 Hello, I'm Carol Scheller. I'm the president and founder of the university neighborhood organization And we're really excited to be a part of today's event and want to do a special thanks to Hilary Bassett the president and also Julie Larry is going to be giving the presentation The university neighborhood organization, so you don't know if you don't know it's a partnership with university USM students and what we do is we try to make a bridge and bring positive things to our neighborhood From the talents and all the great things that the kids are learning over at USM for example We do the annual Longfellow Park Earth Day cleanup Which this year is going to be Friday April 21st and that's followed by the Longfellow Park annual block party and this year It's really really special because we're celebrating the park's 90th birthday The park was formed in 1927 and I'll actually be working with Julie to put together a special little handout on the park We've been doing a lot of research and have found some really interesting clippings We also are excited to say that City of Portland finally widen our path walkways And the park is now pretty much ADA compliant for wheelchair accessibility Which is really a big asset as many of you know in the neighborhood We have the Portland Living Center and many many residents that need Assistance walking so by widening the walkways is really fantastic We also did a partnership here with Hope Gateway Trinity Church and Woodford's Congregational Church when the noise Street fire happened our students were very involved in organizing the vigil and in Future anniversaries that will be held in the park. So I'm also I just want to Let you know if you don't know there's a forum called next door. How many of you are on the next door forum? It's wonderful. And if you sign your name and email here I'll make sure you get an invitation. It's a way to like advertise if you want to sell a car You want a tenant for an apartment or whatever information you want to share or you want information about like today's event You can post whatever you want on it And how many people here are actually live in the Oakdale neighborhood? Wow The boundaries I would say the boundaries are basically the neighborhoods that surround the USM neighborhood You know Um Well, maybe no not well that would certainly it was basically I think of it from Bedford Street Forest Avenue, you know Woodford's in that block in there, but Julie's going to tell you a lot more about that So anyways, is anyone here a lived 40 years or more in the neighborhood? Any newcomers center? I think our neighborhood is just really so many people are discovering it now That it's just really an exciting place to live. So I'm going to turn this over to Julie Hillary Thank You Carol and thank you everybody for coming. I'm Hillary Bassett. I'm the executive director of Greater Portland Landmarks And I'd like to welcome all of you here today I'd like to extend a very warm. Thank you very warm Thank you to Hope Gateway for letting us use this space It's a very creative reuse of a former automotive building so this is a an area that has had a lot of change over the years and also to Carol from the Neighborhood Association who's been so great to work with and getting everybody here today Landmarks was founded in 1964 in response to the urban renewal movement when a lot of buildings were being destroyed In the name of progress and our mission is to preserve and revitalize Greater Portland's remarkable legacy of historic buildings neighborhoods landscapes and parks We are calling 2017 the year of the streetcar suburbs. So we're going off peninsula We've been doing a lot of research in the daring area in the area Particularly out Forest Avenue and Brighton Avenue And so we'll be sharing that research with you as we find it in the coming years and obviously today Now many of these neighborhoods are great neighborhoods to live in as you all know but are being rediscovered And their their popularity is being increasing and also neighborhoods like Woodford's Corner Which really weren't considered a quote neighborhood are gaining their own identity identity and finding Finding neighborhood organizations to support development there Now I'd like to invite you to a couple of landmarks events that are coming up one is called preservation and action You may have seen these postcards at the back of the room it's an event that focuses on Connecting homeowners with the people who can help you repair and renovate your properties and also with realtors and other experts So that's April 1st and for neighborhood organizations. We have a special Arrangement to have a discounted price for you. So if you're interested Please stop by the table at the back of the room You can sign up online and use the special term Neighbor when you sign up and you'll get a discounted price on that day of workshops Another thing that's coming up is a lecture on Tuesday, March 21st with Kent Raiden Kent is the former head of the American New England Studies program at USM That will be at the Portland Public Library and it will be dealing with the the idea of place as As can be read through the cultural landscape. I think you'll really enjoy hearing from Kent It's a free lecture on March 21st And then I'd like to introduce our speaker today Julie Larry is on our staff at Landmarks as director of advocacy She's an architectural historian and a trained architect. She's done an extraordinary job She's been on