This small cafe on Fifth Avenue in Portland is housed in one of the last remaining bus shelters from the pre-2007 transit mall, and (awesomely) still retains the maps and informational signage of that vintage. 

To the left is the transit mall directory, featuring the last iteration of Portland’s icon-based route grouping – a beaver for routes to the southeast, a leaf for southern routes, a rose for southwest routes, and a deer for those to the west. Note that the icons have been made subsidiary to the directional lettering: they originally stood alone with no letters at all, and were phased out at the same time as the mall was redeveloped. 

The directory also notes where to go to catch the MAX light rail. Interestingly, it lists the (then new) Yellow Line, but the Transit Mall Stops map to the right doesn’t show it at all. This map cross-references the route groupings from the left with bus stop locations along the mall, so you know where to go to catch your bus. This system has been replaced with a far more prosaic A, B, C, D for southbound routes and W, X, Y, Z for northbound stops these days (map).

If you look really closely, you can also see a 2007-era MAX light rail map reflected underneath the cafe’s logo in the middle.

It’s nice to see a bit of transit history preserved like this, and I know a lot of people miss these bus shelters – they were enclosed on three sides and certainly gave a lot more protection from the elements than the current glass awning-only shelters.

Source: Photo taken by me this morning.