September 22, 2004

(Updated) Tonight We're Gonna Party Like It's 1999

Portland At The End Of The 20th Century... As Seen In 1913

Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.

We've recently began to shift slightly away from our focus on reading books about Portland to the exclusion of nearly anything else as we've done for the past year or two. But this afternoon we encountered something most peculiar on the shelves at Powell's, and despite its $30 price tag, we couldn't simply leave it behind.

Published in 1913, and entitled Portland, Oregon A.D. 1999 And Other Sketches, the book's first half takes the form of an encounter between the author, one Jeff W. Barnes, and a mysterious 86-year-old woman who reveals to him her prophecies of life in Portland at the end of the 20th century.

So hold on tight. Here, then, are some selected (but extensive) revelations of Portland in 1999 as seen from the vantage point of 1913.

Trains and trolleys have been almost entirely replaced by aerial vehicles, "both for pleasure and business," which are "made entirely of steel bands" to avoid damage during any collision, and including an automatic parachute.

"These air carriers will be simple," the old woman tells the author, "and a good bright boy can manufacture his own vehicle to take him to and from school and at a less expense per day than is now paid for street car fare, and at a lesser risk to life and limb."

Because mid-air is not a location where tracks can (or must) be laid, there are no franchises awarded by the City government, which causes both much trouble for and much annoyance from the railraod companies, whose mode of transportion suffers along with that of the steamship, since people prefer to fly. Country homes become more popular because of the ease of movement provided by air transportation.

However, there are at least two attempts to claim airspace as private property -- one by a businessman who doesn't want people flying over his property, and the other by a railroad campany who wishes to have its own airspace above SW Seventh Avenue to Grant, as well as across the Broadway Bridge.

Of course, the Broadway Bridge presumably is gone, since the bridges have been removed altogether in favor of tubes across the river every other block, starting at Broadway and reaching to Grand Avenue on the east side of the Willamette.

Because of the prominence of air transportion, and the resultant relative lack of trains and automobiles, the City embarks upon what might be called in today's terms a Big Idea:

"... there was an order issued by the City Commissioners removing the hard surface pavements and authorizing the Commissioner of Public Service to sow the streets in rye grass and Kentucy blue grass, so that the city of Portland is one perpetual system of parks, where the youngster may play to his heart's content. ..."

Portland has grown to encompass all of Multnomah County, as well as "portions of other adjacent counties," its population exceeds that of "Greater New York in 1913," and Portland Heights, Kings Heights, and Willamette Heights have been flattened, "only Council Crest with its historic traditions being allowed to remain."

The commission form of government adopted in 1913 "proved a success in every way," with each administration working to exceed the work of the former. "Portland has been well governed for the past 86 years," the woman tells the author. So successful has this form of government been, that Oregon itself adopted the commission form, resulting in a governor and a twelve-member cabinet being seated in Portland, which became the new state capitol.

"The city, county and state buildings embrace five continuous blocks beginning at Jefferson Street running north, taking in Madison, Main, Salmon, Taylor and Yamhill Streets, each building being ten stories high and connected at each third story with its companion on the opposite side of the street for a distance of five blocks, making it practically one solid building five blocks long and each building ten stories high."

Women are prominent in public life, with seven of fifteen circuit court judges being women, and Oregon's women governors and commissioners passing laws such as one permitting a woman to retain her own name after marriage. Abigail Scott Duniway "is held in much reverence." Half the police force are women, "who dress in uniform and there is a day shift and a night shift of these women police, and the idea works well."

Crime is practically non-existant, since criminals "were talked to like brothers and treated like brothers." As such, there are no jails or penitentiaries.

Apparently, some form of holography has been perfected, since "moving pictures" have given way to "motion pictures" -- wherein a live performance given on one day in New York can be replicated exactly one week later in Portland, "and it would be difficult for one seeing both performances to tell which was the original and which the copy."

Both the Fourth of July and the Rose Festival are celebrated in the air. In the former, "the air was filled with vehicles of all kinds and descriptions," while in the latter "[the] celebration was unique and embraced a pageant in the air." Said pageant included an airdrop of roses from tens of thousands of airships.

City streets are sprinkled via a huge air bag holding a hose connected to a fire boat on the Willamette River, providing a moving, artificial rain storm.

All of the old newspapers appear to be doing well, with The Oregonian and The Oregon Journal each occupying its own entire City block, while The Evening Telegram "grew so fast that it was compelled to move to more commodious quarters and occupies that building once known as the Portland Hotel, which ceased to be a hostelry in 1953."