the staff since October 2015 and she has been involved with over 70 projects review projects in Portland There's so much going on here greater Portland. I should say And then she's also been the key player for a number of surveys. We've been conducting in the Deering area We did dear Oakdale last summer the previous summer. We did the forest and Stevens Avenue corridors This summer we're going to be working on Deering Highlands So as we have this information we look forward to sharing it with the people of Portland So without further ado, I'd like to introduce Julie who is going to be our speaker. Thank you Okay, let's make sure all the tech works so on greater Portland Landmarks for many years was focused on studying the history of the peninsula and But a few years back We decided that one of the areas that we hadn't studied very much was the Deering neighborhood And so greater Portland Landmarks published this book which is called Deering a social and architectural history We have some available at the back of the room 2012 I think was the year it was published and a lot of the research that we've been doing has built upon the work that was done by Patricia and Bill Berry as for that publication as Hillary mentioned we've been doing a number of surveys and this map shows the location of the neighborhoods We've been working in so we are so we're about right here today and This summer we're going to be working in the Deering Highlands neighborhood. Let's see if this one will work. That's the blue I think it doesn't like me. Oh Here we go And then this is the Oakdale, Fesadin Park and Oakwood Heights neighborhoods that I'm going to talk about tonight So this is Forest Avenue, Stevens Avenue and Evergreen Cemetery and of course Baxter Boulevard over here So the purple are the projects those the locations that we surveyed a couple of summers ago We had two interns this summer that did these 372 properties within this area and then this summer we're going to be working up here and The reason we focused our survey work this previous summer in 2016 on the Oakdale neighborhood Was after the fall after the fire at 26 noise Street one of the adjacent neighbors applied for some funding to repair The damage done to his property and part of that funding was from federal sources and when you use Federal money or you require a federal permit you have to go through a process called section 106 review and section 106 considers the impact of the work that you're going to be doing on historic resources and When the Main Historic Preservation Commission did their review of that project what they did was they decided that they made it a determination that there is a potential historic district here in the Oakdale neighborhood and they Said that there needed to be some further Evaluation there had been a survey done. It's about almost 20 years old now And so they wanted to know you know, how has the neighborhood changed? What what are the resources like today? And so that's why we decided to undertake this neighborhood to update that survey and to have the most accurate information that we could have So they looked and said this is noise Street here. This is Brighton Avenue. This is st. John This is Falmouth Street and then Forest Avenue. So it's pretty much that whole swath. They determined could potentially be a district so that area is Combined is a combination of three subdivisions early subdivisions We have the Oakdale subdivision, which is the largest that was started in 1881 So it goes from Falmouth to noise Street from Forest Avenue to Deering Then there's this more triangular shaped subdivision that was laid out in 1897. This is Fesadin Park and Then about the time that both of these were almost entirely all built out. They laid out this Subdivision, which is the Oakwood Heights subdivision in the 1920s And so these are the three that I'll be referring to this evening and just to place you here We have Woodford's Corner up here the existing railroad And this is the University of Southern Maine. This is a bird's-eye image from 1871 This is taken from the peninsula. This is outer Congress and Congress Street coming through downtown So this is Deering Oaks. So you can see the city 1871 is fairly built up and when you look out here, it looks like the hinterlands Nobody out there There be wolves or something like that But that's actually not true. There was quite a bit of development happening in the 1870s beyond the peninsula This these is a series of maps that shows the evolution of what we know today is Deering initially Deering, Portland, Westbrook, South Portland, Cape Elizabeth, and Falmouth were all one community called Falmouth the Portland Peninsula because it at Leading up to the the American Revolution was really a prosperous port area separated from the rest of the community and then eventually Deering was left with Westbrook to form a community called Sakarapa Now Westbrook, we know has a you know had a vibrant mill Economy and so they really didn't have the same kind of focus that the Deering the residential area here Here in Deering this was at the time was comprised mainly of several small villages. So those two separated in 1871 and Deering became the town of Deering it later became the city of Deering and then eventually was annexed by the city of Portland in 1899 They wanted the votes All of the welfare people were moving off to Deering and they're like hey, we want you back This shows this is a map showing the town line in