Today Rev Hall is a distinctive music venue that is hard to forget. Entering the halls of what was once Washington High School is an experience that takes one back to the feeling of being sixteen. Built in 1906 and known as Washington High, it was the first secondary school to be built on the newly habitable “other” side of the river aka the East side. The next few decades would see a graduate who went on to win a nobel peace prize, a fire that burned the building to the ground, a rebuilding in 1926, and finally the closing of the school in 1981. In 2005 the defunct building was turned into a music venue, rooftop bar, and offices breathing new life into a part of Portland’s history that had turned invisible.
