PORTLAND, Ore. - Sandy Boulevard will never look the same.
Crews forever shut down a two-block stretch of one of the city's only diagonal roads Sunday, the first part of the Burnside-Couch Couplet that's designed to change a confusing intersection.
As the city works toward progress, some may not realize what we're losing.
Besides the headaches, we'll be losing the history. This intersection of Northeast Sandy Boulevard, East Burnside Street and Northeast 12th Avenue has been six-lanes - and confusing - for decades. On Sunday, March 28, it all changed forever.
The buildings and cars from another era may fool you, but the intersection in the photos above and below are a dead giveaway. The photographs from Portland city archives show this intersection as far back as the 1930s, even with the iconic Tik Tok Drive-In - reportedly Portland’s first drive-in restaurant - on the corner.
"Since all roads lead to it, it was the perfect place in the 1950s and 1960s for kids to go cruising," said Portland historian and "Café Unknown" blogger Dan Haneckow.
Haneckow (pronounced han-a-coe) says the intersection is more than just confusing: "You get there and try to figure your way through it," Haneckow said. "...And then you'll still get it wrong."
Sandy Boulevard is by far one of Portland's oldest transportation landmarks. It was once Portland's only road east from the Willamette River to the Sandy River, which is where it got its name.
"It's something that pre-dates basically anything on the eastside of the Willamette River in terms of Portland," Haneckow said.
Today it makes a famous diagonal slash across an almost-perfect east side grid.
"The intersection of Sandy and Burnside and 12th is where the impulse of transportation - in the form of Sandy - and the impulse of real estate - in the form of the grid system - meet to just glorious results," Haneckow tells KATU.
"Glorious" may not be the way drivers describe the six-lane intersection that's now changing forever, forcing a small stretch of Sandy Boulevard to eventually make way for two new city blocks.
"If it actually did work, it would be hard to shed tears for the way it was," Haneckow said. "But I have to see it work first."
The project will eventually make Burnside and Couch one-way streets, doing away with this stretch of Sandy and the crazy intersection. But don't expect to see construction crews to be out of here any time soon. The new Burnside-Couch Couplet, as it's being called, won't be completely finished until fall 2010.
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$3,475,000
Courtesy of: Prudential Northwest Properties
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$3,950,000
Courtesy of: Prudential Northwest Properties
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