News
Ursula K. Le Guin’s Portland Home Now Listed in the National Register of Historic Places
The Ursula K. Le Guin House is now officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service. Oregon’s State Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation (SACHP) recommended the nomination at its February 2026 meeting for the property’s national significance in the areas of literature and women’s social history for its direct association with acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin.
It is big news for Oregon when a determination of national significance is made! Restore Oregon congratulates the Le Guin Family, Literary Arts and the team they assembled to develop and put forth the nomination.
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) is recognized as one of the most influential American literary figures of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Widely regarded for her transformative contributions to science fiction and fantasy, she explored questions of gender, identity, power, and community in her work. Her home in the Willamette Heights neighborhood of NW Portland served as her primary residence and creative environment for nearly six decades, from 1960 through her death in 2018.
The house on NW Thurman Street retains the key interior spaces where Le Guin worked, including her second-floor writing room with its built-in desk and views of Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams. The surrounding gardens, established and maintained by Le Guin’s husband Charles Le Guin, form a significant component of the property’s setting and remain central to its historic character. Together, these spaces preserve the feeling and association of the home as both a family residence and a creative environment that shaped one of the nation’s most influential literary voices.
The home was recently donated to Literary Arts, a Portland, Ore. based nonprofit, by the Le Guin family to establish the Ursula K. Le Guin Writers Residency. Once established, the residency will welcome writers to live and work in the home.
Return to News
