Headout: The Great Carpet-Matching Game

Can you identify Portland's most iconic rugs?

By Rebecca Jacobson

Portland is losing a legend: The Portland International Airport plans to tear out its carpet. That much-beloved teal upholstery, with its distinctive violet, cobalt and red cross marks, has greeted travelers for more than a quarter century, which, we gather, is positively geriatric in carpet years.

The news was met with outrage and dismay. This is a carpet, after all, with its own Facebook page. There are Twitter and Instagram accounts devoted to it. To memorialize the carpet, clever entrepreneurs made T-shirts and socks bearing the idiosyncratic design. Initial runs sold out quickly.

You've still got some time to bid adieu: The 14 acres of old carpet will be slowly ripped out starting in winter 2014-2015, and the new stuff won't be fully installed until 2016. We decided this was an apposite time to pay homage to Portland's unheralded upholstery: those unsung rugs and runners we trod over daily, never stopping to snap a photo or compose an adulatory tweet.

To test how well you know this city's carpets, we've assembled photos from six different places—see how many carpets you can match to their homes. Answers are at the bottom of the page.

The Carpet List

  1. Governor Hotel ballroom
  2. Oregon Convention Center
  3. Benson Hotel stairs
  4. Brooklyn Park Pub
  5. Laurelhurst Theater
  6. Willamette Week office

GO: See Portland International Airport's carpet before it's fully torn out in 2016, 7000 NE Airport Way, pdx.com.


Answers: Clockwise from top left, Benson Hotel stairs, Willamette Week office, Oregon Convention Center, Laurelhurst Theater, Brooklyn Park Pub, Governor Hotel ballroom

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