Portland Courant

Since the 1970s, Portland has hosted outdoor summer events celebrating and honoring LGBTQ+ legacies. The annual Pride parade weaves its way through the North Park blocks, Waterfront Park, and downtown Portland in a festival of queer joy. Reminiscing on the event, a community member notes “the marches made us visible.”

This year, Pride Northwest Inc.’s Portland Pride Festival is celebrated the weekend of July 15 -16th. Staff from the LGBTQ+ Historic Sites Project, the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, and other city employees will be there! We will be at Booth A75 in Waterfront Park, sharing information about the project as well as a project zine and posters. Visitors are invited to fill out an online questionnaire, which staff are using to gather information about additional historic places significant to LGBTQ+ communities.

Take the questionnaire, open through July 2023

Along with Waterfront Park, various streetscapes, corners, parks, buildings, and spaces of past events remain as physical reminders embedded with histories of LGBTQ+ protest and visibility. These spaces offer congregation and connection, especially during periods when being out presents negative consequences.

The Pythian Building, 918 SW Yamhill, held Portland’s first Pride celebration in 1971. The dance organized by the newly formed gay organization, The Second Foundation of Oregon, recognized National Gay Pride Week. Gay Pride Week emerged across the country from New York’s Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day event honoring the 1969 Stonewall uprising. Two hundred people partied with live music in the dancehall of the Pythian.

By 1973, the organization held a rally and picket line at Pioneer Courthouse supporting Oregon House Bill 2930. Introduced by Vera Katz and other supporters during the legislative session, the bill sought to establish sexual orientation protections in employment and housing. While introduced and supported through multiple legislative sessions, a statewide anti-discrimination bill would not be passed until 2007.

Pride events have continued growing and utilizing outdoor space since the late 1970s, with Waterfront Park becoming a major festival ground. In 1980, the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus performed their first concert. In 1988, an estimated 5,000 people flocked to the area. During the Ballot Measure 9 fight of 1992, Portland Pride garnered the most media attention to compared to previous years. Pride Northwest, Inc., organizer of Portland Pride Waterfront Festival and Parade since 1994, continues to foster one of the largest Pride events on the west coast.

These places and several hundred others are a part of the LGBTQ+ Historic Sites Project, a multi-year effort identifying, documenting, and preserving Portland’s historic resources associated with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer+ histories. Historic preservation’s tools of documentation and designation are just one of the emerging strategies assisting LGBTQ+ communities in efforts to remember, honor, and connect to the built environment. Over the course of 2023, historic property documentation, summaries of Portland’s LGBTQ+ history, and National Register of Historic Places nominations will be completed to advance inclusion and recognition of Portland’s LGBTQ+ historic resources. 

Learn more about the LGBTQ+ Historic Sites Project.

Original source can be found here