YMCA/Libby Building
Libby Building, 1978. H.H. Hay building can be seen at the far left of the photo. Image courtesy Portland Public Library, Portland Press Herald Still-Film Negatives Collection.
Shown mid-demolition, view from High Street, looking toward what is today Congress Square Park with the Eastland Hotel in the background.
Free Street Baptist Church (converted into the Chamber of Commerce by John Calvin Stevens in 1926), Women’s Christian Temperance Building, and Libby Building, ca. 1930. Image courtesy Maine Memory Network.
Former Women’s Christian Temperance Building, 1980, boasting a storefront addition , home to a tailor and a barber and supporting a massive billboard that obscured the second and third stories. Image courtesy Portland Public Library, Portland Press Herald Still-Film Negatives Collection.
Several historic buildings near the corner of High and Free Streets were removed for the expansion of the Portland Museum of Art in 1980. The most prominent of these was the original Young Men’s Christian Association Building built in 1897 directly on the corner. Later owned by Harold and Ralph Libby (the sons of J.R. Libby & Sons Department store) it became known as the Libby Building and at the time of its destruction it was a mixed use building of shops, offices and apartments.
Also torn down at the same time was the small (by comparison) building sandwiched between the Libby Building and the Chamber of Commerce building (formerly Free Street Baptist Church, recently home to the Children’s Museum & Theater of Maine). This structure was for many years owned by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union which operated it as a club house and rooming house. By the time it was demolished it was a mixed use commercial building.