By Constance Rigney, April 13, 2021
Portland has many nicknames, some whimsical, some weird but all wonderful. The loveliest one of all may be the City of Roses. Like so many things in this magical city, the origin of that appellation springs from a history of building community, sharing beauty and offering serenity to urban dwellers.
Conventional wisdom has it that the official nickname may have been coined around 1906 by Leo Samuel, founder of what is known today as Standard Insurance Company. The story goes that Samuel, himself an avid rose-grower, would leave shears in his garden in the hope that passers-by could clip a bloom from his garden so that friends and neighbors would share in their splendor and delight. Perhaps it was meant to promote happiness within the community but it certainly inspired people to start their own rose gardens and beautify an already green and gorgeous city even further.
But there are those who dispute that attribution as there were hints of that nickname prior to Samuel. Before the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in 1905, the Portland Rose Society had promoted the planting of miles and miles and miles of rose bushes along the streets of the city, again with an eye towards increasing its already considerable appeal. So that moniker was a already bit of a buzzword on the lips of Portlanders, so much so that Mayor Harry Lane was inspired to establish the annual Portland Rose Festival just two years later.
As the nickname took root and grew, so did the presence and purpose of the roses , bringing Portlanders together in tranquility and vivid natural beauty. North Portland became the home to the city’s first public rose garden — the spectacular sunken rose garden at Peninsula Park, a location that also fostered coming together as the site of the city’s first community center and one of its first public playgrounds. Designed by Emmanuel Mische and opened in 1913, this glorious garden is set below street level so that folks strolling there really do feel like they are in a far-away world of flowers, a place to share delight in the dazzling colors and the sweet, strong perfume of the thousands of different rose plants thriving there.
And, of course, there is the world-renowned International Rose Test Garden, a stunning spot that initially provided literal sanctuary to varieties of the flowers endangered by World War I. In 1915 Jesse A. Currey, purportedly a newspaperman and rose enthusiast, proposed creating a haven for European rose hybrids threatened by bombings. The result was this spectacular space providing a different kind of haven to the Portlanders who have wandered its acres since its dedication in 1924. Thousands upon thousands of individual rose bushes burst into brilliant, colorful life across this park, reminding the denizens of PDX just why their home is called the City of Roses.
Constance Rigney
Broker | OR & WA
She/Her
What I love about the field of real estate is that essentially, it’s about dreams and possibilities. It’s about finding a space that can support the life you are envisioning and crafting...
Read More
- T: 503-860-4293
- constance@livingroomre.com