so this is 1882 So this is when Deering was happening up here. So this is back Cove. This is about where Hannaford is now This is Deering Deering Oaks This is Deering Avenue going straight up and that's Brighton going out there So you can see this is the town line. It kind of picks up and goes right around USM at the time Deering Was comprised of a lot of large estate homes and one of the largest estates was about a 200 acre estate Was that of James Deering? This is the Deering mansion about 1900 James Deering's house was a local Located on what is today USM's campus the only remainder or from that estate is actually the farm the farmhands house The corner of Bedford and Deering. There's a small little house that looks kind of out of place on the campus That's the only Existing building that remains Here's an image of the campus. So the the farmhands house is right here off this slide This is Bedford Street. This is Forest Avenue down here This is a subdivision called Bedford Park and this was the Deering mansion on USM's campus Deering's estate was built in the early 19th century But there are a number of other estate homes that were built up along Forest Avenue in the mid 19th century, this is Forest Avenue here Woodford's corner is off the map just up here This is the Sparrow the coil the rickr and the Gould estates They all stretched from Forest Avenue all the way down to the Cove This is the coil house. This is a painting of the coil house. Captain coil made his money in the steamship business He then his name his estate was eventually subdivided and became a subdivision known as coil park a Portion of his house the back portion was separated and moved to Clifton Street So that's still an exist. That's an existing Dwelling today his house remained on Forest Avenue It was located between coil and Belmont streets until the 1960s when it was torn down for a parking lot About where we are today was this building. This is the Warren Brown house It was a gothic revival Building it was eventually purchased by a man named Joseph Ricker who owned a tannery He was also one of the founders of the Street Railway Company. That was the the streetcar Line that stretched from the Portland Peninsula came out Forest Avenue to Woodford's went just beyond Woodford's and turned on to Pleasant Avenue went by the house of another Founder of the Street Railway Company who subdivided his land and out to Stevens Avenue where it took a right Went out past UNE which of course was then Westbrook Seminary to Morrill's corner The Ricker estate was later owned by the Ku Klux Klan Until 1923 when it was burned here. It is during the period of the Klan ownership You can see the house on the right and the large building to the left was their dance hall and assembly building They held dances and rallies and things in the building Moving towards Portland in the area now occupied by Burger King and TD Bank CVS that area was this building Oakland's which was Initially the home of the Gould family and it later was purchased by members of the Brown family The Brown family owned the Berlin Mills in Berlin, New Hampshire. They would ship their Lumber down to Portland. They initially owned the Rufus Deering Site on the Portland waterfront and that was the Berlin Lumber yard and then they owned the wharves across the street From where that's still called Berlin wharf today And this later as I mentioned was subdivided for use by the Forest Park as it mentions up there and prior to The street the strip mall that's there today. There was a Howard Johnson's on the site So these estates were gradually split up and subdivided because of mounting pressure for housing off the peninsula in 1866 there was a massive fire in Portland the Great Fire of 1866 it started about where Rufus Deering is today and Spread all the way up towards Munjoy Hill and the Portland Observatory It left 10,000 people homeless So there was a dire need for new housing Initially the downtown area had been a very mixed use place of housing right next door to commercial properties And there was more of a separation that happened after the fire during the rebuilding there was a concentration of the commercial uses in what we now call the downtown and then there was Residential development on Bramhall Hill and on Munjoy Hill and for those who could afford it there was Housing that was built in Deering now. It's took a little bit longer. You couldn't walk Like you could from Bramhall on Munjoy Hill to your work So you needed to have a little bit more money so that you maybe you could afford a horse and a carriage that would take You into town But in 1864 we have the first horse drawn street cars that came out started in India Street went up to Congress Street rather and then went out forest as I mentioned ticked into pleasant and then out tomorrow's corner and So if you lived within five or ten minutes of the street car You could be to work fairly economically and fairly quickly And that allowed for the subdivision of these largest states into new homes one of the proponents of the subdivision of Deering into a residential neighborhood was the International order of odd fellows they published this document called Deering a City of Homes in 1897 this was just as Deering was about to be annexed by the City of Portland That was helping to promote why you should move out of the city and into the suburban ideal of Deering So this is a map from 1914 This was this shows the subdivision of the coil house that I