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Vanport
The story of Vanport City, which was conceived in 1942 as temporary housing for shipyard workers and disappeared in a flood on Memorial Day 1948.
- GenresHistory
151 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 11, 2017
Compelling photos. This is still the definitive historical source on Vanport. Great for research.
September 14, 2019
Definitive source on Vanport IMO. The fact that this book was written 20 years ago by someone that had never written a book is impressive. Its not perfect but it is easy to follow, well researched and I think presents a fair perspective on the many very complicated social, political, historical aspects to the Vanport experience. Some great photos add to the richness. Again I appreciate the the author went into many aspects of Vanport and did so in a way that was respectful of many different perspectives from the residents, to the business tycoon, to the bureaucrats in charge of managing it to the media covering it.
March 26, 2020
Insightful history of the Vancouver and Portland areas during WWII era
March 1, 2025
Not the best written history, but it's one of the few books about the rise and fall of the Vanport, at one time the second largest city in the state of Oregon.
October 16, 2019
A history of Vanport, the largest wartime housing project in the United States during World War II and the second-largest city in Oregon. It opened for business in 1943 and was washed away by an immense flood five years later.
Lots of dates, names, and numbers, and very little explanation about why they're important, leaving me to assume they are not. Introduces people we will never hear from again with their full name, previous job, and where they came from, to no avail. Full of poorly described administrative minutia—literally, much of this was taken from housing authority minutes—and boring gossip, i.e. bureaucratic in-fighting amongst all these people with their full names and middle initials. Much of it lacks context and leaves you with the feeling that Maben included a detail because he found it in the archives and wanted to pad his word count. (This was originally presented as his doctoral thesis, a detail I provide without commentary.) There's little factual analysis. He did not, as far as I can tell, speak with a single resident of Vanport as part of his research, and he displays a clear bias for the city's commissioners and the administrations in charge of overseeing it. He has a rosy view of Vanport, an unquestioning faith in wartime America ("There was never a doubt that the war would be won."), and demonstrates a limited understanding of the scope of racism and the many ways it works and the different kinds of harm it causes.
From the first page, Maben is more willing to engage in discussions of race than Zita Podany's Vanport, but he still shies away from speaking the truth:
"The importation of blacks, a group that played an important role in the Vanport story, caused some ripples in the placid calm of Oregon's almost non-existent race problems."
See, it's true because Oregon didn't even let black people live in the state until 1927. So apparently Oregon didn't have any race problems because we didn't have very many black people, which is itself a race problem, and it's almost guaranteed that those few black people were in fact encountering 'race problems' simply by existing in a region that did not welcome black people. I feel like I'm repeating myself, but this snake is swallowing itself whole.
Fun fact: Wartime activities brought a record number of black people to the Portland area. A 1946 estimate (by whom Maben does not say) put the number around 15,000, an increase of more than 800%. At the time of the flood, nearly one third of Vanport's 18,500 residents were black, and they all needed somewhere to live since their homes were now underwater.
In the chapter titled "Racism," Maben explains that, "Aside from the arguments over housing segregation (considered later), there was little, if any, official racial discrimination or, for that matter, any serious racial incidents."
Maben then goes on to recount a lot of racist behavior—from individuals as well from people in positions of power, such as the police—including those claims of segregated housing practices, something the housing authority initially denied, but then later sort of admitted that yeah they were putting all those black people in one place. Yep, no racism here.
Plus this ominous and unexplained statement from Maben: "The Public Health Department wanted information as to whether HAP [Housing Authority of Portland] accepted the acknowledged nationwide differential between health standards for Negroes and whites." WHAT. WhAT?
Anyway, lots of photos with meticulous captions, but they're the same photos you always see when Vanport's discussed, and Maben doesn't do anything new with them to provide a larger perspective. This is a dry read, and I found at least one factual inaccuracy, and while its index is mostly useless, it does have thorough endnotes with sources, so it could be used as a reference. Though, as I said, a lot of those references are HAP minutes, but also local newspapers that are not longer in circulation.
Like I said in my review for Podany's book, if you want to learn about Vanport, read this article in Smithsonian Magazine: How Oregon's Second Largest City Vanished in a Day, by Natasha Geiling. I highly recommend it.
Lots of dates, names, and numbers, and very little explanation about why they're important, leaving me to assume they are not. Introduces people we will never hear from again with their full name, previous job, and where they came from, to no avail. Full of poorly described administrative minutia—literally, much of this was taken from housing authority minutes—and boring gossip, i.e. bureaucratic in-fighting amongst all these people with their full names and middle initials. Much of it lacks context and leaves you with the feeling that Maben included a detail because he found it in the archives and wanted to pad his word count. (This was originally presented as his doctoral thesis, a detail I provide without commentary.) There's little factual analysis. He did not, as far as I can tell, speak with a single resident of Vanport as part of his research, and he displays a clear bias for the city's commissioners and the administrations in charge of overseeing it. He has a rosy view of Vanport, an unquestioning faith in wartime America ("There was never a doubt that the war would be won."), and demonstrates a limited understanding of the scope of racism and the many ways it works and the different kinds of harm it causes.
From the first page, Maben is more willing to engage in discussions of race than Zita Podany's Vanport, but he still shies away from speaking the truth:
"The importation of blacks, a group that played an important role in the Vanport story, caused some ripples in the placid calm of Oregon's almost non-existent race problems."
See, it's true because Oregon didn't even let black people live in the state until 1927. So apparently Oregon didn't have any race problems because we didn't have very many black people, which is itself a race problem, and it's almost guaranteed that those few black people were in fact encountering 'race problems' simply by existing in a region that did not welcome black people. I feel like I'm repeating myself, but this snake is swallowing itself whole.
Fun fact: Wartime activities brought a record number of black people to the Portland area. A 1946 estimate (by whom Maben does not say) put the number around 15,000, an increase of more than 800%. At the time of the flood, nearly one third of Vanport's 18,500 residents were black, and they all needed somewhere to live since their homes were now underwater.
In the chapter titled "Racism," Maben explains that, "Aside from the arguments over housing segregation (considered later), there was little, if any, official racial discrimination or, for that matter, any serious racial incidents."
Maben then goes on to recount a lot of racist behavior—from individuals as well from people in positions of power, such as the police—including those claims of segregated housing practices, something the housing authority initially denied, but then later sort of admitted that yeah they were putting all those black people in one place. Yep, no racism here.
Plus this ominous and unexplained statement from Maben: "The Public Health Department wanted information as to whether HAP [Housing Authority of Portland] accepted the acknowledged nationwide differential between health standards for Negroes and whites." WHAT. WhAT?
Anyway, lots of photos with meticulous captions, but they're the same photos you always see when Vanport's discussed, and Maben doesn't do anything new with them to provide a larger perspective. This is a dry read, and I found at least one factual inaccuracy, and while its index is mostly useless, it does have thorough endnotes with sources, so it could be used as a reference. Though, as I said, a lot of those references are HAP minutes, but also local newspapers that are not longer in circulation.
Like I said in my review for Podany's book, if you want to learn about Vanport, read this article in Smithsonian Magazine: How Oregon's Second Largest City Vanished in a Day, by Natasha Geiling. I highly recommend it.
April 13, 2016
Tragedy in our own backyard!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews