Portland State's New Vanport Building Also A Memorial

PORTLAND, OR —Portland State University held an official —and virtual — opening for the new Vanport Building on Tuesday.

The building, located at 1810 SW 5th Ave., serves as a new home for PSU's College of Education, the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, Portland Community College's dental hygiene and dental assisting programs and the City of Portland's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

The building is named for Vanport, which from 1942 to 1948 was the nation's largest wartime housing development. Located right outside of Portland, Vanport provided a home for many people who worked in the shipyards, including thousands of Black Oregonians.

Vanport sat on 650 acres of the Colombia River flood plain west of the Denver Avenue and east of the North Pacific Railroad line, according to OregonEncyclopedia.org.

Much of Vanport was destroyed in a flood on May 30, 1948, which killed 15 and displaced the community's 18,500 residents.

The Vanport Extension Center, a college, eventually was renamed and became Portland State University following it's relocation to downtown Portland, according to the university.

In a release, Portland State said the decision to name the building in honor of Vanport "reflects Portland's diverse history and honors generations of activism, engagement and community organization within the city."

"As we celebrate Portland State's 75th Anniversary this year, we are reflecting often on our roots in Vanport," PSU President Stephen Percy said. "The Vanport Building is a beautiful addition to our downtown campus and will serve as a symbol and reminder of our resilient past and our continued dedication to racial justice and equity."

In addition to the name, the building owners partnered with Vanport Mosaic — a memory-activism organization dedicated to preserving and sharing Vanport history — to create an exhibit at the entrance of the Vanport Building, which will serve as a permanent memorial to the town, the flood and the people who called Vanport home.

The memorial includes a mural by Portland Artist Alex Chiu titled "The Spirt of Vanport."

"Vanport was a vibrant, engaged and diverse community, where working families could make a healthy life and where people took care of one another," said City Commissioner Carmen Rubio, who oversees the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, one of the new building's tenants.

Rubio continued: "There's a collective, deep sense of loss for what this city could have been had the flood not happened or, more importantly, if city leaders had rightly valued the community. We take a small step in honoring Vanport's value, and in reminding ourselves to value all our communities every day, by choosing this name."

The Vanport Building, which first opened for use in January 2021, was designed by Portland's SRG Partnership and built for a cost of $111 million.

Watch the Vanport Building's official opening here: