there was a more hurried growth and more inflated condition of trade, which, however, subsided with the cause. In 1870 the population of Portland was under ten thousand, but the proportion of wealth to population was greater than any town in the United States, paying taxes on six million dollars of property assessed at one-third of its value. From that time forward the growth of the city has been steady rather than forced. According to the census of 1890 the population of Portland proper is 47,294, and its suburbs on the east side of the river contain—East Portland, 10,481; Albina, 5,104.
A noticeable feature of Portland is the snug and homelike appearance of the city. The streets are narrow—too narrow, indeed, for the display of the fine structures already erected and in progress; the squares are small, affording frequent streets and corner lots—so small that many of Portland's capitalists have appropriated a whole one to themselves, giving a perspective to their tasteful mansions which their business houses lack. The absence of long blocks of uniform structures must ever deprive the city of a certain metropolitan solidity of appearance, but the airiness and individuality of short blocks constitute one of its chief attractions.
Portland follows the rule of the Pacific Northwest, and builds its residences of wood, which is cheaper, more rapidly built, and more conformable to the climate than brick and stone. The sun is a necessity everywhere along the coast, and a wooden house is quickly warmed through by it, while brick houses exclude the heat, and the winters are seldom cold enough to make thick walls desirable for protection from frost. There is not in Portland yet any great leaning toward the half mediaeval style adopted in some of the trans-montane cities, which indeed is out of place in wooden structures and not consonant either with the material of the houses, the climate, or the spirit of the age, which eschews "Mariannes in a moated grange," Juliets in hooded balconies, and every appearance of constraint. Even the colonial style, which is much affected, seems out of place in close neighborhood with Portland's elegant High School building, Medical College, or the City Hall now building. The most that can be claimed is that it gives variety and individuality to indulge in these architectural vagaries.
