Take a video tour
We can offer private tours of the SMILE Station but you can save yourself the trip by checking out our quick video tour of the space! It goes over the exact same things as our in person tour!
A Place For Community
The SMILE Station is an affordable, beautiful and convenient Portland venue rental that offers a clean, modern, and bright interior with landscaped grounds, a baby grand piano, fireplace, projector system, commercial kitchen, round table seating for up to 72 with capacity for 90 and is handicapped accessible.
We can offer private tours of the SMILE Station but you can save yourself the trip by checking out our quick video tour of the space! It goes over the exact same things as our in person tour!
It was originally the neighborhood’s firehouse, Station 20, built in 1921 after the original firehouse was found to be in disrepair. At the time, horse drawn fire carriages had just been replaced by motorized trucks and a barn was no longer a requirement for the station. When it came to the design of the new firehouse, the neighborhood looked to Battalion Chief Lee Gray Holden, who happened to be an amateur designer at the time. Holden designed what would be the first Bungalow-style Firehouse which he believed would blend well with the neighborhood. He gained international attention with his design and went on to build 24 others in the Portland area. To this day, inside the storage closet of the Station you can still see the original ladder and shoot opening where the firemen climbed from the building into their truck and where they hung their hoses to dry.
In the 1950s a ballot measure passed to replace aging fire stations and Fire Station #20 relocated to it’s current spot in Westmoreland. In 1959, the building began its second career as a clubhouse for the Sellwood-Moreland Boys Club. Girls were, at some point, allowed participation but they were not permitted membership until the 1990s when the organization changed its name to the Boys & Girls Club. When that group relocated, the Sellwood-Moreland Improvement League (SMILE) purchased the building, still owned by the Portland Fire Department, and renovated it for neighborhood use. SMILE needed a place to hold their community meetings and a place for other types of gatherings and neighborhood functions. In 2020 the green carpeting was replaced and in Spring of 2024 the building received a near complete remodeling including the basement area which is now home to the SMILE business offices and an additional small meeting space, the Hainley Leipzig room.
Thanks to our 2023-24 renovations we now have a rental space on the lower level of the SMILE Station. This versatile room is ideal for a variety of uses both on its own and as an addition to the main floor.
The first and third Wednesday of each month, the SMILE Station serves as the community meeting place for SMILE, the Sellwood Moreland Improvement League, the local neighborhood association. SMILE is Portland’s original neighborhood association, is a registered 501(c)3, and is unique in that it owns the SMILE Station. It also saved the old Oaks Pioneer Church from demolition and brought by barge to the neighborhood in 1965. The neighborhood has cared for OPC, the oldest original structure church in the state of Oregon, built in 1851 and listed in the National Historic Registry.
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