(Not to break the narrative thread, but it should be noted that the author's mysterious old woman was close to correct that the Hotel "ceased to be a hostelry in 1953." In reality, the Hotel was razed in 1951 to become a parking structure for Meier & Frank.)

"... Ever since the year 1933, when the State of Oregon passed a bill making it a criminal offense for anyone to recommend or prescribe deleterious drugs in the cure of diseases, the number of doctors using medicines have fallen off and drug stores are no longer run under that name, and the health of young and old was wonderfully improved. ..."

Women dress in "an Oriental style" while men "have gone back to the old Knickbocker style." There are "few of the old stock of Indians left," and those who remain are seen as the "First Families of America." Portland includes some Chinese and Japanese citizens who "have had a change of heart and have stopped all their objectionable ways" and who "affect the American stlye of dress, even to the knee pants."

Doctors, lawyers, and minsters all are under the supervision of City government, although only doctors and lawyers are paid "out of the common fund."

For some unexplained reason, "corn, wheat, rye and other cereals entering into the production of alcohol" lost their ability to ferment, and so "the science of making alcohol has become a lost art." In its place, a substitute was found or developed which "exhilarates but does not intoxicate."

Portland is lot from above by a single giant electric light "suspended in the air at a height of several thousand feet." As such, no one has any need of their own personal gas or electric light fixtures. Heat is provided "through a thorough pipe system and it is compulsory on all citizens to patronize the city's heat." Because of this, premiums on fire insurance have dropped significantly.

Sometime in 1925, a young inventor came up with a device which so scared the railroad companies that they purchased the rights and sat on it until their patent expired 25 years later. This device "may be so applied to a balloon or other object suspended in midair, which, when properly adjusted and at a certain height from the earth, will shake off or cast off the gravitation of the earth allowing it to suspend in space as an independent planet."

What good does this do? Why, it means that a traveller only has to go up in such a device, and freed from gravity simply wait for the earth below him to turn to their destination, at which time they descend back to the ground. Since this is only good for travelling from east to west (since the earth rotates west to east), northward and southward travel is still accomplished by either car or train.

It seems that many of the same family names in business in 1913 are still in business in 1999, but we won't repeat the old woman's litany to the author here. But in the midst of this lineages, it is revealed that men no longer have the need of going to a barber for their shaves, since someone managed to invent a lather than can be applied to the face, and after three minutes it and all the facial hair in question simply can be rinsed off.

Cheap and abundant electricity is available thansk to harnessing the motion of ocean waves, and even the motion of the waters of the Great Lakes.

No one is buried anymore, but instead everyone is cremated. Cemetaries have disappeared to be replaced by playgrounds.

With a race for governor approaching in the year 2000, there are only two parties competing -- one a Progressive party, the other a Socialist party.

(At this point, the tale told by the mysterious old woman becomes more than vaguely ironic, for reasons that should be fairly obvious in a moment.)

It seems that as a result of its expansion and increased population, Portland had need to increase its access to a decent water supply. It was decided in 1951 that the "conditions at Mt. Hood forbade looking to that place for a greater supply" and so the City of Portland turned to Mt. St. Helens instead.

A year after establishing the Mt. St. Helens water supply, the ignored Mt. Hood "began to belch forth from its intestines a mass of smoke and lava which bared the mountain of snow and caused much consternation among our people."

(In reality, of course, we continue to get our drinking water from the Bull Run Watershed, which is part of the Mt. Hood National Forest. In reality, of course, it was Mt. St. Helens that went on to erupt.)

Meanwhile, phonographs have turned into a hybrid of flatbed scanner and text-to-speech device:

"... Take for instance, an item cut from a daily paper and paste it on the cylinder, or disc, and without further preparation, a voice will read off the item to you in a plain, clear tone. Pasteo n the disc, the 'Index of today's news' from your morning paper and start it going and the items are read off to you correctly and in good voice. ..."

Telephones, of course, provide not only audio but video as well, and sinc they are everywhere (including public telephones on every street corner) there are no longer any central switchboards. In addition, "[m]uch telephoning is now being done by wireless and that brance of the service has developed greatly and is used to communicate with aerial vehicles."

As related by author Hayes, the old woman proceeds to tell him of a near calamity regarding the breaking away of massive sheets of ice from the South Pole, and the hysteria that surrounded these events. That part we won't bother to pass along here.

So, at least according to this very odd little book from 1913, that's what Portland was meant to be in the year 1999. We're coming up on 2005 now -- how'd we do?

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