1887
After considerable violence against the local Chinese population, Oregon authorizes the building of armories to allow for the drilling and practice of the National Guard. A quote from Judge George H. Williams in his speech at the construction site illustrates the need for such a building: “Communists, socialists, and nihilists — the enemies of God and man — are swarming...to this free land, and with diabolical zeal are working up an organized hostility to the reign of law and the rights of property...citizens should organize themselves...to uphold...the cause of law and order.”

1888
The first Portland Armory is completed to architect Richard Martin’s designs and is almost immediately found to be too small. Colonel Charles F. Beebe, great-grandfather of Spencer (of Ecotrust renown), is its first officer. Also this year, the Skidmore Fountain is dedicated, and Portland is first named the “City of Roses.”

1896
Union Station opens.

1905
The Lewis and Clark Exposition welcomes 2.5 million visitors to Portland, spurring the city’s development.

1907
Queen Flora presides over Portland’s first Rose Festival. She is joined the following year by a king with a fake beard — “Rex Oregonus.” The Society Circus performs at the Armory, and a local paper reports, “peanut shells fell like snow drops and lemonade flowed like water.” Later this year, John Philip Sousa performs at the Armory. The Oregonian calls it “one of, if not in fact the very finest, evenings Portland has ever spent with a band of music.”

1910
City population: 207,214, more than double that of the previous decade. A Women’s Christian Temperance Union event causes the smashing of many bottles of liquor, and Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony play two shows at the Armory later in the year.

1911
Former president Theodore Roosevelt, acting president William Howard Taft and future president Woodrow Wilson all give speeches at the Armory on separate occasions. Roosevelt later lays the cornerstone of the Multnomah Athletic Club. Additional Armory events include the Russian Symphony Orchestra of New York, and a concert by opera diva Mary Garden.

1916
Oregon officially becomes a “dry” state three years before Prohibition kicks in nationally. Soldiers are soon to be mustered in the Armory for World War I.

1920
General John “Black Jack” Pershing, leader of the Allied Expeditionary Force in the First World War, addressed a crowd of more than 3,000 ex-service men and women at the Armory, proclaiming that Oregon soldiers were “second to none.”

1924
Dozens of teens are arrested for disturbing Armory boxing crowds and vandalizing the building.

1928
The Portland Kennel Club holds their dog show at the Armory. Later that year, Olympic wrestling trials are held here. Portland fire marshal Fred W. Roberts states that “the Armory is a fire hazard and always has been.”

1930
American Legion Circus Maximus is held at the Armory. The Oregonian described the acts as coming “from the aristocracy of circus talent...
Leo, the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lion, who growls an introduction to all his producer’s photoplays, is to start New Year’s by making Portland a visit as a guest star.” “Hoovervilles” (homes made of corrugated tin and tar paper) begin appearing in Sullivan’s Gulch, where Highway 84 now runs. City population is about 300,000.

1948
The Armory takes in refugees from the huge Vanport flood. (Vanport was located where East and West Delta Parks are today.) Audiences at the Armory watch the Portland Indians defeat the Seattle Athletics to take the Pacific Coast Professional Basketball League Championship.