Keeping the Flame of Love & Creativity Alive
The Portland City Archives is pleased to announce a new exhibit at the Portland City Archives, Keeping the Flame of Love & Creativity Alive: A Collection of Oral Histories with Street Books. The exhibit highlights a recent project with Street Books, a mobile library that provides community, resources, and advocacy for people living outside or at the margins in Portland.
From February 2024 to March 2025, the Portland City Archives and Street Books collaborated on an oral history project to collect and preserve the history of Street Books and the patrons they serve. Street Books serves a community whose stories are often left out of the historical record. This project gave us an opportunity to use oral history as a tool to amplify diverse experiences and memories of life in Portland.
These oral histories were compiled into a book which is available through Street Books Library, Multnomah County Library, and online. Visit the Portland City Archives to view the exhibit highlighting this project and listen to oral histories featured in the collection using our oral history listening station.
Open for viewing Tuesday - Thursday, 8:00AM - 4:30PM.
1800 SW Sixth Ave, Room 550, Portland, OR 97201
Past Exhibits
- A history of the Portland Archives & Records Center
- For Love & Life: Celebrating LGBTQIA2S+ History in Portland
- Portland Streetcars: 1870s - 1950s
- Never Built: Pioneer Courthouse Square
- From Cesspools to 'Big Pipes': Portland's Sewer Projects
- For You a Rose in Portland Grows
- Civil Defense in Portland: 1936-1963
- Portland and the Commission Form of Government
- Women of Portland
- Works Projects in Portland