The City of Portland's Office of Arts & Culture and the Bureau of Transportation, in collaboration with the Piedmont Neighborhood Association, are excited to announce that the highly anticipated installation of commemorative street sign toppers along Rosa Parks Way was recently completed. In all, 100 sign toppers—designed by renowned local artist, painter, educator, and Piedmont resident Arvie Smith—were added to shine a light on the civil rights icon.
This project's history dates back to October 2006, when Portland's City Council adopted Ordinance No. 180549, which renamed N and NE Portland Boulevard to Rosa Parks Way. In 2024, when the Office of Arts & Culture was created, it partnered with the Piedmont Neighborhood Association and neighbors across North and Northeast Portland to design artist-made sign toppers to reflect the street's renaming and honor the legacy of Rosa Parks.
Following a neighborhood selection process, community members chose Smith—whose practice is grounded in deep research and influenced by thinkers like James Baldwin, Angela Davis, W.E.B Du Bois, Michelle Alexander, and Isabel Wilkerson—to design the sign toppers. The end result of Smith's work depicts Rosa Parks in the foreground looking out the window of a bus with a side profile of a bus—the same one she rode along Cleveland Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama—in the background.
"I aim to understand residents' desires for their neighborhood, the area's history, grasp the project's purpose and intent, and incorporate my artistic vantage," Smith said in a press release issued by the Piedmont Neighborhood Association. "I create with the belief that creative expression and appreciation can be a tool for empowerment, education, and unity."
To see the new laser-cut, powder-coated aluminum sign toppers, installed by the Bureau of Transportation during the week of October 27, 2025, you can find them between N Missouri Avenue and NE Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The Bureau of Transportation plans to install more sign toppers on the North Portland section of Rosa Parks Way next year as part of its 2026-27 sign maintenance program.
Photo courtesy of Brian Borrello