1. The First Landing (1632)
Hancock & Fore Streets
The first white settlers to land on the peninsula of Portland were George
and Margaret Cleves and Richard and Joan Tucker, with their daughter, Elizabeth.
They chose a spot at the bottom of a hill, sheltered from the wind with a
good view of the harbor. They built a crude log house, and they traded fish and furs with
the Indians. |
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Where do you think the Cleves and
Tuckers found their BUILDING MATERIALS? |
2. Tate House (1755)
1270 Westbrook Street
Captain George Tate and his family lived in this house when America was still a colony.
They came here from England so that he could be the mast agent for the British
navy. He was in charge of finding tall timber for the masts of English ships.
His house was large and stylish for the time, because he had an important job.
Portland was a frontier. |
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Find the CHIMNEY.
What did people use FIREPLACES for? |
3. Wadsworth-Longfellow House
(1785-1786)
487 Congress Street
This is the oldest house on the Portland penisula. Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow's grandfather, named General Peleg Wadsworth, built this house out of bricks
shipped here from Philadelphia. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the
famous poet, lived in this house and wrote poetry here. When Longfellow was a boy,
he could look out the third floor windows and see down to the harbor and
out to the Back Cove. |
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How many CHIMNEYS can you
count?
Cover the third floor with your hand.
Now you can see what this house looked like before the third floor was
added in 1815. |
4.
McLellan Sweat Mansion (1800)
103 Spring Street
Hugh McLellan built this mansion after he made a fortune in the shipping
business. Portland was growing after the American Revolution, and merchants
like Mr. McLellan helped to build up the city. He hired a master builder, named John
Kimball, Sr., to design his house in a popular new style, with bigger windows and carved
decorations. The neighborhood was full of beautiful mansions. Some people in
Portland were getting rich in the businesses of logging, fishing, shipping, and
manufacturing. |
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What shape is this building?
How many SHUTTERS can you count? The design of this building is SYMMETRICAL.
Do you know what SYMMETRICAL means? |
5.
Portland Observatory (1807)
The Portland Observatory sits on the
highest point in Portland! A sea captain, named Lemuel Moody, built
a tower to watch for ships coming into the harbor from a long way off.
Lemuel and his son, Enoch, used bright colored signal flags to send
messages down to the harbor. They could send out a warning signal if they spotted
ships in distress or saw a storm approaching.
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(© Greater Portland Landmarks) |
This tower has eight sides.
Can you select the figure that has eight sides and is called an octagon?
   |
6. First Parish Church (1825-1826)
300 years ago, people thought that
Congress Street was way out in the country. They built
a wooden meeting house here in 1740 and called it, "Old Jerusalem."
When the parish decided to build this new church out of stone, they saved the old
weathervane and put it one top of the steeple. You can still see it, waving in the
wind. Inside the church there is a cannonball from Mowatt's invasion! |
(First Parish photos
by C. Richard Coburn) |
Can you find the WEATHERVANE? |
7.
Charles Q. Clapp House (1832)
Mr. Charles Q. Clapp bought so much land and
sold so many buildings in Portland that he became wealthy. He designed this house
himself to look like a Greek temple. Americans loved Greek temples,
because the government in ancient Greece was the birthplace of democracy and a model for
the new American government. |
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Can you find the triangular roof? It is called a PEDIMENT.
Now find the pillars that hold up the roof. They are called COLUMNS.
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8.
Park Street Row (1835)
As Portland began to grow, the city
was crowded with houses and buildings. Soon it was hard to find open
lots of land. More houses can fit in a city block, if they are tall and
narrow. Houses built side by side are called townhouses or rowhouses.
Behind them was a park and a well for people on this block to share. |
Photo by Nicholas Dean |
How many separate homes can you see in this picture? |
9.
Victoria Mansion (1855-1860)
The Victoria Mansion is one of the most
splendid houses in America. Ruggles S. Morse built this house so that he
and his wife, Olive, could spend summers in Portland. It was the fashion
to build houses with tall towers to look like Italian palaces,
called "villas." Mr. Morse found the finest artists from
Europe and America to decorate his house. |
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This house is constructed of BROWNSTONE, shipped here from Connecticut.
Find the corner blocks and call them QUOINS. |
10.
Lincoln Park (1866-1871)
Lincoln Park was the very first public
park in Portland. When all the buildings in this block burned down in the
Great Fire, the city turned it into a park. They hoped that if there were ever
another fire, the open space could stop it from spreading up to Munjoy
Hill. Soon, people in the
crowded city wanted more parks to enjoy a peaceful view and get some
exercise. |
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How many parks can you name? |
11.
The Woodman Block (1867)
Mr. George M. Woodman lost his dry good
business in the Great Fire of 1866. People in Portland wanted to build new buildings
out of materials that were fireproof, like brick, stone, and slate.
Mr. Woodman hired an architect to design a new kind of building that
covered a whole city block with fancy storefronts along the side walk. |
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How many stories does this
building have? (Hint: There is a story hidden inside the curved MANSARD roof.) |
12.
United States Custom House (1868-1871)
After the Civil War ended, the harbor
was busier than ever with ships coming in and trains
going out. Portland needed a new building where the government could keep
track of all the cargo. An architect from Washington, D.C.
designed this building to look like a European palace built out of Maine granite.
The inside is decorated with marble, gold, and chandeliers. |
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If you were inside this building,
do you think that you could get the best VIEW of the harbor from the ground floor, the
second floor, or the towers? |
13.
Baxter Library (1888)
Mr. James P. Baxter built this building and
gave it to the city as the first public library. Mr. Baxter became
a rich man at a young age by starting a canning business called the Portland Packing
Company. He was mayor six times and devoted his life to improving the city
of Portland. Today this building is the library of the Maine School of Art. |
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Find a circular window.
Label it OCULA WINDOW. (That means "THE EYE" in Latin.)
Now circle all the ROMAN ARCHES on this building. |
14.
Soldiers & Sailors Monument (1891)
Monument Square is right in the middle
of the Portland peninsula. People gather in this spot to talk about politics
and celebrate holidays and hold farmers' markets.
After the Civil War, the people of Portland wanted to honor all the soldiers and sailors
who died fighting. An artist sculpted this bronze statue of Nike, the goddess
of Victory. |
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Have you ever been to Monument
Square?
Name some activities that take place here. |
15.
Fidelity Trust Company Building (1910)
This building does not look like the glass
skyscrapers of today, but this is Portland's first skyscraper! The
walls are constructed out of carved stone, but there is a modern steel frame hidden
inside the walls. The invention of the steel frame made it possible to build taller
buildings than ever before. |
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How many stories can you count?
Why is it so tall? |