showed you the painting earlier This was the ricker estate that the KKK owned you can see that here in 1914 It hasn't been subdivided yet. The Brown estate has not yet been built up We have this development on the side of back cove called Boulevard Park That has just a couple of houses that have been built up Here's Deering Here's the Oakdale neighborhood. This is the Fesadon Park subdivision Sparsely developed you can see that there's a lot of development over here But none over towards a noise street development in this subdivision moved from this end down the street and eventually Hooked up with some of the development that had been happening around Woodford's corner And we have the Oakwood Heights site just up the map which is not developed again That didn't develop until the 20s The street cars were eventually supplanted by the automobile and the automobile had a huge impact on Forest Avenue And on the suburban neighborhoods off of Forest Avenue Initially There was a need to Howard. Where are you going to put your car? so this is one of the This is a auto dealership that was demolished for 295 Automobile dealerships initially were on the peninsula and then they Eventually migrated out to Forest Avenue and so a number of the properties on Forest Avenue are auto dealerships Including this building that we're in you can see the very large columns the four columns in this main space These were an early this was a typical form of concrete structure that was used to create these big open spaces That you could park a car into This map shows the location of a number of those auto dealerships. This is before 295 goes in so this is Deering Oaks here. This is the USM campus So this is where Oakhurst was or Oakhurst is they eventually expanded and took over what was an auto dealership here on the corner of Falmouth there was a number over here on the other side of the street One where for many years peer one that building Those of you have been around for a while and then there was another one on this street that no longer exists because the library has taken it over There was a big forest city Chevrolet I think I have an image of that coming up and then there were a number of them out towards Woodford's corner as well. There's this one This is a 1924 tax photo on the top the city of Portland has an image of every income producing property in the city from 1924 this is a more recent but not super current This is going to be the new location of the bakery collective and a new art gallery that's going into this space There's a couple of those a little bit closer down towards 295 And this was first forest city Those of you have been around for a long time Forest city for many years after they left this location was out by the old exodate, which I think is 48 now On Brighton Avenue. They're now quirk Chevrolet and you can see in the back the old bakery building Which is now the library for usm Here's an image from the 40s that I just really love because it shows all kinds of transportation Types we have of course This image which we don't see much of in Portland, right? Although maybe Tuesday night. We'll need to use this form of transportation We have some of the cars and truck traffic But you can also still see the rails for the streetcar lines in the street and here's a number of those Auto dealership buildings across the street. So where do you store a car once you've purchased a car? Well, one of the earliest Places was a community garage This is on Oakdale Street The image in the upper left is what it looks like today on the lower right is the 1924 photo You can see in the center There was initially a pair of swinging doors that you could drive the cars into and this was built by Silas Adams Who was a vice president of the American Chick-Lay Company? They made Gum they took over one of the chewing gum Manufacturers in the city of Portland. So he lived out here Enduring and worked in town and he built this garage for him and his neighbors but mostly what we know is The individual garage on your own property now a number of the carriage barns that Would have had maybe a horse and a carriage for somebody were converted as you can see on the left with a garage door We have another form of a community could perhaps a community garage a three-bay Hip roof garage in the center But the most predominant type of garage that we see in this early 20th century is the single-car garage That you can't fit an SUV into anymore With either a hip or a gable roof some of them were actually done quite fancy and match the style of the house So now I'm going to talk about the three neighborhoods individually. We'll start with Oakdale in 1881 When Oakdale was laid out. This is Falmouth Street Forest Avenue and Deering Avenue It was initially bisected by the Portland and Rochester Railroad. So the train came right through the neighborhood eventually when the railroad Went out of business in 1911 Those lots were subdivided for additional housing So when you start on Forest Avenue and you start driving down some of these streets You'll find that there's some earlier houses just as you go off Forest Avenue because these became house lots except for this end of the development where it became Freeman Street it was left open and Here's just showing the subdivision of the lots the railroad right of way now a number of the streets in this Subdivision are William Pitt and Fesson and those are named for US senator William Pitt Fesson who married a daughter Ellen of