Brooklyn is a mostly residential neighborhood in southeast

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

. It sits along the east side of the

Willamette River The Willamette River ( ) is a major tributary of the Columbia River, accounting for 12 to 15 percent of the Columbia's flow. The Willamette's main stem is long, lying entirely in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward b ...

in the vicinity of

Reed College Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...

. Founded as a neighborhood in the late 1860s, the neighborhood today is a middle-class area comprising mainly single family homes, interspersed with remaining industrial sites along the river and a large railyard. This railyard was home to

Southern Pacific 4449 Southern Pacific 4449, also known as the Daylight, is the only surviving example of Southern Pacific Railroad's "GS-4" class of 4-8-4 "Northern" type steam locomotives and one of only two GS-class locomotives surviving, the other being " GS-6" ...

as well as several other large antique

steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...

and diesel-electric locomotives.

History

The area of the neighborhood was inhabited by Clackamas people before settlement by whites. The first white settler in the area of was Giddeon Tibbets, who acquired the land in the

Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 The Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, sometimes known as the Donation Land Act, was a statute enacted by the United States Congress in late 1850, intended to promote homestead settlements in the Oregon Territory. It followed the Distribution-Preem ...

. He settled the area in 1851, building a family home and

grist mill A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and Wheat middlings, middlings. The term can refer to either the Mill (grinding), grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist i ...

. Tibbets named the area "Brookland" due to the river, creeks, and lakes on his property. In 1868 Tibbets subdivided the property into smaller lots and allowed the

Oregon Central Railroad The Oregon Central Rail Road was the name of two railroad companies in the U.S. state of Oregon, each of which claimed federal land grants that had been assigned to the state in 1866 to assist in building a line from Portland south into California. ...

to cross the property. The rail line and the subdivision quickly brought in a large number of residents to the neighborhood, which acquired its current name of "Brooklyn". The influx led to the construction of a town square at the corner of Powell Boulevard and Milwaukie Avenue. In the 1890s, the neighborhood received an influx of largely

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

German-American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...

s. While many of the German street/landmark names were changed during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, the neighborhood continues to bear the traces of this period today, with several older German-American businesses, as well as the Sacred Heart Catholic Church and the 1891 Johan Poulsen House. In 1908, The contracting firm

Geibisch and Joplin Geibisch and Joplin was a contracting and paving company in Portland, Oregon in the 1900s and 1910s. The company was run by Ada Joplin and her husband Anton Geibisch, married on 8 June 1892. The company built the original Brooklyn neighborhood ...

built this neighborhood's original sewer system. "Row at Executive Board Meeting" ''The Oregonian'' (Portland Oregon) June 24, 1909 In the 1920s, the neighborhood changed drastically as a part of a citywide construction effort. The construction of the

Ross Island Bridge The Ross Island Bridge is a cantilever truss bridge that spans the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon. It carries U.S. Route 26 (Mount Hood Highway) across the river between southwest and southeast Portland. The bridge opened in 1926 and was d ...

over the Willamette destroyed the town square. At the same time, many of the streams and ponds in the neighborhood were filled in. The construction of McLoughlin Boulevard (

Oregon Route 99E Oregon Route 99E is an Oregon state highway that runs between Junction City, Oregon and an interchange with I-5 just south of the Oregon/Washington border, in Portland. It, along with OR 99W, makes up a split of OR 99 in the northern part of th ...

) severed the neighborhood's connection to the Willamette waterfront. The construction of an overpass on 17th avenue also divided the neighborhood in two. By the 1960s, the neighborhood had acquired the reputation as being poverty-stricken. During this time, future Portland mayor

Tom Potter Thomas Jay Potter (born September 12, 1940) is a former American politician and law enforcement officer in the U.S. state of Oregon. He served as Mayor of Portland from 2005 to 2009, and had been the chief of the Portland Police Bureau. As mayor ...

began his police career in Portland as a beat officer in the neighborhood, as well as nearby Sellwood to the south. According to Potter, he acquired many of the basic tenets of his philosophy of

community policing Community policing, or community-oriented policing (COP), is a strategy of policing that focuses on developing relationships with community members. It is a philosophy of full-service policing that is highly personal, where an officer patrols ...

while as a young officer in the neighborhood. Potter became involved in the Brooklyn Action Corps (BAC), a community organization that was founded during this time to combat the poverty, crime, and drugs that were afflicting the neighborhood. By the 1980s, the neighborhood had undergone a nearly complete turnaround. Today it is regarded as among southeast Portland's most desirable residential neighborhoods. The construction of the

Eastbank Esplanade The Eastbank Esplanade (officially Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade) is a pedestrian and bicycle path along the east shore of the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States. Running through the Kerns, Buckman, and Hosford-Abernethy neighb ...

in Portland allowed the neighborhood to regain its connection to the Willamette River, and the opening of the Orange Line light rail, completed in September 2015, has created easier mass-transit access to downtown.

References

External links

Official WebsiteBrooklyn Street Tree Inventory Report
{{Portland neighborhoods German-American culture in Portland, Oregon Neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon