Ladd's Addition is an inner southeast historic district of

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, ...

, United States. It is Portland's oldest planned

residential development A residential area is a land used in which housing predominates, as opposed to industrial and commercial areas. Housing may vary significantly between, and through, residential areas. These include single-family housing, multi-family resident ...

, and one of the oldest in the

western United States The Western United States (also called the American West, the Western States, the Far West, the Western territories, and the West) is List of regions of the United States, census regions United States Census Bureau. As American settlement i ...

. The district is known in Portland for a diagonal street pattern, which is at odds with the rectilinear grid of the surrounding area. Roughly eight blocks (east-west) by ten blocks (north-south) in size (by reference to the surrounding grid), Ladd's is bordered by SE Hawthorne, Division, 12th, and 20th streets. It is part of the Hosford-Abernethy

neighborhood association A neighborhood association (NA) is a group of residents or property owners who advocate to organize activities within a neighborhood. An association may have elected leaders and voluntary dues. Some neighborhood associations in the United State ...

History

Ladd's Addition is named after William S. Ladd, a merchant and mid-19th-century Portland mayor who owned a farm on the land. In 1891 (when the city of East Portland was merged into Portland) Ladd subdivided the land for residential use. Rather than follow the standard orthogonal

grid Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to: Space partitioning * Regular grid, a tessellation of space with translational symmetry, typically formed from parallelograms or higher-dimensional analogs ** Grid graph, a graph structure with nodes connec ...

of the surrounding area, Ladd created a diagonal "wagon wheel" arrangement, including four small diamond-shaped

rose garden A rose garden or rosarium is a garden or park, often open to the public, used to present and grow various types of garden roses, and sometimes rose species. Designs vary tremendously and roses may be displayed alongside other plants or grouped ...

s and a central

traffic circle A roundabout, a rotary and a traffic circle are types of circular intersection or junction in which road traffic is permitted to flow in one direction around a central island, and priority is typically given to traffic already in the junct ...

surrounding a park. It is also one of fewer than 20 areas in Portland that have alleyways, with street elevations mostly uninterrupted by

curb cut A curb cut (U.S.), curb ramp, depressed curb, dropped kerb ( UK), pram ramp, or kerb ramp (Australia) is a solid (usually concrete) ramp graded down from the top surface of a sidewalk to the surface of an adjoining street. It is designed primaril ...

s. While it is said that Ladd's design was inspired by L'Enfant's Washington layout, it bears no actual resemblance to the Washington street plan. LA - Clark Residence - Portland Oregon

The homes in the district, mostly developed between 1905 and 1930 (after Ladd's death), have been called a "architecturally rich mix of compatible early 20th century styles," notable for their "continuity of scale, setback, orientation, and materials."

Architectural styles An architectural style is a classification of buildings (and nonbuilding structures) based on a set of characteristics and features, including overall appearance, arrangement of the components, method of construction, building materials used, for ...

represented include

bungalow A bungalow is a small house or cottage that is typically single or one and a half storey, if a smaller upper storey exists it is frequently set in the roof and Roof window, windows that come out from the roof, and may be surrounded by wide ve ...

, craftsman,

American Foursquare The American Foursquare (also American Four Square or American 4 Square) is an American house vernacular under the Arts and Crafts style popular from the mid-1890s to the late 1930s. A reaction to the ornate and mass-produced elements of the ...

Mission Mission (from Latin 'the act of sending out'), Missions or The Mission may refer to: Geography Australia *Mission River (Queensland) Canada *Mission, British Columbia, a district municipality * Mission, Calgary, Alberta, a neighbourhood * ...

, Tudor, and

Colonial Revival The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture. The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the arch ...

. Development started at the north end, closest to the streetcar transportation, with the largest homes built between 1905 and 1915. Though the earliest deeds excluded Japanese and Chinese residents, except as servants, after those covenants expired, Ladd's Addition was one of the few areas by 1939 informally designated as open to 'oriental' families.

Ecology

The narrow streets of Ladd's Addition are lined with

American Elm ''Ulmus americana'', generally known as the American elm or, less commonly, as the white elm or water elm, is a species of elm native to eastern North America. The trees can live for several hundred years. It is a very hardy species that can ...

trees. The Save Our Elms organization inoculates the elm trees yearly against Dutch elm disease. Each of the four smaller, diamond-shaped "circles" to the east, west, north, and south contains one of Portland's rose test gardens. Friends of Ladd's Addition Gardens regularly solicits money and volunteers to maintain the rose gardens. Ladd named most of the streets after trees, but he named SE Ladd Avenue and SE Elliott Avenue for himself and his wife, who was born Caroline Elliott.

Historic preservation

The area was designated a

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains historic building, older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal p ...

by 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 ...

in 1988.

Notes

References

;General references: * ''

Portland Monthly ''Portland Monthly'' (also referred to as ''Portland Monthly Magazine'') is a monthly news and general interest magazine which covers food, politics, business, design, events and culture in Portland, Oregon. The magazine was co-founded in 2003 b ...

'', April 2007, 20 Best Neighborhoods, pages 78–79. ;Citations:

External links