Pearl District

The Pearl District, northwest of downtown between Burnside and the Broadway Bridge, is Portland's most upscale neighbourhood — blocks of converted warehouses and new mixed-use buildings filled with restaurants, design shops, galleries, and expensive flats. The transformation from industrial wasteland to sought-after urban district happened rapidly in the 1990s and 2000s and is often cited as a textbook example of urban regeneration.

Powell's City of Books on W Burnside anchors the district's southern edge. The main gallery concentration is around NW 13th and Everett (the First Thursday art walk runs here on the first Thursday of each month). BridgePort Brewpub, Andina, and numerous other restaurants cluster along NW 13th Avenue and NW 23rd Avenue. Tanner Springs Park, a small ecological park designed to recall the wetland the district was built on, is at the district's northern end.

things to do neighbourhood
A story
The Pearl District takes its name from an art gallery owner who, in the late 1980s, described the neighbourhood as an oyster — industrial and unglamorous on the outside but with pearls within, in the form of artist studios and galleries hidden in the old warehouse buildings. The transformation from freight yards and industrial buildings to one of the wealthiest urban neighbourhoods in the Pacific Northwest happened primarily between 1994 and 2010, driven by a combination of city-subsidised development and the extension of the Portland Streetcar.

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