Olds, Wortman & King
historic building in Portland, Oregon, U.S
Olds, Wortman & King, also known as Olds & King, was a department store in Portland, Oregon, United States, established under a different name in 1851 and becoming Olds & King in 1878, on its third change of ownership. The store was renamed Olds, Wortman & King in 1901; Olds & King again in 1944; and Rhodes in 1960. Moving several times within the downtown Portland area, the store settled at 10th & Morrison in 1910, in a large new building that remained in operation as a department store until 1974 and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Since 1976, the building has been known as The Galleria.
History
The company traces its ancestry to a small store established in 1851 by Henry Corbett at the intersection of Front and Oak streets in downtown Portland; it was the city's first general merchandise store. Later in the 1850s, the store moved to Front & Taylor and was operated by brothers Robert and Finley McLaren, although Corbett continued to be a principal supplier of goods for the store. John Wilson purchased the store in 1856. Wilson's store moved in 1868, to Front Street near Morrison Street. In 1878, Wilson sold the shop to William Parker Olds, who had worked as a clerk there since 1869, and Olds' stepfather, Samuel Willard King, and the business became Olds & King, or Olds & King's. At that time, the store was located at 147 3rd Street.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Olds, Wortman & King” is historic building in Portland, Oregon, U.S. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Olds, Wortman and King, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “historic building in Portland, Oregon, U.S” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7085718. Authority coordinates are 45.520, -122.681. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1851, 1878, 1901 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “Olds, Wortman & King” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.