Welcome to Portland! This loop starts and ends at Powell's City of Books and takes in the Pearl District, Old Town Chinatown, the Willamette River and the heart of downtown.
Stop 1 of 8Free preview
Powell's Books
W Burnside St between NW 10th & 11th Aves
Welcome to the corner of 10th and Burnside, and welcome to Portland. The building in front of you is Powell's City of Books, and it fills an entire city block, from 10th to 11th Avenue and from Burnside up to Couch Street. Powell's calls it the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world. The story starts in 1971, when Walter Powell opened a bookshop in Portland.
His son Michael had already been running a used and scholarly bookstore in Chicago, and in 1979 he came west to join his dad. Within about a year they'd found this location, and it has been the heart of the business ever since. Inside, the store is organized into nine color-coded rooms and thousands of sections, with new, used, rare and out-of-print books all under one roof. You could lose an afternoon in there, so maybe save the deep dive for after the walk.
This is also a good moment to grab a coffee for the road.
🚶 Walk to the next stop (730 m · ~9 min walk): When you're ready, walk north on NW 10th Avenue. You'll cross Couch, Davis, Everett, Flanders, Glisan, Hoyt and Irving; notice they run in alphabetical order. At Johnson Street, the park on your left is Jamison Square. About 9 minutes.
This is Jamison Square, a pocket park in the Pearl District that opened in 2002. It was the first of a series of new parks planned for this neighborhood as part of a 2001 renewal plan, along with Tanner Springs Park and The Fields. Look at the stone steps in the middle of the park. The designers first imagined this as a dry outdoor gallery, but water was added to the rocks to keep skateboarders off them.
The result was a surprise: when the fountain runs, water pours out of the steps, fills the basin and drains away, a man-made tide pool that kids love. It only runs seasonally, roughly late spring to early fall, and it may be off for repairs. The park closes at 10 at night. Now look up at the four tall, colorful totem poles.
They're the Tikitotmoniki Totems by the artists Kenny Scharf and Paige Powell, and they hide the steel poles that hold up the overhead wires for the Portland Streetcar, which runs along two sides of the park.
🚶 Walk to the next stop (1.1 km · ~13 min walk): Next we head to Chinatown, about 13 minutes. Walk back south to NW Flanders Street, then follow Flanders east toward NW 3rd Avenue. Look for the walled garden near NW 3rd and Everett; that's Lan Su. Follow the map line for the exact turns.
