Eliot / Albina

To understand Eliot, you have to start with Vanport. When the 1948 flood destroyed Oregon's second-largest city overnight, Portland's 6,000 Black residents — who had come north to work the Kaiser Shipyards during World War II — had almost nowhere to go. Racial covenants and redlining closed most of Portland's neighborhoods to them. The Albina district, a historically working-class area of NE Portland, was one of the few places they could rent or buy.

Through the 1950s and 60s, the area around Williams, Vancouver, and Mississippi Avenues became the cultural and commercial heart of Black Portland — Black-owned businesses, churches, jazz clubs, and community organizations. It was a community built under constraint, but it was built.

Then the city took it apart. Emanuel Hospital's expansion in the 1970s demolished over 300 homes. Interstate 5 cut through the neighborhood. Urban renewal programs demolished more than 1,100 homes across the broader Albina district — the overwhelming majority owned by Black families. The combination of these interventions effectively destroyed the economic base of Black Portland and forced another generation of displacement.

By 2010, the percentage of Black residents in Boise (the neighborhood north of Eliot) had fallen to 26.6%, down from 48% in 2000. Portland has been called the most gentrified city in the country. Albina is the primary reason why.

Albina Vision Trust is a community-led organization working to reclaim and reimagine the area that was destroyed by urban renewal — particularly the land taken for Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Quarter. Their first major project, Albina One, a 94-unit affordable housing development in the Eliot neighborhood, broke ground with the first families expected in 2025.

The N Williams Avenue corridor has become one of Portland's best cycling and dining streets — a dense stretch of restaurants and shops accessible by the protected bike lane that runs its length. The irony that this was made possible partly by displacing the community that built it here is not lost on anyone who has paid attention to the history.

Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church, one of the oldest Black churches in Portland, has stood in the neighborhood since 1888 and remains a community anchor. The Eliot Oral Histories project is an extraordinary archive of firsthand accounts from longtime residents.