Flip 19--NE 102nd and Halsey

8/8/2011   Monday   5:00 PM

Location: Woodland Park/Gateway neighborhoods

It's rush hour on a weekday evening, and the still air is stirred only by the rush of passing cars. These blocks are at the intersection of two major surface streets as well as two Interstate highways--around here, it's always rush hour. The sinking sun is in everyone's eyes.

But just a block away from this crossroads, a secluded neighborhood sits tucked away, its winding streets and tall trees creating a barrier against the traffic noise. The houses were mostly built in 1945,  two-bedroom postwar bungalows. The freeways they overlook were built in the 1950s and later. I-84 and I-205 pave the ravine between these houses and Rocky Butte, a forested, volcanic cinder cone (now extinct). I wonder how the residents of this neighborhood reacted decades ago when they learned of the freeway project.

 

Across 102nd Avenue, the old Woodland Park Chapel, also built in the '40s, keeps its neon sign glowing, even during the day.

 

It's a plain structure, its western face almost blinding in the sun.

The church is now the home of an organization that ministers to Native Americans.

It's not the only building to be slightly repurposed as the neighborhood changes. Across the street, the former Woodland Park Hospital is now Vibra Specialty Hospital, part of a national chain of "Long-Term Acute Care" facilities.

A skybridge connecting two hospital buildings spans Hancock Street.

 

The neighborhood has a solid workingclass feel to it, as I am sure it has always had. Its unpretentious character reveals an occasional quirk, such as this phone booth in a driveway.

There's something about the buildings, the businesses and even the kids that wouldn't be out of place in the 1950s. This is a neighborhood that has not yet been steamrolled by gentrification, and perhaps never will be.

 

 The Wunderland video game arcade was there when I was a kid.

A hallmark of the era in which it was built, virtually everything in this neighborhood is designed around the automobile, from the businesses that cater to auto care to the drive-thru fast food restaurants that line the main thoroughfares.

Appropriately, this district is called Gateway. The name conjures images of movement and progress.

 

Even the local payday loan shop wants to keep you rolling.

 

But if the gridlocked boulevards and car-choked freeways nearby are any indication, the days of unfettered mobility by automobile are no longer. Are we reaching a tipping point? Will drivers soon be forced out of their cars and onto buses and bicycles by the masses? Or are we insensitive to the gradual change like the proverbial frog in the pot, who doesn't notice just how hot the water's getting until he's been boiled alive?