The Empress Hotel continues to ride Portland's real estate roller coaster. It was born before the Great Depression and, about 80 years later, it was renovated and sold as condo units before the 2008 Great Recession.

The five-story building in the Northwest District, adjacent to the Historic Alphabet District and the 405 Freeway, was built in 1927 as one of the first extended-stay hotels. At the time, it was distinctive for having self-contained studios with a bed, bath and kitchenette.

-- Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

The hotel-turned-apartment-turned condo building at 20 N.W. 16th Ave. opened as Portland's population and economy continued to boom after being ignited by the crowd-pleasing 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition.

In our series on the city's beautiful apartment buildings, we spotlight classically designed, early 20th century structures that have survived 100 years or more of change.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Many of the original

with luxury features to attract a growing upper middle class, have been reconfigured into condos. In the case of the Empress Hotel, the handsome brick building became the Marquette Apartments after WWII and in 2006, developers J.B. Equities converted upgraded units into condos.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

A dozen years ago, 64 studio condos, with 300 to 450 square feet of living space, were priced from $99,000 to $163,000. Eight one- and two-bedroom units on the ground floor that range in size from 500 to 720 square feet were for sale from $120,000 to $229,000.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Real estate agents Alexander Clark and Peter Clark of Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere recall that all 72 condos sold in five weeks in 2006.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Keys were handed over to a mix of owners, from people who had rented when the Empress was an apartment building and first-time home buyers wanting an affordable, downtown place to investors and suburbanites who wanted a pied-a-terre.

[Unit 405]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Original Douglas fir floors were refinished. Walls and ceilings were replastered and painted.

[Unit 405]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Refrigerators were added to closets that used to hold Murphy beds.

[Unit 405]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Honeycomb bathroom floors, cabinets, trim, hinges and turnbuckles were restored, and sinks and tubs were re-enameled.

[Unit 405]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Roaring Twenties-style light fixtures from Rejuvenation were installed ...

[Unit 405]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

... along with vintage looking ceramic tile kitchen counters and backsplashes as well as modern appliances.

[Unit 405]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Every unit has a dishwasher and washing machine/dryer hookups.

[Unit 6]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Custom carpet runners made in Georgia were laid in the hallways ...

[Unit 6]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

... and an oil painting from the 1920s was presented to the homeowners' association by the developers.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

The painting hangs in the lobby.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Guests entered the front door, then walk down a few steps to what once was the reception area. The hotel manager lived in the unit behind the reception desk.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Today, Alexander Clark and Peter Clark represent the owners of two condo for sale: They describe both as "an excellent investment" and "one of the best priced one bedrooms in all of Portland."

[Unit 405]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

The building does not have a rental cap, that is, a limit to the number of units that can be rented out.

Let's look inside at the different condos.

[Unit 405]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Unit 405 is a corner studio condo with 370 square feet of living space.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Unit 405 on the top floor benefits from southern exposure.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Unit 405 at 20 N.W. 16th Ave. is in the Northwest District, between the Pearl District and Downtown.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Unit 405 is for sale for $180,000 by Alexander Clark and Peter Clark of Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Unit 405 comes with a dishwasher and front-loading washer/dryer.

The estimated cost to buy the condo at asking price, after a $36,000 down payment, is $1,234 per month, including mortgage principal and interest, property taxes ($2,303 a year), homeowners' association fees ($292 a month) and homeowner's insurance.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Take the elevator to the ground floor to see ...

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

... another condo for sale:

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Unit 6 is a one-bedroom, one-bath condo with 379 square feet of living space.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Unit 6 is for sale for $150,000, also by Alexander Clark and Peter Clark of Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

[Unit 6]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

Unit 6 includes a refrigerator ...

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

... washer and dryer.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

[Unit 6]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

[Unit 6]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

The estimated cost to buy Unit 6 at asking price, after a $30,000 down payment, is $1,129 per month, including mortgage principal and interest, property taxes ($2,440 a year), homeowners' association fees ($300 a month) and homeowner's insurance.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

[Unit 6]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

The Empress building at 20 N.W. 16th Ave. in the Northwest District is near The Pearl District and Downtown.

