She was born over a century ago and yet fans still flock to a tidy, quiet northeast Portland neighborhood to catch all of the Beverly Cleary literary sites in real life. The character Henry Huggins made his debut in Beverly Cleary’s first novel nearly 75 years ago. Ramona didn’t really begin to shine until she took the lead role in Ramona the Pest in 1968. And yet these characters–along with Beezus and Howie and Ribsy and Daisy–still resonate with elementary aged kids today.
Even if Ramona and Father has a heavy subplot that focuses on Ramona getting her father to quit smoking cigarettes (it was written in 1977 after all) or the kids tell each other to shut up or call each other stupid or walk to school alone. The wholesomeness of Ramona’s world still resonates.
Reading Beverly Cleary’s work aloud to my children has been a joy for us all, she was an American literary treasure. Cleary spent her childhood living on these quiet, residential streets. She modeled her characters and so many of their ordinary experiences and heartfelt thoughts on her own environment. Use this guide to find all the best Beverly Cleary literary sites in Oregon and beyond.
A SMALL HISTORY OF BEVERLY CLEARY
Beverly Atlee Bunn was born in rural Oregon in April of 1916 to a farmer and a school teacher. Her early years were spent on a farm in Yamhill. In 1922, when Cleary was six, the family moved to Portland because her father had been offered a job as a bank security officer. She spent her school years (and the Depression) in the Hollywood neighborhood of Portland.
She struggled to read in first grade but by sixth grade she was reading and writing so fervently that a teacher told her that she should write children’s books when she grew up. Clearly graduated from Grant High School in 1934 and headed to Ontario, CA for junior college. After two years, she was accepted to the University of California, Berkeley and graduated with a BA in English in 1938 with aspirations of becoming a children’s librarian.
It was at Berkeley where she met her future husband, Clarence, at a school dance. 1939 took Cleary to Washington where she was enrolled in the School of Librarianship at the University of Washington. She then accepted a one-year position as a children’s librarian in Yakima, WA. Beverly and Clarence eloped in 1940 and eventually moved back to California.
The couple lived in Berkeley (the home they lived in at 1019 Creston Road from 1957-1968 was recently listed for the first time since the Cleary’s dwelled there for a cool $1.849M) and then settled in Carmel-by-the-Sea for decades. Beverly Cleary passed away at her retirement community in March of 2021 at the age of 104. She is buried in Pike Cemetery in Yamhill, OR.
Cleary took cues from her young patrons when she was a librarian. She found that children asked for books that featured characters that were ordinary just like them. Her first book, Henry Huggins, was published in 1950 and her last, Ramona’s World, in 1999. She once described her 49 year writing career as an “exceptionally happy career.” Many of her characters and the settings she used in her novels were based on her own childhood and her surroundings growing up in this adorable northeast neighborhood of Portland.
A WALKING TOUR OF BEVERLY CLEARY LITERARY SITES IN PORTLAND
Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden
Grant Park
The best place to begin this little tour is at the Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden among the friendly bronze faces of a couple of children’s literature’s most celebrated characters–Ramona Quimby and Henry Huggins. Henry’s dog, Ribsy, is there too. It took the community five years to fundraise for this space and children from all over the country help penny-drives to fundraise. Money was donated by all 50 US states and several provinces of Canada.
Portland sculptor, Lee Hunt, created the bronze statues and the garden was dedicated in October of 1995. There were originally water features spraying at Ramona’s feet and Ribsy’s paws but it was bone dry when we visited. No matter–seeing Ramona life-sized was all it took for stars to appear in my daughters’ eyes. Catch two additional busts of Ramona by Lee Hunt in the Gresham Regional Library in Gresham, OR.
Grant Park served as additional inspiration to Cleary. Head over to the playground and you’ll see where Beezus waxes the slides to make them faster. The larger green space to the north of Grant High School is where Henry digs for nightcrawlers to sell. The high school is named for Ulysses S. Grant and Cleary graduated from here in 1934. In her books the school is named after Zachary P. Taylor.
Beverly Cleary School, Fernwood Campus
1915 NW 33rd Ave.
Built in 1911, Fernwood was the grammar school Cleary attended. It was named after her in 2008 (there is an additional Beverly Cleary campus, Holyrood, that was constructed in 1958). This is Cleary’s Glenwood Elementary where Ramona and her friends attend Kindergarten-2nd grade before being bussed to Cedarhurst Primary for third grade.
