30 Vintage Photos of the 1956 Portland Rose Parade

The 1956 Portland Rose Parade was part of the annual Portland Rose Festival, a tradition that dates back to 1907. The parade, which took place in Portland, Oregon, showcased a colorful display of floats, marching bands, and various community groups, all celebrating the city's vibrant history and the beauty of the rose, which is Portland’s official flower.

The Portland Rose Festival itself is a celebration of Portland’s status as the “City of Roses,” and the Rose Parade is one of the most prominent events during the festival. In 1956, the parade featured a variety of floats decorated with roses and other flowers, as well as performances by marching bands from schools across the region. The event usually attracts thousands of spectators from Portland and beyond, and it serves as an important part of the city’s cultural identity.

The Rose Parade was an important event in the 1950s, and it was part of a growing tradition that included the crowning of the Rose Festival Queen and various other festivities that celebrated Portland’s blooming rose culture. Here below is a set of vintage photos that shows the Portland Rose Parade in 1956.

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Portlander Lives Frozen in Ice Block for Thirty Minutes, 1931

A scientific experiment that bewildered thousands was performed when A. Moro, of Portland, Ore., allowed himself to be frozen up in a solid cake of ice for thirty minutes at an annual newspapermen’s midnight frolic held in Portland, in 1931. At the end of the half hour of imprisonment, the ice block was chopped open and Mr. Moro emerged bright and healthy, a little chilled, perhaps, but otherwise unaffected.

Mr. Moro is enabled to accomplish this remarkable feat because of his ability to get along with a minimum supply of oxygen for an unusual length of time. In performing the stunt, he crawls into the cavity formed in two blocks of ice as shown at right. Ice is then melted around him to inclose his body in the cavity.

The World’s Largest Log Cabin: The History of the Forestry Building in Portland, Oregon

Organizers of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition boasted that the Forestry Building was the world’s largest log cabin, measuring 206 feet long, 102 feet wide and 72 feet high (approximately 7 stories). Its construction was said to have cost approximately $30,000 (about $935,000 today). The lumber baron Simon Benson (1851-1942) paid for most of the giant logs that comprised the building, selected from old-growth trees in Columbia County, Oregon.

Exterior view of the Lewis and Clark Exposition Forestry Building, Portland, 1905.

Architect Ion Lewis (1853-1933), of the noted Portland architectural firm of Whidden and Lewis, designed the Forestry Building for the massive log cabin. Architectural historian Henry Matthews, in his biography of the architect Kirtland K. Cutter said of the Forestry Building: “The Forestry Building at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition of 1905 in Portland, Oregon, designed by Ion Lewis of Whidden and Lewis and his young assistant Albert E. Doyle, offered another precedent for rustic architecture on a grand scale. This building, described as the “world’s largest log cabin” or the “Parthenon of Oregon” had an interior “nave” of unpeeled logs forty-eight feet high. This veritable cathedral of giant trees was by far the most popular attraction of the exposition and confirmed the public taste for such architecture.”

The interior of the Forestry Building featured colonnades of 54 massive, unpeeled Douglas Fir logs. The logs supports a 2-story center aisle, cruciform in plan, lit by skylights. The building housed an exhibit highlighting the forestry industry, local flora and fauna and Native American photos and artifacts.

After the 1905 exposition, the building was purchased by the city of Portland, which for many years let it decline and decay. It was nearly lost to fire several times when embers fell on the roof, either from nearby building fires or from wood-stove embers, but quick responses by the fire department kept it going.

In the 1940s, there was talk of actually demolishing the building, which by then had turned into a safety hazard; the balconies had been built with whole logs, which had warped, making them dangerous, and the whole building was like a banquet hall for wood-destroying organisms like bark beetles and termites.

Finally, in the 1950s, the Chamber of Commerce took up a collection to restore the place. By this time, people were starting to realize it was completely irreplaceable. Old-growth timber like what had gone into its construction could still be found, but it was deeper in the forest and less uniform. Finding 52 matching trees would be prohibitively expensive if not impossible to do, and – since the logs would have to be trucked to the site rather than just floated up the river – log-handling systems would have to be engineered to prevent the bark from being scarred by logging equipment.

By the time of the state’s sesquicentennial celebration in 1959, the building was mostly restored to its former glory. It now boasted a “priceless collection of logging and lumbering exhibits, both antique and modern,” according to an Oregonian report. Also on display was another bit of history, the first sheet of commercially produced Douglas Fir plywood ever made, a product of the Autzen family’s Portland Manufacturing Company, produced in 1904.

On August 17, 1964, the Forestry Building’s caretaker locked up for the night at around 5:30. Within 45 minutes, neighbors were noticing that something was wrong. Specifically, the place was on fire, and when the fire crews arrived at around 6:15 it was clear that nothing short of direct divine intervention was going to put it out.

“There was never a hope of saving the building,” the Oregonian reported the next day. “Nothing was saved from the inside.”

Construction of the old Forestry Building, 1904.

A 1904 postcard showing the interior scene in the Forestry Building, with the central colonnade of matched old-growth fir trees.

The immense Forestry Building is shown in 1905 during the Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition, for which it was built.

Two women sitting in the upper balcony of the Forestry Building, 1905. This image really displays how massive the support logs were.

The interior of the Forestry Building, ca. 1905.

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A Shock of Hair Receives a Shock

If you care for snappy haircut take 200,000 volts and barber does the rest. Here we see Charles Hawker, barber, giving Retlaw Haines an electrical haircut.

Electricity causes hair to stand up straight making it easy for barber to give even trim. There is practically no amperage, so the process is painless.

Works on all but bald heads.

(Image via The Square America Archive)

Pigeon Hole Parking for Automobiles in Portland, 1955

Pigeon Hole Parking came to Portland with the wave of parking-lot mania that swept the city in the 1950s. This one, at SW Stark and Park, lasted until the mid-60s when it was moved two blocks south to SW 9th and Alder. Like many of these parking systems, it was plagued by bad electrics that would strand cars until repairs could be made. The Stark and Park site is still a surface parking lot.

The Pigeon Hole Parking corporation prospered in 1950-1958 under the direction of the Sanders brothers with Vaughn serving as president and general manager and Leo as vice-president in charge of engineering. They were considered one of the leaders in the field of mechanical parking, having sold sixty units in the United States, Canada, and Venezuela.

And to their credit, there are still units in operation today.

44 Rare Vintage Photos That Capture Street Scenes of Portland From Between the 1900s and 1910s

Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Multnomah County. It is located in the Willamette Valley region of the Pacific Northwest, at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers.

The city covers 145 square miles (380 square kilometers) and is the 26th most populous city in the United States.

Here, below is a rare collection of 44 vintage photos capturing street scenes of Portland from between the 1900s and 1910s.

5th and Morrison, 1912

A red electric pulls the liberty bell past the Circle Theater, 1915

Baker Stock Company in the late 1900s

Broadway in the late 1910s

Children (near political signs) in front of the Portland and OK coffee houses, circa 1900

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