Woodstock Travel Guide

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All of the items here are basically one of a kind works of art, made from wood.

The basic focus of The Joinery is their locally handcrafted wooden furniture. While that is the focus of their store and their workshop, they also sell a number of wooden toys and smaller items from local artists and craftsmen that are set up to work with smaller material.

They have the skills here to create these smaller items, but their shop really just isn't set up for it. They did try to create them at one time, and it just didn't work out for them economically. Therefore, they decided their shop would stick with the larger items, and their store and showroom would sell their own furniture, and feature a few items made by local artists as well.

What to buy: Ignoring completely the wooden furniture, which is far too large to be of interest to most tourists:

There are some handmade wooden toys, clocks made from wood or metal, driftwood candle holders, small wooden boxes and bowls and kitchen utensils, and various wall art and other artifacts.

What to pay: The smaller items tend to fall in the $20 to $100 range, depending on what it is. Remember it is one of a kind works of art that are for sale here.

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While almost everyone in the neighborhood will know where Woodstock Park is, it is not a park that is a major tourist attraction in the region. It is a fairly standard city park, though it has a mildly eccentric artistic feature which I will cover later in the tip.

The park adjoines an elementary school to the south, and to some extent the park and the school grounds share space.

There are several activities you will find are very popular in this park:

+ picnics of all sorts (there are a number of picnic tables in the park in various places)
+ baseball games of all age levels
+ the off-leash dog area of the park is very popular with neighborhood residents and provides a lot of room for dogs to run around outisde of the small yards in the nearby houses.
+ the playground always seems to be filled with children

Less appreciated by neighborhood residents, but still very pleasant features of the park, include:

+ "artwork" that consists of a series of brick boxes that are just high enough to sit on them, created by artist Lloyd Hamrol in 1997. These sculptures of sorts are called as a collective "Park Place" (there are several scattered through the park) and are intended to serve as gathering places similar to the picnic tables. The artist statement, found on a plaque near one of the sculptures, reads "References to architecture, cityscape and nature are revealed in these brick structures which form intimate gathering places at three locations in the park. This is a project of the City of Portland's Percent for Art Program, administered by the Regional Arts & Culture Council"

+ The large number of trees and bushes, some of them fairly old, that provide wonderful shade in the park

One of the best features of the park, in my opinion, is the lack of extremely noisy busy roads nearby. While Steele Street, on the north side of the park, is somewhat busy, it isn't so busy as to be completely obnoxious, and the noise that does come from this street can be escaped by simply going deeper into the park, as the speeds are slow enough as the noise generated doesn't overwhealm the rest of the park.

The nearest bus route to the park is #10 Harold, but #71 on 52nd Avenue and #19 on Woodstock are not very far away.

Restaurants on Woodstock are not far away at all, and if you want to have a very pleasant dinner outside it is always possible to go to one of the restaurants on Woodstock, get takeout food, and bring it to this park to eat as a picnic dinner.

More information is available below on the City of Portland Parks & Recreation web site.

Location: The park is located between Steele Street and Harold Street (though Harold Street is only a walkway on the south side) west of SE 50th Avenue and east of SE 47th Avenue.

:NOTE!: Several east-west streets near the park are not paved.