Victorians and Craftsman houses older than most of the city — rewiring, knob-and-tube replacement and panel upgrades for Portland's biggest old houses.
Irvington has the oldest median year built of the seven Portland neighborhoods on this site: 1917. Of its 1,905 homes, 451 were built before 1910, 49 of them before 1900. Another 517 date from the 1910s and 640 from the 1920s, so 1,157 homes — 61% — went up between 1910 and 1929. 88.9% of homes were built before 1940. The median house runs two stories and covers about 2,430 square feet, the biggest of the seven.
The neighborhood was wired when electric light was still an upgrade. The oldest houses were built before wiring a house was routine; those from the 1910s and 1920s were wired from the start, on knob-and-tube with no ground. A house that size has a lot of wall to hide that behind. Panels have usually been replaced since, but the runs feeding the upstairs bedrooms often have not. Apartments make up about a third of the units here, yet 76.6% of homes are owner-occupied. Laurelhurst, built mostly in the same years, has the same mix of big houses and original runs behind replaced panels.