[Unit 405 ]

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

The classically designed building has a brick exterior and white-stone columns and quoining.

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Willcuts Company Realtors

Another condo recently on the market includes a studio at 20 N.W. 16th Ave. Unit 105 that sold for $169,900 in August 2018 by Marc Willcuts of Willcuts Company Realtors

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The Agency

A studio at 102 sold for $157,000 in July 2018 by Mike Rushing of The Agency

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

The five-story building is adjacent to the Historic Alphabet District and the 405 Freeway.

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Keller Williams Realty Portland Premiere

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(w)here

See more of Portland's most famous apartment buildings: Wander through this gallery of important and surviving apartment buildings that rose from the pre-1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition days until the Depression. The photo is of the 1922 Ambassador Apartments at 1200 S.W. Sixth Ave.

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Zillow

Read more: Learn why the East Coast idea of luxury living in a classically designed building caught on here in "The Apartment House in Portland, Oregon" by Ed Teague, director of branch libraries at the University of Oregon. This is the 1930 Sorrento Court in Kerns. The Mediterranean townhouse-style apartments, now condos, are at 2250 N.E. Flanders St.

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Deven Stross Photography via KBC Management

Check out this other historic building: Northwest Portland's 1911 Trinity Place Apartments at 117 N.W. Trinity Place were designed by architect William C. Knighton of Knighton & Root in the the Tudor Revival style. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Walter W. McMonies, who owns the Trinity Place Apartments, says many of Portland's classic apartment houses survived the "indifference" of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and were revived In the 1980s by investor developers.

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Ajbenj via Wikimedia Commons

The 1922

Ambassador Apartments

building at 1200 S.W. Sixth Ave. was one of the new-style luxury

that rose in Portland before the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition until the Great Depression. The apartments in downtown Portland were converted to condos.

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y Painter provided by REACH affordable housing developer and property management organization

Here's another one of Portland's beautiful historic apartment buildings: The 1909 Admiral Apartments began as a luxury multifamily building on the fashionable South Park Blocks. After decades of decline, it was revived and converted into subsidized housing for low-income seniors and people with disabilities who enjoy living in the Portland Cultural District. Apartments are small, but so are the rents.

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Ian Poellet via Wikimedia Commons

A luxury apartment investment by the Bronaugh family was perfectly timed. The Italianate-style

Bronaugh Apartments were built in 1905

, right as Portland's population boomed. Today, the three brick buildings are owned by

, a nonprofit, affordable housing development and management company.

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Stephen Fiddes Imaging via Premiere Property Group

People poking around downtown Portland Plaza's high-rise have all kinds of choices: Live at tree level or in a place that seems to pierce the clouds; move in or rent it out; embrace the building's nickname, Norelco, because the roof resembles the electric razor with three round shaving heads, or not.

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Wikimedia Commons

If Portland's King's Hill Historic District had a throne, it would reside in the penthouse of the fabled, pink Envoy building that has reigned over West Burnside at Northwest 23rd Avenue since 1929.

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Stephen Miller

The Portland Development Commission sold a troublesome block on the east side of the Burnside Bridge to a developer for $1.5 million. A controversial tower was built and the property went to the next owner for $127 million. Here's the story of Yard and what it costs and feels like to live there.

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Stephanie Yao Long | The Oregonian/OregonLive

A luxury high rise in Portland's Pearl District has a sassy name: NV, which is pronounced "envy." What would evoke jealousy among green-eyed monsters? As part of our weekly apartment building series, we take you on a look inside.

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KBC Management

Developers eyeing the extreme housing crunch created by the crowd-drawing 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition saw a future in luxury apartments.

One self-made millionaire, grocery-owner-turned-developer Harry Mittleman, made a mint during the Depression investing $1 million in Southwest Park Avenue apartment construction.

In 1931, he paid $400,000 to erect the Jeanne Manor Apartment Building at 1431 S.W. Park Ave.

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Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices NW Real Estate

Just two years after the first purpose-built Portland apartment houses rose in 1904 -- the Jeffersonian and Oneonta Apartments, neither of which survive -- merchant P.E. Brigham paid $20,000 to construct the Mordaunt Apartments on a corner lot at at 1810 N.W. Everett St. (originally 586 Everett St.)

