Portland, Oregon, is a city widely known for its civic planning, preservation and inviting atmosphere. Within the five-mile downtown district can be found skyscrapers, cast-iron front buildings, a riverfront park, old brick warehouses, breweries and more. Photos.

The history of Portland's architectural design, from the mid-nineteenth century to the more recent tradition in postmodern commercial architecture.

"All new things built with the idea of preserving the beauty of the city and adding to it." -A. E. DoyleThe Central Library, Benson Hotel, Reed College, the Meier & Frank building, the U.S. National Bank-these are just a few of the grand Portland icons designed by Albert E. Doyle. During a period of rapid growth in Portland, Oregon, after the Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition and before the Great Depression, Doyle (1877-1928) was the city's most important architect. Beauty of the City is the first biography of this celebrated architect. Doyle's career was short, just twenty-one years. Yet everywhere Portland retains his imprint. Many of Doyle's classical, often white terra-cotta buildings became venerable city landmarks. He also designed Portland residences, Neahkahnie beach cottages, and houses and banks in Oregon and Washington.Using A. E. Doyle's own diaries and letters and his firm's records, historian Philip Niles traces the architect's life and times in the context of the burgeoning cityscape. As Portland expanded beyond its frontier origins and provincialism, Doyle helped introduce East Coast and European sophistication. Indeed, his refined sensibility influenced the development of the Northwest Regional Style by Pietro Belluschi and John Yeon, among others. Doyle set the standard for elegance and proportion that later architects adapted to more modern styles-his standard defines Portland's vibrant core and contributes to the city's beauty as much today as it did eighty years ago.Readers interested in Northwest history and culture will appreciate this compelling and richly illustrated biography of "Portland's architect" and the parallel story of the growth of the city. Likewise, architectural historians and those seeking to better understand Portland's architectural heritage will enjoy reading of Doyle's contributions to this celebrated cityscape.

Portland Hill Walks features twenty-four miniature adventures stocked with stunning views, hidden stairways, leafy byways, urban forests, and places to sit, eat, and soak in the local scene. The revised and updated edition offers five new walks in addition to the well-loved classics, with new contemporary and historical photos and easier-to-follow directions. Whether you feel like meandering through old streetcar neighborhoods or climbing a lava dome, there is a hill walk for every mood. New walks take you up to Willamette Stone State Park, across the St. Johns Bridge, down to the South Waterfront (with a ride on the aerial tram), along a stream in Gresham, and up Mounts Talbert and Scott. Portland is a walking city, and Portland Hill Walks will inspire you to enjoy it to its fullest!

Portland's great residential architecture is presented in the context of the history and growth of the city as well as the broader, international architectural trends.

A compact and comprehensive history of Portland from first European contact to the twenty-first century, Portland in Three Centuries introduces the women and men who have shaped Oregon's largest city. The expected politicians and business leaders appear, but Carl Abbott also highlights workers and immigrants, union members and dissenters, women at work and in the public realm, artists and filmmakers, activists, and other movers and shakers. Incorporating social history and contemporary scholarship in his narrative, Abbott examines current metropolitan character and issues, giving close attention to historical background. He explores the context of opportunities and problems that have helped to shape the rich mosaic that is Portland. This revised and updated second edition includes greater attention to Portland's communities of color, an expanded prologue, and coverage of the 2020 protests that thrust Portland into the national spotlight. A highly readable character study of a city, and enhanced by more than sixty historic and contemporary images, Portland in Three Centuries will appeal to readers interested in Portland, in Oregon, and in Pacific Northwest history.

A “deeply researched and brilliantly written” blueprint to the criminal possibilities in the world all around us (Warren Ellis, author of Gun Machine). At the core of A Burglar’s Guide to the City is an unexpected and thrilling insight: how any building transforms when seen through the eyes of someone hoping to break into it. Studying architecture the way a burglar would, Geoff Manaugh takes readers through walls, down elevator shafts, into panic rooms, and out across the rooftops of an unsuspecting city. Encompassing nearly two thousand years of heists and break-ins, the book draws on the expertise of reformed bank robbers, FBI special agents, private security consultants, the LAPD Air Support Division, and architects past and present. Whether discussing how to pick padlocks, climb the walls of high-rise apartments, find gaps in a museum’s surveillance routine, or discuss home invasions in ancient Rome, A Burglar’s Guide to the City ensures readers will never enter a bank again without imagining how to loot the vault, or walk down the street without planning the perfect getaway. Praise for A Burglar’s Guide to the City “This burglar’s guide isn’t for ordinary smash-and-grab burglars, it’s for the rest of us—who steal in, steal out, and get away with glorious dreams. A spectacularly fun read.” —Robert Krulwich, cohost of Radiolab “Who knew that urban studies could be so riveting? Geoff Manaugh excels at finding new, illicit, and fresh angles on a subject as loved as it is overexposed—the city. In his new book, elegant, perverse, sinuous supervillains maneuver and master the city like parkour champions. I see the TV series already.” —Paola Antonelli, design curator, MoMA