Pittock Mansion

Henry Lewis Pittock was the longtime publisher of The Oregonian, the dominant Portland newspaper of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pittock built additional fortunes in real estate, banking, railroads, steamboats, silver mining, and sheep ranching. In 1909 he and his wife Georgiana Burton Pittock commissioned a hilltop residence in Portland's West Hills from architect Edward T. Foulkes; construction was completed in 1914.

The 46-room mansion is built of Tenino sandstone in the French Renaissance Revival style, on a 46-acre site at roughly one thousand feet of elevation overlooking downtown Portland and Mount Hood. Notable features include an oval music room, a Turkish smoking room, and one of the earliest residential central-vacuum systems on the West Coast.

Georgiana Pittock had been a central figure in the founding of Portland's Rose Society in 1889, which hosted the first city Rose Show that year and ultimately gave rise to the Portland Rose Festival. She lived in the mansion for only a few years before her death on June 12, 1918, from complications of a stroke. Henry Pittock died of influenza on January 28, 1919, leaving behind what was at the time the largest estate ever probated in Oregon.

The property descended through family hands until severe damage from the Columbus Day Storm in 1962 prompted talk of demolition. A community fundraising campaign raised seventy-five thousand dollars within three months, and the City of Portland purchased the estate in 1964 for $225,000. The mansion opened to the public as a historic house museum in 1965 and is now operated by Portland Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the nonprofit Pittock Mansion Society. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.