named.”

A parks department letter to City Commissioner Francis Ivancie read:

“While I cannot help but feel that Woodlawn is a very appropriate name since it is descriptive of the Park [sic] and identifies the neighborhood. The re-naming of the park, if appropriate, should involve the neighborhood committee since they have been a part of the park’s total development since its inception. If this occurs, I am sure they would be happy to consider Bishop Daniels’ suggestion.”

Ultimately, the parks department thought the neighborhood committee was better suited to name the park.

As much as the park has been a boon to the neighborhood, it also became notorious for gang activity which peaked from 1989 to 1991. Bloods and Crips members fought over Woodlawn Park, each aiming to claim it as its members’ “turf.” According to court records, Woodlawn Park staff reported 59 gang-related incidents in 1990. Gang activity declined as police increased their presence. In 1995, 15 members of two Bloods sets — the Woodlawn Park Bloods and the Loc’d Out Pirus — were convicted of racketeering and other crimes in 1995. The average sentence was eight years.

On one occasion, Burnett recalls about 200 to 250 gang members in the park at the same time. “They were throwing bricks at the buses and doing things to properties on Dekum,” she said. “They had the police come. The horse patrol stopped it for a long time.”

Fortunately, those days are over. Graffiti and litter issues remain, but are far off earlier levels.

Now, Burnett enjoys seeing people using the park for more positive activities, especially kids playing basketball and bands playing live music. The city’s kickball league also staged games there in 2005 and the 2007 city-wide Earth Day Celebration was held in the park.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 11:44 pm and is filed under Land Use, Woodlawn Park. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.