James Deering So when the Deering land company subdivided this land they purchased 40 acres I think it was from James Deering of his 200 acres from his family for this subdivision So here are some of the homes Mostly initially single family large homes particularly large considering the size of their lot So you have the Clifford house and the upper left you have some some Queen Anne homes that 92 to 96 Fesson and Street matching Houses with identical towers and porches probably built as spec houses by the Deering land company a Number of the homes like the Clifford house were built specifically for by property owner But the land company that was selling also wanted to show what was possible And so they did a number of homes on spec much like you might see in a subdivision if you're out in Falmouth or Cumberland today Below although it needs some TLC and a good paint This is the Hawes house at 69 Falmouth Street has an amazing amount of detail left on that building And then this sweet little house the Murphy house at 90 pit Street Fairly small in comparison to many of the homes in the neighborhood a number of homes in the neighborhood look alike You can see these are very similar They all have a central entrance and a full width porch They have brackets supporting the overhanging roof three windows at the top then they have some sort of feature Window this one's obviously a mirrored image of that one This one and you can still see that that original feature. I'm sorry. That one's a little dark and then the paired columns on the porch Again, probably a builder Building these own speculation to sell Again another grouping of houses very similar probably spec houses You have the paired porch columns the full width porch the big dormers The little rectangular window and as you can see these are noise and Dartmouth Street So these were built on the far end the Western end of the neighborhood As the neighborhood developed in Oakdale There was less and less of the individual homes that were built And then you see more and more spec housing and so there are a number of the houses on that end of the neighborhood Do look a lot alike Also on that end of the neighborhood as it was built up There's less and less single family and you start to see more two family homes This enabled people who maybe couldn't afford to buy a single family home The ability to live in this neighborhood because they had the income from the rent and many of the early Two family homes were built to look like their neighbors that were single family homes So again, you have the full width porch on some of these you have the dormer Except for the double door. There's not a lot to give it away that it's a two family It's about the same size and scale and has a lot of the same details as its single family neighbors Another way to get more density into the neighborhood was the triple decker This was also another way to be able to afford to live in the neighborhood because now you had two rents Coming in potentially or what often happened was you had two Families that you know, so maybe mom and dad and then the kids and then grandma and grandma I'll live down grandma and grandpa live downstairs and then they rented out a third unit You can see these are two of the triple-deckers these became very popular as we know all throughout New England Lots of light allowed into the building almost always they had a porch This one has lost all its upper porches in the neighborhood, but this one still has its fantastic Original balconies the Oakdale neighborhood had a number of the amenities that you might expect in a neighborhood Including a school. This is the Oakdale school This is an early image from 1885 and a more recent image. It's now used for housing This was the neighborhood school right up until Nathan Clifford was built on Falmouth Street And then after that point this was used initially as a kindergarten It had a couple of other uses and then it was vacant for a while in the city sold it and it was converted to housing Right and there's Nathan Clifford Right next door to the Oakdale school was this dwelling that had a storefront added on to it The storefront was then removed. It was only in place for about 30 years This was called Oakdale pure foods neighborhood grocery store and then where the railroad tracks were Removed on Fesadon Street. This building was constructed Constructed initially it was used as a bakery then it was Bicknell manufacturing company with these large storefront windows and then when the In the company moved out they took out the storefront added the bay windows and converted it into housing Then at the end of the neighborhood we have as Carol was talking about earlier We have Longfellow Park. This is a an early plan from the 20s and an image of it today You can see the cross pattern and then the next one we'll talk about is Fesadon Park. It was laid out in 1897 the following year the a new streetcar line went out Brighton Avenue out to Rosemont and that helped to shorten the walk and make that subdivision more popular because it The day you wanted to be within five to ten minutes of the streetcar That was kind of what the land developers were selling Fesadon Park is a smaller subdivision. It has slightly larger lots then the Oakdale neighborhood the Oakdale subdivision and it has For the most part some really individual unique houses That were specifically designed For certain residents. So we have the Peterson house on the upper left This is