Your eyes rest on one of the finest examples of early twentieth-century planned residential development in the Pacific Northwest. Eastmoreland was developed beginning in 1910 by the Ladd Estate Company, the same organization responsible for Ladd's Addition, on a tract of land in the far southeast that was marketed to upper-middle-class families seeking a park-like setting within the city. The neighborhood was designed with curved streets, generous setbacks, large lots, and street trees — a reaction against the rigid grid of central Portland and an embrace of the City Beautiful movement's principles of residential design.
The houses are primarily colonial revival, English Tudor, and Spanish Mission styles built between 1915 and 1940, representing the range of historical styles that American residential architecture borrowed from during the first half of the twentieth century. The Eastmoreland Golf Course, established in 1917, forms the green center of the neighborhood, and Crystal Springs Creek runs through the golf course, feeding the Rhododendron Garden nearby. Reed College borders Eastmoreland to the north.
The neighborhood has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2016, a designation that came only after a contentious battle between preservationists and property owners who objected to any restrictions on how they could modify their homes. The battle over Eastmoreland's historic designation was a referendum on what Portland values in its built environment.