Old Town / Chinatown

Old Town is where Portland began — the original waterfront settlement that grew from Asa Lovejoy's land claim in 1843. The cast-iron facades along NW 1st and 2nd Avenues date to the 1880s and represent one of the largest concentrations of Italianate cast-iron commercial architecture on the West Coast. The buildings survived because the neighborhood declined before mid-century urban renewal could demolish them.

Chinatown grew in the blocks north of Burnside beginning in the 1870s. By 1890, Portland's Chinatown was the second largest in the US — only San Francisco's was bigger. The Chinese community built schools, temples, and businesses here in the face of significant legal hostility: Oregon had some of the most severe anti-Chinese legislation in the country. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 gutted the population, and the neighborhood slowly contracted.

Today the Chinatown designation is largely historic — the Chinese-American community is distributed throughout the metro area, and the neighborhood is better known for the Lan Su Chinese Garden, the Saturday Market, and the social service concentration along Burnside that reflects Portland's unresolved homelessness crisis.

Luce and Han Oak (Korean noodles and dumplings in a stunning space) represent the newer restaurant generation in Old Town. Voodoo Doughnut on SW 3rd is either a Portland institution or a tourist trap, depending on your perspective — probably both. The Saturday Market food vendors are worth sampling on their own.

The Lan Su Chinese Garden is a genuine surprise — a full classical Suzhou-style garden built in the block between NW 2nd and 3rd, constructed by artisans from Suzhou, China in 2000. It's a walled world inside the city, and one of the most peaceful places in Portland. The teahouse inside is excellent.

The Portland Saturday Market — the largest continuously operating outdoor arts and crafts market in the US — runs on weekends under the Burnside Bridge from March through December. The quality varies, but the concentration of local makers in one place is unmatched.

The Shanghai Tunnels run beneath these blocks. Tours are available — see our history of the crimping era for context on what's legend and what's documented.