a little bit later So these houses are more in what was the becoming the popular shingle style It has a little bit of colonial revival influence as well So you can start to see the gambrel roof forms being used that was very a popular Roof feature for the shingle style homes and then we still have a little bit of Queen Anne I call Queen Anne architecture everything but the kitchen sink architecture You can have arches towers bay windows dormers Porches anything you want. It's just kind of a riot and of Features on your house Here's some more there's another one with a nice big gambrel roof The two on the right hand side You can see have a relationship with a dr. King Dr. King was a graduate of the main medical school. The main medical school was located at Bowdoin College He graduated from there. He taught there He was a practitioner at main medical center, which was not called main medical center at the time But and so this was the house on the lower right that he built for himself and then he opened up a hospital nearby on William Street for nurses training school became so popular that they expanded and Purchased another building and connected the two buildings and those were in operation until the About the Great Depression about that period of time like Oakdale the neighborhood Developed from the Portland side towards the bright towards them the Westbrook side And so most of the early homes are the large individual very over-the-top Houses and then we have some more modest houses as you move back towards noise Street and you get to start to see again some of the Two family houses being built as you move backwards through the neighborhood Fesson and Park took a fairly long time to develop as it was laid out in 1897 and it wasn't fully built up until 1923 And it only has about 40 lots in it, too One of the things that it does have is an apartment building and then that's real density in a neighborhood, right? This is the Heinz-Croft apartment building And that's 1924 photo and then a more recent image from last fall the last neighborhood I'm going to talk about is the Oakwood Heights plan Oakwood Heights was laid out when the two other neighborhoods were essentially all developed At the time there was a number of subdivisions going in around what we would call the USM community today Just south of Bedford Street was the Bedford Park development There was another one behind where the law school library is now and then Oakwood Heights And they were all done around the same same time period as the Oakdale, Fesson and at Oakwood Heights the Oakwood Heights and the Bedford Park were both done by the same gentleman and That developers name was Thomas Sanders. He lived on Williams Street So he lived in the Fesson and Park neighborhood and purchased land from the Daring airs To build those two subdivisions The these are the streets Catherine Kenwood Sheffield and Woodmont Street is a hundred and twenty one parcels Most of them are about five hundred. I mean fifty by a hundred feet rather The Lots came with deeded restrictions. It was a twenty five year deed restriction They stipulated that no part a portion of the lot could contain a store Factory theater hospital stable garage public garage or any building to be used for commercial or industrial use It was meant to be a purely residential neighborhood Homes for more than two families were prohibited The restrictions called for setbacks. This was an early form of zoning that was done by the developer 20-foot setbacks at the street five foot side yards Single family homes had to be greater than six thousand dollars in value Exclusive of the land costs two family homes had to be greater in value than nine thousand dollars and There was no livestock You could not have chickens. You cannot have sheep and they enumerated all of those animals They did not want any farming going on in this neighborhood So here's the subdivision plan This is St. John Street, this is Brighton Avenue, and this is Falmouth, so it didn't include The the lots that front onto St. John Street It just included all of the streets coming off of Brighton So here are some of the images now this neighborhood I mentioned was laid out in 1923 So in 1924 when the city's tax assessor was coming through to take pictures a Number of these homes were under construction or had not yet been built even so a number of the 1924 photos You'll see some that have the stairs are missing. You know, they're still in progress So here are two early homes. You can see this one's had its porch Filled in this one still looks remarkably like it did in 1924. There's it's cool little two-car garage out back what we found was that a number of the homes in this subdivision we believe are Factory cut or mail order homes or homes inspired by those catalogs called kits They were very popular in the early 20th century and there were a number of national companies that operated during this period the most Famous of which is Sears and Roebuck Out of Chicago Montgomery wards also sold kit homes. There was a company called Gordon Vantyne There's one of those in this neighborhood and another company called Bennett Homes that was out of Tawanda, New York This one is I believe a Sears modern home The only way to definitively know is to find a bill of sale or markings within the house And I haven't been in any of these homes But this home on Kenwood Street, you can see it has the fairly steep pitch of the front Edition it has the little Unusual window there