Electric Building

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

From the record

“The Electric Building is a building located in downtown Portland, Oregon, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1910 for the Portland Railway, Light and Power Company, to serve as the company's headquarters and to house its main electricity generating station.”
Wikipedia article Electric Building (Portland, Oregon), CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 650 National Register listings published here for Multnomah County · listed in 1989 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service · the Wikipedia article

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. 621 SW Alder St., Portland, 97205
When was it listed? February 1989
Category. building
Census division. Portland West
Architectural style. Chicago School
Architect. Carl L. Linde
National Register reference number. 89000059 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

1 since 2001

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Electric Building in 2001, burning about 7,500 acres in total. 1 started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Natural	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
13 July 2001	Natural	7,500 acres	Prineville District	STARVATION

Every fire recorded in Multnomah County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 34 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 34 workings within 5 miles of Electric Building: 25 past producers, 6 producers, 1 occurrence, 1 prospect. 6 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Clay, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Stone. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
Limestone Quarry	Stone, Dimension	Past Producer
Portland Tunnel	Mercury	Occurrence
Portland Tunnel	Mercury	Prospect
City of Portland	Stone	Past Producer
City of Portland	Stone	Past Producer
Quarry	Stone	Past Producer
City of Portland	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
City of Portland Pit	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
City of Portland Pit	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Pacific Stoneware Co	Clay	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Multnomah County

Storms near this property

16 since 1999

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Portland, the town this property stands in, in 16 storm reports between 1999 and 2018: 6 heavy rain, 5 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail, 1 lightning. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
December 2015	Heavy Rain	West Portland	$621,000	Heavy rain resulted in urban flooding across the Portland metro area. All Amtrack and freight trains were shut down between Portland and Vancouver due to flooding. A mobile home park in Gresham flooded. There were a couple of land slides on Highway 30 where debris covered the highway. One of these slides was near German Town Road. The other slide was near the St John's Bridge, hit a car (with no injuries) as it happened, and covered all lanes of Highway 30.
October 2016	Heavy Rain	Portland	$30,000	Heavy rain caused culverts and low-lying urban areas to flood, including 4th and Morrison. Also flooding was reported at the Portland State University Bookstore.
May 2014	Thunderstorm Wind	Portland	$11,000	Winds from a thunderstorm resulted in a large Oak Tree falling on two parked cars in downtown Portland.
March 2015	Heavy Rain	Portland	$6,000	A mudslide crossed Northwest Marlborough Street into a residential garage after 3 to 6 inches of rain fell across Northwest Oregon.
September 2007	Hail	Portland	$5,000	Estimated half-inch hail fell near 162nd and Main.
July 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Portland	$5,000	Reports received of strong wind resulting trees blown down in downtown Portland.
June 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Portland	$1,200	The top of a 70-foot tree, estimated between 20 and 20 inches in diameter, was snapped off in downtown Portland at the intersection of SW Salmon Street and Park Avenue. A passer-by was nearly hit as it fell to the ground. Time of the event is estimated based nearby reports from the storm.
September 2018	Heavy Rain	Portland	-	Standing water reported near NE 28th Ave between Glisan and Burnside. Trimet MAX lines were temporarily closed due to standing water between Lloyd Center and Hollywood. Rain guage at the Portland Airport reported 0.82 of an inch of rain.
July 2011	Thunderstorm Wind	Portland	-	A thunderstorm moving through Multnomah County produced lightning that hit a tree which fell on power lines causing a power outage to about 1600 customers.
November 2009	Heavy Rain	Portland	-	An observer reported receiving 0.98 inches in two and a half hours.
November 2009	Flood	Portland	-	Major street flooding was reported at the intersection of 39th Avenue and Belmont Street, east of downtown Portland.
January 2007	Heavy Rain	Portland	-	A total accumulation of 1.61 inches was reported at the WFO Portland.
August 1999	Hail	Portland	-	A reporter from the Hillsboro Argus newspaper reported 3/4 inch hail near 33rd Ave and Columbia Boulevard in Portland. This is unusually large hail for the Portland area away from mountains or foothills.
May 2003	Funnel Cloud	Portland	-	no account filed
May 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Portland	-	no account filed
August 1999	Lightning	Portland	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Multnomah County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Alderway Building	under 500 feet	2024
Selling Building	under 500 feet	1991
Charles F. Berg Building	under 500 feet	1983
Imperial Hotel	under 500 feet	1985
Bedell Building	under 500 feet	1989
Liebes, H. and Company, Building	under 500 feet	1996

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 89000059 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Multnomah County	All 650 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.