Stella Maris,
Portland Property Witch
(503) 662-7994
Licensed Oregon Broker
with Portlandia Properties
Carol Carmick • 201251970
Portlandia, the Goddess of Portland
What if our city is alive?
What if Portland is more than streets, buildings and bridges?
What if we see this city as a benevolent being who blesses her inhabitants?
How could that way of understanding transform how we live here?
Who is Portlandia?
Portlandia is the great copper statue above the west entrance to the Portland Building.
She goes down on one knee and reaches below her own pedestal to offer her hand to the people of this city.
She is the goddess of Portland because she embodies the spirit of this place and its inhabitants.
The spirit of this place
The spirit of this place did not begin with Portland.
Many, many generations of Indigenous peoples have deeply known and belonged to these rivers, forests and mountains.
Although Portlandia as a civic symbol arose from the violence of colonization, she cannot erase or replace the original and ongoing relationships between Indigenous peoples and this land.
Instead, she invites today's Portlanders into a relationship of love, gratitude and care with the home we now share.
A river goddess
Portland exists because of its rivers.
For over ten thousand years, humans have traveled the Columbia and the Willamette, exchanging trade, gifts and news.
Portlandia first appeared on the city seal in 1878 as the goddess of commerce, standing by the river, surrounded by symbols of natural resource and human activity.
Portlandia carries the trident of Poseidon, Greek god of the oceans, because she is a river goddess, and all rivers return to the sea.
How she came home
Portlandia was created by sculptor Raymond Kaskey in 1983.
Standing 34 feet 10 inches tall and weighing about 13,000 pounds, she is the second-largest hammered copper statue in the United States after the Statue of Liberty.
She was made in Maryland from sheets of copper hammered by hand over carved wooden forms. Every mark on her skin is the memory of a hammer blow.
On October 6, 1985, she came home.
She traveled across the country, floated up the Willamette on a barge and rolled through downtown Portland on a flatbed truck before being lifted into place by crane.
She shone as bright as a new copper penny. Thousands of Portlanders lined the streets to welcome her. Parents lifted their children to touch her outstretched hand as she passed.
Portlanders have loved her ever since.
Portlandia's Poem
She kneels down,
and from the quietness of copper
reaches out.
We take that stillness into ourselves,
and somewhere deep in the earth
our breath becomes her city.
If she could speak, this is what she would say:
Follow that breath.
Home is the journey we make.
This is how the world knows where we are.
Go meet her
The best way to know Portlandia is to visit her.
Stand beneath her outstretched hand and look into her face.
Bring flowers if you like. Or fruit or water or a song. Or simply your heart.
If you’re looking for work or a home and a place to belong, tell her who you are, and why you’re here, and what you need.
Then listen.
Perhaps her answer will come in the wind through the trees, the caw of a crow or an unexpected conversation.
Cities speak through relationship.