and then it had this big porch that's been filled in So I believe this one probably is the Glen Falls version of Sears and you can see this is the floor plan It would give you what your your options that you could have This one is a standard homes. I believe you can see it has a little eyebrow window up there This one was recently on the market So I've seen the interior photos of this one Here's one of their images of the breakfast nook which is right here in the floor plan In fact, this one when it was sold a year or so ago The kitchen was original and matched to this exact layout. It was Like a time warp in this house. I'd love to go into it now and see what they've done There's another one that I believe is probably This is called this is Gordon van Tynne is one of those is like Sears This is the Hudson House. You can see the details of the Hudson is this prominent chimney This projecting entrance door which we have right here. This is kind of a mirror image of that And you can see this unique Open lattice window that looked into the porch from the street that still exists today Although I think it may have been filled in on the other side. They don't have the open porch But here's the image of it in 1924. It's it's very clearly. It's even got the same Pediment above the door. This was one of our interns that did the survey work They loved this house. They're like, we don't know why we like this house, but we really do but it's really strange and then when I got Yes, it's it's got some tutor which still exists It's hard to see in this image, but it's still got some of its tutor detailing right here, which you can see Right there in that image This has been altered. This is what it was in 1924 was under construction. See the stairs are missing out here They've lost their chimney Because they put in a dormer window This still exists although they've extended it out a little bit You can see the clipped hip roof is still there and then you can barely see it right here There's this long slope has a cutout in it And that's a passageway to go out along the side of the building to go out to the backyard and that still exists today They've got a little gate that they filled it in with so this started us on a journey of learning more about mail order buildings mail order Homes in the greater Portland area and coincidentally at the same time in Lincoln Park tempo art Sponsored a new piece of work by an artist and Judith Hoffman and she used it's called the American dream is the name of her sculpture and she based it off some of the Sears kit homes that that's what makes up the sculpture and So we've teamed up with tempo art We're going to be doing a lecture just on kit homes on April 26 at Luther Bonnie At the Talbot lecture hall at six o'clock in USM And So if you'd like to learn more about more kit homes We've been finding more and more across the area and how you can locate and how you can identify a kit home And as Hilary mentioned also coming up. We have our preservation and action workshops. So I'm happy to answer any questions you may have and if not if you don't have any questions Then we can mingle and I'll be at the back over the room and you can come up and if you're shy And ask me a question privately. Yes I don't remember two questions The question was what were the dates of the neighborhood so Oakdale is 1881 Fesseton Park is 1897 and Oakwood Heights is 1923 Designed Yes, that's the quick answer. Yes, there are some that are on William Street that we believe John Calvin Stevens either Designed or did additions and alterations to yes? I am from away And I have a question about the double and triple-decker Well holes, yeah, then have flat roofs. Yes, and that seems so counterintuitive to me with Considering the weather And everyone who owns a flat roof house in two days will be thinking the same thing Yeah, it is It was it wasn't necessarily about thinking practical it was about squishing a lot of people on one lot Developers no, sorry That was commentary. Yes, sir in the back with the move When did the streetcar stop? The streetcar stopped operating. Oh gosh. I want to say 1840s they were really in declining. I think there were some that still existed around a little bit later than that I'm not in 1840s 1940s. Sorry, sir Thank you What do you call a neighborhood between a Behind found the street of the space in Exeter and all those streets behind us That's a little grayer in there. Yeah, I can't remember the name But I wanted to say it's something about Exeter Woods or something like that I can't remember the name of that subdivision, but I think it begins with ease. That's why I'm thinking Yes Yes, yes the plans for these developments for the most part Particularly these later ones from 1880s onward are in the registry of deeds So they're very easy to look up. You can just go to the registry of deeds with which is online and Just type in to Google Cumberland County registry of deeds. They have two ways you can search You can search by you can search land records, which is the Where the maps are and then you just put in your street name so if you live on Exeter Street you can type in Exeter Street and then you can arrange them by date and so you look for like the 1920 map and Pull it up and there will be your subdivision I believe they burned at the same time. Yeah Yeah Yeah, I did a presentation to some kids at King Middle School And I wasn't sure they'd know who the Ku Klux Klan was to be honest, but they did and when