Why are the streets in N.W. Portland at an odd angle from the streets in the rest of Downtown Portland?

First, they are not at an odd angle to each other.

The angle is 18 degrees.

And as any third grader will tell you, the number 18 is even, so the streets in N.W.  (the left side of the map above) are at an even angle to the streets in S.W. (the right side of the map.)

Satisfied?  Thought not.

Okay, so here goes, but it involves honest-to-God documented history and we know you always slept through history class and only claim to have watched a Ken Burns documentary on PBS but didn't because you fell asleep then too.

When Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove (both living in Oregon City) founded Portland in the late 1840s they hired some character named Smith (I agree, probably an alias) to do the layout of the township they had ponied up a whole $0.50 to register (Yes, fifty cents.  Inflation.)  They instructed him to lay out Portland in certain specific ways so as to maximize their investment.  Which he did in spades.

They instructed that Portland's city blocks be one half the size of standard city blocks elsewhere in the universe.  Why?  So there would be more corner blocks to sell, and as everyone knows. . . corner lots sell for more.  Twice as many corner lots, lots more money.  And no, the blocks were not made half size so it would be easier for you to walk around gawking at the weird street-people hanging around Saturday Market.  Your convenience, in fact, anyone's convenience, was the last thing on their greedy little minds.  What was in their minds was the sound of a cash register.  Cha-ching.

(Yes, we know the cash register wasn't invented until 1883 and we're writing about the late 1840's.  Stop being so anal.  You'll live longer.)

The partners' rampant greed went further.  Rather than have full-width streets and avenues to support the traffic in a growing port*, the partners decreed that avenues running north and south (a habit since Roman times) would be 100 feet wide.  Streets running east and west were to be no wider than 80 feet.  Even in Portland's earliest days traffic in the downtown core sucked.  But, the partners created more land to sell.  Cha-ching again.

HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE:  You can skip this if you want, but then people will laugh at you when you ask about these:  It is from the response of early Portlanders to these annoyingly narrow streets that the myth of the "Shanghai Tunnels" came into existence.  Because the east-west streets in early Portland were so narrow (and being un-paved, very muddy and full of horse shit), getting goods to and from the wharves and piers of the early was so difficult that certain merchants opened up the walls between their respective basements and trundled stuff to and from the port underground.  This only lasted a few years because the basements flooded every spring.  Besides the port moved down river onto Captain Couch's township a few years into the city's existence because the partners and the investors who bought into the original Portland scam were too cheap to keep the river of the original port dredged.  

So, now we're ready for part one to the answer of why streets in N.W. run at a different angle than those in S.W.  This fellow Smith was a landsman, meaning not a sailor.  When he laid out his grid, he got out his compass, lined it up with MAGNETIC north, and, the streets and avenues in S.W. Portland became aligned with his compass.

Northwest Portland however, was originally the homestead of a gentleman named John Heard Couch, pronounced "Cooch" as in hootchie coothchie.  (We'll address the hootchie cootchie aspect eventually if ever.)  Now Couch was a ship's captain who had been visiting the Northwest Coast as a trader for some years earlier 19th century.  It was he who determined that the spot on the Willamette River (roughly where the Morrison Bridge crosses the river) was as far as a deep-draft, sea-going vessel could get up river year round.  Which is why the partners selected this site for their land claim township.

Hang in there, we're almost at an answer.

Okay.  Here goes.  After the partners filed their land claim and starting building their land development business, Couch shows up and looking around for a business opportunity, he files claim to the township (640 acres) just north of and abutting the partners' township (soon to be known as Portland, another occurrence in Portland's long history of weird).  And, he hires some yahoo to lay out his version of a city, using standard U.S. size blocks and streets, and. . .

wait for it. . .

being a sailor, Couch aligns his streets to TRUE north, which in those days was at an 18 degree difference from magnetic north.  Magnetic north moves.  Constantly.  Just so you know.

So the next time you're standing in line at four freaking o'clock in the morning waiting for Voodoo Donuts to sell you an instant heart attack and wondering why there is this weird little street (Ankeny) stuck like a piece of crab-apple pie in the middle of your waiting line, realize that you are, in fact, standing on the southern edge of Couch's land claim and across the street from the Partner's.  Got it?

See, we told you Portland was weird even before it was founded.

*  *  *  *  *

* From the start, Portland was a raging financial success.  The gold discovered in the hills of central California flowed north to Portland.  Miners needed food, and food we had.  An egg at the farm in Portland (yes, farms, mostly in the Goose Hollow neighborhood) could be purchased for two or three cents each then sold in the Gold Fields for three dollars.  Each.

Or more.

Cooking was extra.

The wheat for their bread came from the Portland.  The lumber for their shanty towns came from Oregon.  I mean, San Francisco was the worlds's largest shanty town until it burnt to the ground in 1906.  And we made tons more money off them then as well.  I mean, as one U.S. President said, "you can fool some of the people some of the time, but Californians are easy pickens."