Rose Perfume on the Upper Floors: Portland’s Pittock Mansion

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 27, 2026 · How we verify

Pittock Mansion sits a thousand feet above Portland, Oregon, a French Renaissance chateau of Tenino sandstone with the whole city laid out below it. It was built for a newspaperman and his wife, it was nearly torn down after a windstorm, and it has spent the last sixty years as a museum with a persistent second reputation: staff and visitors have long described the place as gently, domestically haunted by the couple who commissioned it.

Quick Facts About the Pittock Estate

• Built: construction began in 1909, completed in 1914
• Built for: London-born publisher Henry Pittock and his wife Georgiana Burton Pittock
• Architect: Edward T. Foulkes of San Francisco
• Size: 46 rooms on 46 acres in the West Hills
• Now owned by: Portland’s Bureau of Parks and Recreation
• Listed: National Register of Historic Places, 1974
• Annual visitors: roughly 80,000

Forty-Six Rooms and a Walk-In Refrigerator

Henry Pittock did not build modestly. When the house was finished in 1914 it contained a central vacuum system, intercoms, indirect lighting, an elevator and a walk-in refrigerator, all of it luxurious for a private residence of the period. Foulkes drew on Beaux Arts and French Renaissance models for the exterior, then let the interiors run in different directions: the library is Jacobean, the dining room craftsman, the smoking room Turkish, the music room French Renaissance.

The building’s layout still shapes what a visitor sees. The lower level, once the boiler and laundry rooms, is now museum space. The first and second floors were the family’s living quarters and have been redecorated to resemble either the Pittocks’ own rooms or those of comparable nineteenth century Oregon households. The third and fourth floors, where the servants lived, now hold the offices of the Pittock Mansion Society and are reached only by a back staircase. They are closed to the public except on the paid “Behind the Scenes” tours, which is worth knowing if you have read accounts of activity on the upper floors.

Georgiana Pittock and the Portland Rose

Georgiana was not simply the wife of a wealthy man. She was a serious gardener, a founding member of the Portland Rose Society, host of the first Portland Rose Show in 1889, and one of the people who helped launch what became the Portland Rose Festival. The formal gardens around the house reflect that, and the lawn is hedged with heritage roses as a tribute to her work.

This matters for the ghost stories, because the single most repeated report at Pittock Mansion is the smell of rose perfume drifting through the upper rooms with no source anyone can find. Visitors and staff have attributed it to Georgiana. Whether that scent is a haunting or the very ordinary consequence of a rose-hedged hilltop estate is a question the mansion has never had to settle, and the association between Georgiana and roses is documented fact regardless.

The Water Line That Ended a Councilman’s Career

The house also produced a genuine scandal while it was still going up. In 1911, Portland City Council member Will H. Daly drew public attention to the fact that Pittock had arranged for a water line to be run to the construction site entirely at city expense, despite the property sitting half a mile outside the city limits at the time. The affair fed a long-running feud between Daly and Pittock’s newspaper, and that feud ultimately finished Daly’s political career.

Georgiana died in 1918 at 72. Henry followed in 1919 at 84. The family stayed on until 1958, when Eric Ladd, who had lived in the house for four years, and Peter Gantenbein, a Pittock grandson born in the building, put the estate up for sale and could not find a buyer.

What the Columbus Day Storm Nearly Finished

The 1962 Columbus Day Storm did enough damage that the owners began seriously considering demolition. What saved the mansion was a public subscription: the community raised $75,000 in three months toward a city purchase, and the City of Portland, persuaded by that show of support and by the building’s value as a historic resource, bought the estate in 1964 for $225,000. Fifteen months of restoration followed and the house opened to the public in 1965. It has needed more work since. In 2006 the city estimated that six to eight million dollars of restoration were still required.

What People Report Inside the Mansion

Accounts of paranormal activity at Pittock Mansion are said to date to the 1960s, the decade the house became a museum. They are unusually mild by haunted house standards, and nothing in the documented history of the building suggests a violent or tragic event behind them.

• Georgiana’s apparition: reported moving through the house as if tidying it.
• Phantom rose perfume: the scent described above, most often on the upper floors.
• Henry Pittock’s presence: visitors have described encountering both Pittocks, invariably as benign rather than threatening.
• Digging on the grounds: the sound of a shovel working late at night, attributed in local retellings to a groundskeeper who spent his final days working the estate.

All of these are reported experiences and folklore, not verified events. There is no record in the mansion’s history that confirms any of them. Read them as part of the building’s cultural life, alongside the film crews and the birdwatchers.

Pittock Mansion on Screen

The house photographs well and Hollywood noticed. Its first known screen appearance was the 1977 romance First Love with Susan Dey and William Katt, where it served as the main character’s family home. In 1982 it became the principal location for the slasher film Unhinged, which was later banned in several countries as a video nasty and thanks the people of Portland in its end credits. It appeared again in the 1989 television film The Haunting of Sarah Hardy and prominently in the 1993 Madonna and Willem Dafoe vehicle Body of Evidence. It hosted the finale of the thirteenth season of The Amazing Race and the first elimination of season seventeen of the Dutch series Wie is de Mol?. In Colin Meloy’s Wildwood Chronicles, Forest Park becomes a magical realm and the mansion serves as its seat of government; Laika built a miniature set inspired by it for the film adaptation.

Getting Up to Pittock Mansion

The estate is owned by Portland Parks and Recreation and open for touring. Most people drive up. Hikers can also reach it on foot, since the Wildwood Trail through Forest Park crosses the mansion’s parking area, which makes the house a natural turnaround point on a longer walk. At a thousand feet above sea level the site delivers panoramic views of downtown Portland and ranks among the best birdwatching spots in the city, so a visit rewards even those indifferent to the ghost stories. If the upper floors are what draw you, note again that they are only opened on the additional-cost “Behind the Scenes” tour.

See Pittock Mansion for Yourself

Sources

• Estate of the Art
• Pittock Mansion
• Portland landmark Pittock Mansion turns 100 with free admission and special tours
• Pittock seeks new funding source
• Oregon – Multnomah County
• Wikipedia: Pittock Mansion

Address: 3229 NW Pittock Drive

Ghost Tours Nearby

Shanghai Tunnels Underground Tour – with Beer Tasting★ 4.3 (467)from $44Phantoms, Penance, and Poltergeists: Portland Ghost Tour★ 4.4 (364)from $26Portland Ultimate Dead of Night Tour★ 4.6 (37)from $27

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