Sellwood, the southernmost neighborhood of Portland proper and the river town you are now in, was an independent city until 1893 and has kept a small-town scale that feels genuinely distinct from the urban density of inner southeast. Sellwood was platted in 1882 on a bend of the Willamette south of the city, developed around the streetcar line that connected it to downtown, and maintained its neighborhood commercial character through the mid-twentieth century when the antique trade arrived. Southeast 13th Avenue became the antiques row of Portland through the 1970s and 80s, attracting dealers of furniture, art glass, architectural salvage, and American folk art who filled the Victorian-era storefronts.
The antique trade has thinned somewhat as the internet democratized vintage markets, but Sellwood remains the city's primary antiques district and the commercial strip retains the feel of a small-town main street with unusual inventory. The Sellwood Bridge, completed in 2016, replaced a 1925 bridge that had been rated as structurally deficient for years — the previous bridge shook when heavy trucks crossed it. The Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, visible from the Sellwood riverfront, provides habitat in the flood plain that connects Sellwood's river edge to the urban wildlife corridor running north through the city.