The Bluff School: University of Portland

Perched on a bluff overlooking the Willamette River in the University Park neighborhood of north Portland, the University of Portland has one of the more scenic college campuses in the Pacific Northwest. The story of how it got there is a bit of an opportunistic rescue.

In nineteen oh one, Archbishop Alexander Christie of the Archdiocese of Portland spotted a large vacant building from aboard a ship on the Willamette. He learned it was West Hall, left empty after the closure of Portland University, a Methodist institution that had run out of money. Christie saw a chance. The Archdiocese purchased the building and the surrounding bluff property, and on September fifth, nineteen oh one, a new school opened as Columbia University. The very next year, the Congregation of Holy Cross arrived from Indiana to take over its operation.

That connection matters. The Congregation of Holy Cross is the same Catholic religious order that founded the University of Notre Dame. Portland and Notre Dame are sister institutions, sharing not only a religious tradition but a strong emphasis on undergraduate teaching and a characteristic commitment to service.

The name Columbia University proved confusing once the better-known institution in New York became nationally prominent, and the Portland school was eventually renamed the University of Portland. It has grown into a university of more than three thousand students with particular strengths in nursing, engineering, and business, alongside a highly regarded NCAA Division One soccer program.

Sitting eighty feet above the river on the University Bluff, the campus commands views west toward the Tualatin Hills and east toward the city. Students here like to say they are on the bluff, and that phrase carries more than one meaning in Portland.