One more "Then and Now"

We are moving back into Oregon for the subject matter of this posting. The picture on this post card is a view of a train arriving at the Union Station in Portland, Oregon prior to June 2, 1911. That is the date the post card was mailed.

Union Station does not look like the initial design which was created in 1882 by McKim, Mead, and White. If the builders had followed the blueprints of the original plans, the station would have been the largest train station in the world.

However, a smaller design was introduced by architects Van Brunt & Howe, and accepted in 1885. Construction of the station began in 1890. It was built by the Northern Pacific Terminal Company at a cost of $300,000. It opened on February 14, 1896. The signature piece of the structure is the 150 ft. tall Romanesque Revival clock tower.
This is a view of it taken in this century:

Neon signs were added to it in 1948. The signs read "Go by Train" on the northeast and southwest sides and "Union Station" on the northwest and southeast sides. The station was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

The back of the card tell us that it was posted in the mail on June 2, 1911 and it was published by Gray News. Gray News was situated in Salt Lake City, Utah from 1906 to 1922. They were known to be a publisher and distributor of regional lithographic view-cards. Many images were produced of sparsely populated rugged areas, perhaps like Portland, Oregon in the early 1900s???