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Chuck Collier Schmidt/Windermere Realty Trust

A building earns cachet because of its posh location, luxe amenities and the status seekers who move in. Take the case of the 1910 Wickersham Apartments in Northwest Portland's Alphabet Historic District.

The handsome "apartment house" was designed by one of Portland's top architectural firms for developers flush from a railway sale and one of the famous tenants was Academy Award-winning actor Clark Gable.

Occupying a quarter of a block at 410 N.W. 18th Ave., the brick building is another surviving example of the housing boom ignited by the explosively popular Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in 1905.

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Premiere Property Group

Did notorious gangsters Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen hide out for months inside Portland's Tudor Arms Apartments while mob bosses and the Feds were hunting them down for their decades-long abuses, betrayals, murders and misbehavior?

A plaque on a wall outside Unit 308 isn't very credible -- starting with the misspelling of "Seigel" -- but it's one more layer of history to a storied building in Nob Hill.

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Chris Lawrence/Prometheus Real Estate Group

Portland wouldn't be the same without Slabtown, that once soggy swath from Northwest Lovejoy Street north to the Willamette River. Here, Native Americans camped, Chinese immigrants grew vegetables and lumber-mill workers created fuel for cooking and heating their homes using castoff, cut-off log ends called slabwood. Hence, the nickname.

Slabtown is rapidly changing. What does it cost to rent there? In this week's gallery, we look inside the new high-tech, laid-back Carson Apartments.

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Ian Poellet via Wikimedia

Over time and in most cities, as housing needs change, large old houses are divided up into duplexes and even historic mansions serve multiple families at one time.

The 1908 Dayton Apartment Building, however, was one of the first luxury apartments in Portland that was designed to look like a big fancy house from the street.

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Debbie Chen of Keller Williams Realty Professionals

In 1910, a "socially acceptable," four-story masonry building rose to meet upper middle-class housing needs. The brick midrise at 2109 N.W. Irving St. became the Irving Street Towers Condominiums in 2006.

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KBC Management

$1,295 to rent: 1929 Zenabe Court apartment in Nob Hill: The Spanish Colonial-style building opened in 1929, the first year of the economic crash.

The two-story Zenabe Court was designed by Elmer Edward Feig, a prolific, yet unlicensed architect responsible for more than 81 of Portland's apartment buildings erected between 1925 and 1932.

Feig preferred U- and L-shaped buildings to create courtyards, and he adorn his structures with relief panels and cast stone. Zenabe Court has a staggered, clinker brick facade. Colorful decorative tiles embellish entry walls.

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Pacific Realty Northwest

As the city experienced a population boom in the late 1800s -- which would be repeated after the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition -- developers invested in multifamily houses suitable to the growing upper middle class.

At the Campbell Townhouses, new buyers wanting the features of a fine house but the economy of a townhouse were treated to two levels of highly crafted construction plus a basement.

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Rediviva

There was a big splash across the Columbia River. The 32-acre area, once the Boise Cascade paper mill, is welcoming the public for the first time in a century.

The ribbon of riverfront land now has restaurants, office space and housing like the glass-laden Rediviva, which received its first tenants in December.

It took decades for the city and Gramor Development to create a $1.5 billion Pearl District-like mix of high-end residential and commercial buildings and greenspaces across 20 blocks.

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Green Hammer

Imagine opening up your bills and not finding one from the electric company. Residents of the new Tillamook Row housing complex in Portland's Eliot neighborhood are expecting to pay nothing in energy bills.

That's because the buildings at 20 N.E. Tillamook St. were engineered to be highly efficient and what little energy is needed is served by an 82-kilowatt rooftop solar system.

Airtight walls, windows and roofs reduce heating and cooling needs by nearly 90 percent. Energy Star appliances, hot water heat pumps, mini-split HVAC systems, LED lights and extra shading on the south side of the buildings help, too. Read more

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Wikimedia

What's your favorite apartment building?

-- Janet Eastman

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