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Get to Know Slabtown

Posted on October 19, 2022   |   Updated on September 30, 2025

Rachel Monahan

A new walkway among the recently built apartments in Slabtown. (Rachel Monahan/City Cast Portland)

A new walkway among the recently built apartments in Slabtown. (Rachel Monahan/City Cast Portland)

A walk through Northwest Portland’s Slabtown neighborhood features a soundtrack of pounding sledge hammers as new apartment buildings keep coming.

Even though it’s an old section of the city, Slabtown feels new these days. When a New Seasons grocery store opened here in 2015, it kicked off a whole new era. Hundreds of people moved in, for plenty of good reasons. In between the Pearl District and the Alphabet District, the neighborhood has plenty for those living there or stopping by: breweries, coffeeshops, and restaurants a plenty.

Its name, however, is a throwback to the 1870s, when a lumber mill, on Northwest Northrup, cut trees into slabs.

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