Broadway is a street in

Portland, Oregon Portland ( ) is the List of cities in Oregon, most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest region. Situated close to northwest Oregon at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, ...

, that runs from the Southwest Hills into the Rose City Park area of Portland. It is north-south in

Downtown Portland Downtown Portland is the central business district of Portland, Oregon, United States. It is on the west bank of the Willamette River in the northeastern corner of the southwest section of the city and where most of the city's high-rise buildi ...

, crosses 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 ...

over the Broadway Bridge, and is east-west on the east side of the river. The Memorial Coliseum and

Lloyd Center Lloyd Center is a shopping mall in the Lloyd District, Portland, Oregon, Lloyd District of Portland, Oregon, United States, just northeast of Downtown Portland, downtown. It is owned by the Urban Renaissance Group and KKR Real Estate Finance T ...

are located on or near Broadway. Many old

movie theater A movie theater (American English) or cinema (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English), also known as a movie house, cinema hall, picture house, picture theater, the movies, the pictures, or simply theater, is a business ...

s are on Broadway in the Hollywood District. The street also runs through historic Irvington and Sullivan's Gulch.

Portland State University Portland State University (PSU) is a public research university in Portland, Oregon, United States. It was founded in 1946 as a post-secondary educational institution for World War II veterans. It evolved into a four-year college over the next ...

is also located on Broadway. The section west of the Willamette was the most vibrant street in downtown Portland even before it was renamed, in 1913, from 7th Avenue to Broadway, and this continued for decades. During the day, it was a bustling shopping street, and remains a busy shopping street today. The street hosted several movie theaters and

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment which began in France in the middle of the 19th century. A ''vaudeville'' was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a drama ...

playhouses, and at night their many neon signs and lighted marquees gave the area a look that was similar to

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

's more-famous Broadway. Almost all of the movie theaters have since closed, most in the 1960s and 1970s, but the street remains the center of downtown's nightlife. Theaters still located on Broadway in downtown include the

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (opened as the Portland Publix Theatre before becoming the Paramount Theatre after 1930) is a historic theater building and performing arts center in Portland, Oregon, United States. Part of the Portland Center ...

(in a former Paramount Theatre) and the Antoinette Hatfield Hall. Over a dozen buildings on Broadway are listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

, but the street is meant to be a busy and commercial, and to provide a route through which Portlanders could commute. Due to an advanced lighting system installed in 1925, it was once called "the brightest street in the world."

Transit

In downtown, Broadway is parallel to, and one block west of, the Portland Transit Mall. On the east side of the Willamette River,

TriMet The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet) is a Transit district, transit agency that serves most of the Oregon part of the Portland metropolitan area. Created in 1969 by the Oregon Legislative Assembly, Oregon legi ...

bus lines 17 and 77 serve Broadway, and the

Portland Streetcar The Portland Streetcar is a streetcar system in Portland, Oregon, that opened in 2001 and serves areas surrounding downtown Portland. The NS Line runs from Northwest Portland to the South Waterfront via Downtown and the Pearl District. Th ...

's B Loop follows Broadway from Grand Avenue to and across the Broadway Bridge, while the A Loop follows Broadway from the Broadway Bridge until it branches onto N Weidler Street.

References

{{Streets in Portland, Oregon Streets in Portland, Oregon

Transit

See also

References