I said, you know, the buildings burn They're like karma I'm like, I'd like you guys you're fun Yes, ma'am I just want to comment on the flat roofs. I live in the Lafayette on the top floor and I have had like Seven weeks in the room In like 15 years. Yeah Yeah, it's not practical is it and the main branch and Flat roofs are totally against the vernacular which is a gray concept And so I think it was a stylistic choice Well, it was certainly for the library modernism was in you know, most most modernist buildings did not Have hipped roofs or yeah, I mean so the flat roofs was definitely yeah Yeah, you well, it's interesting when you go to and of course the triple-decker They are just exploded in communities like Dorchester outside of Boston And so you drive through like South Boston Dorchester and you look at some of the triple-deckers and what they've done to Change the roof Form because it's such an impractical Those but the Irish are very practical people and they can fix their rules There's tons of triple-deckers and they all have flat rooms Again it was Making a lot of housing particularly You know when the triple-deckers came in that was when the big waves of immigrants were coming to Portland You know the the Irish were first and then we had the the the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and the Italians and Yeah, yeah, they were here. You know, they were here even earlier Yeah, and so you have these waves of immigrants who initially settled on the peninsula in the India Street neighborhood The Gorms Corner neighborhood off York and Danforth Street and eventually like moving out, you know Moving on up like the Jeffersons as soon as they could afford to they moved up the hill You know up Bram Hall that was great consternation when Catholics started moving into the neighborhoods on the West End They moved up to Manjoe Hill or if when they could they moved out to here and of course The there are number in the India Street neighborhood There are a number of synagogues on that was a very large Jewish community in the India Street neighborhood and as they moved up They moved out here And so you have the synagogue on noise Street which grew out of the synagogue that was on Newbury Street initially And in the industry Yeah, well, yeah a lot of people I've heard people say that But I don't know of anybody who's opening one certainly I we have a lot of We work a lot with the Woodford's friends Woodford's corner friends group And we always meet a big sky and you see a lot of people coming in or trying to get their coffee Because they just need to get out of the house. So yeah The odd fellows recognize that and they know that their neighborhood and I think that they have some interest in helping to spur The regeneration of that corner and and and they know that it's time for Some new new blood in the neighborhood in the commercial Those were built closer to World War two and they were there was a lot of housing within throughout greater Portland That was needed to house the workers in South Portland and that is My best guesstimate. I don't know that for certain Back Yeah, yeah, it it's yes because that was the main street that the Deering Mansions driveway came off of Yeah, that and I believe it was called Wilmont Street That was the street that went down behind the library What's now the library and cut across where 295 was? Is it Wilmont? Winslow, that's it. Yes. Thank you. I was a W. Um, I don't know if I'm gonna get back there So, yeah, that those were very Very early laid out streets noise street Predates all the other streets noise street was an original street as well There we go noise noise was laid out before any of these were these were built these were filled in between Falmouth and Here noise was an original street or or predated these streets. I shouldn't say it was original, but yeah this You know coming down here and this path into Portland was a very early road Yes in the back. I've heard that Found the street was the alignment of found the street essentially followed. There was a creek The name when they built the sewers and stuff they piped it and put the street over it Did you have you come across any photos? No, I haven't heard that No, there's some great photos of when the sewer went in across the street You can see the men digging going out to back Cove. Those are pretty cool. Yes, sir. You mentioned noise street Did I I believe I heard at one point that Dartmouth Street was actually us route one at one time Us route one Dairy Avenue Dairy Avenue. Okay. Dairy. Yeah Yeah, it went through a couple of it went through a couple of developers the early developers were two gentlemen name Marks and Earl and Marks lived in the neighborhood and built big large homes spec homes which took a while to develop Believe there was me was an economic downturn in there as well that didn't help matters You know another 2008 kind of situation and eventually he sold off most of his Those two sold off most of their to another developer who's last name. I think was Brown And then they developed you can just see it sliding off here There's this neighborhood over here where Orleans Street is it comes off Brighton Avenue. That's called Fessin Park extension That's the name of that subdivision They developed that and then they got out of town and they went and developed neighborhoods in Brookline outside Boston So they were they were those kind of developers More commentary Anybody else All right, well, I'll catch you up