Twenty-five years ago the blocks you are walking through were a grid of warehouses, rail yards, and light industry that few Portlanders had reason to visit. The Pearl District transformed in the 1990s and 2000s into one of the most complete urban reinventions in American history. Artists moved into the empty warehouses first, drawn by cheap rents and high ceilings.
Galleries followed. Then restaurants, then luxury condominiums, then the streetcar line connecting it to downtown and the South Park Blocks. The name Pearl supposedly came from a gallery owner who described the neighborhood as an oyster hiding pearls — the art hidden in industrial shells.
The Brewery Blocks, where the old Blitz-Weinhard brewery operated from 1856 until 1999, became a mixed-use development that preserved the historic facades. The neighborhood remains the center of Portland's commercial gallery scene, particularly on the First Thursday gallery walk that has run monthly since 1986. The contrast between the Pearl's polished storefronts and the unhoused encampments just beyond its edges captures something essential about Portland's ongoing argument with itself about who the city is for.