place

Zidell Yards

Oregon stubsSouth Portland, Portland, Oregon

Zidell Yards is a former industrial waterfront in Portland, Oregon's South Portland neighborhood, owned by Zidell Companies and planned for development.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Zidell Yards (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Zidell Yards
Southeast Powell Boulevard, Portland Hosford-Abernethy

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Zidell YardsContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 45.501666666667 ° E -122.66916666667 °
placeShow on map

Address

Ross Island Bridge

Southeast Powell Boulevard
97258 Portland, Hosford-Abernethy
Oregon, United States
mapOpen on Google Maps

Share experience

Nearby Places

Commercial Iron Works
Commercial Iron Works

Commercial Iron Works was a manufacturing firm in Portland, Oregon, United States. Established in 1916, the company is best remembered today for its contribution to America's emergency shipbuilding program during World War II. The company was founded in November 1916, by William T. Casey, Otto J. Hoak and Robert Boogs, on a 30-acre (120,000 m2) site on the Willamette River just south of the Ross Island Bridge. Little is known about the company's early years, but it appears to have served diverse markets. For example, it placed a bid for the manufacture of 200 fire hydrants for the City of Portland in 1927, and supplied the high pressure outlet gates for the Unity Dam on the Burnt River near Baker, Oregon in 1937. The company is recorded as having built only one ship prior to World War II - a small 140-ton tender for the US Coast Guard in 1935. The CIW built the 25-ton tugboat Constance J for the Crown Willamette Paper Company. The Constance J was still in service as an active workboat as late as 2017 under the name Diane. Commercial Iron Works established a shipyard on the Ross Island site in the early 1940s, which turned out close to 200 small warships during the war, including net layers, minelayers, submarine chasers, and LCI and LCS landing craft. It also outfitted larger ships built at other yards with armaments. Following the war, the shipyard was acquired in 1946 by another local firm, the Zidell Machinery and Supply Company, which was eventually to transform the yard into America's largest shipbreaking operation.

Northwest Steel
Northwest Steel

Northwest Steel was a structural steel fabricator and shipbuilding company in Portland, Oregon. During World War I the yard built cargo ships for the United States Shipping Board (USSB). Some 37 of the 46 ships ship built at Northwest Steel were the West boats, a series of 5,500-gross register ton (GRT) steel-hulled cargo ships built for the USSB on the West Coast of the United States as part of the World War I war effort.The Northwest Steel Company was incorporated in August 1903.In July 1913, NW Steel began construction of a new plant, to be complete February 1914, after its present site was purchased by the public dock commission. Location of the new plant is a newly built 300x350 feet dock. Planned are a 60x800-foot main shop, 50x100-foot blacksmith shop, 50x100-foot machine shop and a 50x100-foot template shop.Work on shipyard facilities began with dredging on April 1, 1916. everything built was as extensions of the existing company plant. The mold loft was begun the first week of May, the ways were constructed starting in late May. The first keel was hurried and laid down on July 9, 1916 with some improvisation in the still not fully finished yard. Eventually there was also a large rivet and bolt shop erected to handle the demand, including for boat spikes of the numerous wooden hull constructors in the vicinity, production for the boat spikes alone amounting to 14 tons a day in 1918. See also: 1921 Industrial Map of Portland. The shipyard was sandwiched between the river to the east, the yard of the Columbia River Shipbuilding Company to the south, railroad tracks to the west and the Portland Lumber Company mill to the north. Northwest Steel was the largest of the 4 steel shipyards in the Portland / Vancouver region. In May 1918, contracts were awarded for a $17,500 mold loft to be built at the company's site at the foot of Sheridan Street. In July 1918, NW Steel planned to build 4 additional slipways at its plant site.In February 1919 it was announced that Northwest Steel had retired from the structural steel field. The Northwest Bridge & Iron Co., headed by W.H. Cullers, was taking over this end of the business and was looking for a new plant site. In January 1920, Bridge & Iron took over the rest of Northwest Steel's business.It was headed by Joseph R. Bowles, who was indicted for bribing a government official in about 1918 and then convicted of contempt of court. He was later described as a "greedy, domineering and difficult person, with no sense of civic responsibility."The first ship built at Northwest Steel was the cargo ship War Baron, originally launched on March 31, 1917, as the Cunard Line ship Vesterlide, a British-flagged ship sunk by German submarine U-55 in January 1918. The final ship built was the 8,200 GRT tanker Swiftwind, completed in June 1921. 31 Men Tackle City Wood Yards Thirty-one men reported this morning for work in the municipal woodyard, located in the sheds of the old Northwestern Steel Company, foot of Sheridan Street. The yard was opened upon recommendation of the mayor's committee on unemployment to allow men who need board and lodging an opportunity to earn it without loss of self respect by begging. Oregon Daily Journal, December 20, 1921