Coe Circle

Coe Circle involves a large park in the middle of the street. Not many people are ever standing in the park because there are lots of nearby parks such as Laurelhurst Park. Walking around here is usually not pedestrian friendly. The statue of Joan of Arc is still very much beautiful.
The circle is important because it helps guide traffic, making it easier to go to different parts of Portland. A few different buses such as the 19 and 75 on TriMet stop here, with a covered bench, unlike other nearby stops. Many people will find this convenient for commuting to Hawthorne.
This circle proves that even a crosstreet can be glorious like Joan of Arc.

This encircled sculpture is so not Portland and so Portland at the same time.
When Joan and her steed were restored, I was fortunate by my art connections to climb the scaffolding right up to the sculpture. It is probably at least ⁵⁄₃ scale. My friend had set up a red and yellow light show for a night within the plastic shroud to create appearance of burning. Those artists!
And yes she was regilded by hand. Inch by inch and there are many, many.
The narrative of Joan of Arc is fascinating and a good match for Portland. Thanks Dr. Coe!
And please Portlanders, don’t vandalize her!

Driving north toward Coe Circle on a beautiful sunny day confronted me with a glowing Joan of Arc on horseback. This 1924 – 25 copy of Emmanuel Frémiet’s 1899 original had me driving around the circle repeatedly until my car had the good sense to park so I could get a closer look.
I understand this statue was damaged last year by vandals who epoxied a unicorn horn to the horse’s head resulting in a $ 1500 repair. (I trust said horn was later creatively affixed to those responsible.) Fortunately, on my visit, this statue probably looked as good as the Parisian original. Vive la France!

39^th Avenue. An essential cross-​town street that takes you as far north as the Hollywood district, and as far south as Crystal Springs Boulevard and the Springwater Corridor biking trail. Nothing along the Avenue is quite as curious as the giant, gilded statue of Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc for my Francophile friends) erected in the middle of a rotary at the intersection of NE 39^th and Glisan.
Your first WTF moment is the very fact that you have arrived at a rotary (or, camembert, again for my Francophile friends), here on the west coast. Because these traffic conundrums are such a rarity this side of, say, Boston, the city of Portland has done the one and only thing it can think to do to give you any chance of navigating this devil’s circle. They have installed stop signs at each and every entry point. East Coasters laugh at the «safety» aspect added to what should otherwise be a goddamned free-​for-​all where the strong of will and crazy of heart will always take and maintain the right of way. But I digress.
Since you are at a stop sign and trying to figure out exactly how to enter the seventh circle of Hell without being hit by the oncoming bus that is riding not in any particular lane that you can discern, you also have the opportunity to wonder if you are actually in Portland, or if you have somehow been wormholed to the Place des Pyramides in Paris, because there is a life-​size reproduction of Joan of Arc, atop her trusty steed, in the most flamboyant of gilded gold. This is your second WTF (or CQCB — «C’est quoi ce bordel?») experience to be had here at NE 39^th and Glisan.
The statue is here to commemorate the fallen from World War I. The traffic circle — Coe Circle — is named after the man who donated the statue back in 1924. But I can hardly think of it as anything but CQCB circle from now on. I find myself asking «C’est quoi ce bordel?» each time I attempt circumnavigating this NE Portland traffic landmark.