As a Portland native who has devoted his professional life to historic preservation in Maine, I found a recent op-ed, “Let the Portland Museum build its addition,” both troubling and inaccurate.
Like the PMA leadership and advocates for expansion, the writer’s argument for destroying the former Chamber of Commerce/Children’s Museum seems to come down to this: it is not an important building and, trust us, what is going to replace it will be better.
No regard for Portland’s architectural heritage. No regard for the city’s historic preservation ordinance, which was carefully crafted and has served the community well for more than three decades. No regard for the work of architects John Calvin Stevens and Henry Cobb.
It was Stevens, whose major redesign of 142 Free Street a century ago gave us the building we see today, and Cobb, whose landmark Charles Shipman Payson Building several decades later was designed to relate to its neighboring building. As Cobb later said: “I believe I had an obligation to connect the new building to the city and the region.”
For more than 50 years, I have researched, lectured and published on the work of John Calvin Stevens, Portland’s leading architect and a figure of state and national reputation. Any assertion that the Free Street building’s Colonial Revival façade was “never great or distinctive architecture” could not be more wrong.
As Stevens began his career in 1884, he designed homes, summer cottages, churches and public buildings in the Shingle Style and the Romanesque Revival. At the same time, he was influenced by the emerging Colonial Revival, a style inspired by historic New England architecture, whether Colonial, Federal, or Greek Revival.
By the early 1900s, the Colonial Revival was Stevens’ style of choice. As part of his Colonial Revival work, he specialized in the restoration of historic Portland homes and buildings which he remodeled with his interpretation of classically inspired design. His restoration practice extended to other parts of Maine, including the Blaine House in Augusta.
When the Portland Chamber of Commerce acquired 142 Free Street for its headquarters in 1926, Stevens chose to replace its Victorian church façade with the stately Colonial Revival columned façade we see today. He based this design on the building’s original 1830s appearance as a theater and a church.
It is not some “bastardized architecture” but a carefully conceived plan. Stevens’ redesign of the building transformed it into an impressive civic building in a style that was widely popular for public architecture during this period.
Stevens was an advocate of the City Beautiful movement, as part of which he sought to improve Portland with such public buildings as City Hall, the PMA’s own Sweat Memorial Gallery, and the Portland Post Office. In his own words, his purpose was “to have all the city’s institutions so built that they become points of interest and beauty.”
A century later, these buildings are still points of interest and beauty. The architectural significance of 142 Free Street is a primary reason for its listing as a contributing resource to Portland’s Congress Street Historic District. The appropriateness of this designation was confirmed by the National Park Service when it certified the district for the use of Federal historic tax credits.
Finally, the op-ed suggested that the PMA’s proposed new addition would “enhance the overall vibrancy and revitalization of our city.” This is a familiar argument that has been used since the 1960s to rationalize the tearing down of historic buildings. I would argue instead that it is Portland’s commitment to preserving its historic buildings and neighborhoods that has led to its economic revitalization and attractiveness as a place to live, work and visit.
The essence of Portland’s Historic Preservation ordinance is to ensure that the fates of our historic buildings are not decided by individual whims or an institution’s grand plans. They are judged on their merits, using rational, objective, time-tested criteria.
142 Free Street has stood the test of history and saying it must be demolished to make way for the PMA expansion is a false choice. Instead, it can and should be thoughtfully integrated into any new design for the museum campus. I am confident that that is what John Calvin Stevens and Henry Cobb would expect us to do.
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