CVS Parking Lot
(Directly across the street from the Beverly Cleary School)
If the Beverly Cleary School served as Glenwood then the vast CVS parking lot would serve as the empty, muddy lot that Ramona found herself in a couple times throughout the series. This is where she got her new red rain boots stuck in the mud (Ramona the Pest) and where she made a crown of burrs for herself (Ramona the Brave).
Childhood Home (Elementary years)
3340 NE Hancock Street
The first house the Bunn family rented upon moving to Portland was at 3600 NE 77th Ave. Beverly’s mom hated the easterly winds they’d receive there. When Beverly was in fourth grade, the family rented this modest 1910 bungalow at 3340 NE Hancock with three bedrooms, one bathroom, and a kitchen nook for a number of years during Beverly’s childhood.
When it was listed for sale in 2013, students from the nearby Beverly Cleary School came to tour it. It sits on a quaint tree-lined street next to similar compact homes with lovely front gardens. There are two Little Free Libraries on Hancock Street (the first just across the street from this home and down a few doors).
Childhood home (Middle/High School years)
2924 NE 37th Ave.
The last of the three Portland homes Cleary lived in. The family was able to buy this house with the money they made from selling their farm in Yamhill for $6,500 in 1927. They moved here when Cleary was in seventh grade at Fernwood and she lived there through her high school graduation.
Her parents bought her a used bike to get to and from school. After Home Ec, girls were allowed to take home baked goods they’d made in class so Cleary would put them in the bike’s basket and would have to pedal fast to outrun the boys chasing after her.
The original number at this address was 632. Beginning in 1931, Portland’s address system was revised in a bit of a frenzy. The ceramic black and white plates on the house are original from the renumbering.
Don’t miss the double-decker Little Free Library a few doors down from this home.
NE Klickitat Street
Finally, the street where all of our fictional friends live. Up the hill from the working-class homes of Cleary’s childhood, Klickitat St. and the surroundings boast much larger properties (including the 1914 Barnes mansion at 3533 NE Klickitat St that Cleary once wrote was haunted).
Cleary famously chose NE Klickitat Street for the residences of the Quimbys and Huggins because she said the name reminded her of the sound of knitting needles tapping together.
Rite Aid
1814 NE 41st Ave.
Covering an entire city block, this enormous pharmacy was once a Fred Meyer. In her novels, Cleary calls it the Colossal Market. Henry Huggins’s mother shops here to buy clippers to give him a haircut.
Fleur de Lis Bakery and Café
3930 NE Hancock Street
Site of the old Hollywood Library and the old old Hollywood Library. Then known as the Rose City Park Library, the first building opened on this site in August of 1926. Back then the address here was 1170 NE Hancock Street, as this was before the great Portland address reshuffling of the early 1930s. This would have been the library young Beverly visited as a youth and the library that Beezus took Ramona to get her library card at in Ramona the Pest.
In January of 1959 a new, larger library building was proposed for this site and that opened in April of that year. It also adopted the name Hollywood Library to be more representative of the neighborhood. It served as the branch library until the late 1990s when a $3.45M new library project was approved as part of a bond measure. At that time, the location of the Hollywood library moved to its present-day home on Tillamook Street.
Hollywood Library
4040 NE Tillamook Street
While you’re in the neighborhood, pop into the Hollywood Library to see a map of Ramona Quimby’s neighborhood on the wall. There are also copies of Cleary’s books in display cases embedded below the map.
Other libraries in the city play homage to Cleary–she was a children’s librarian after all! There are two terracotta busts by local sculptor Lee Hunt in the children’s room at the Gresham Library branch.
The Central branch in Portland named their children’s library after the author and features a bust of her at its entrance. Cleary even had a short stint as a children’s librarian at the Central branch at 801 SW 10th Ave.
For a deeper dive into Beverly Cleary’s life in Portland, I’ll suggest Walking with Ramona by Laura O. Foster. For children, try the nonfiction book Just Like Beverly: A Biography of Beverly Cleary by Vicki Conrad to learn more about the author’s life.
While you’re in Oregon, stop by the oldest continually operated hotel in the Pacific Northwest to see where Jack London spent a lot of time writing.
I hope you enjoyed these Beverly Cleary literary sites in Portland. If you think I missed something please let me know in the comments.
