 Okay, well thank you for coming out on this wild and crazy day that turned out to be snowy after all in spite of all the predictions yesterday. My name is Hillary Bassett. I'm the Executive Director of Greater Portland Landmarks and I'm really glad to see all of you who have an interest in the India Street neighborhood. I would like to welcome you all to the Jewish Main Jewish Museum. If you have not seen this building before, do take a while to admire it. This building has been recently completely restored and a few years back, maybe ten or twelve years back, it was very different from this. It would drop ceiling that contained this lower level. The building, the stained glass wasn't visible. The windows had all been blocked up. So I really want to commend the efforts of the Jewish Museum to bring a building back that tells a part of the story of Portland. And Julie's going to tell you a little bit more about the history of the building. Now our topic tonight is a neighborhood in transition, immigration and the India Street neighborhood. Architectural historian Julie Larry recently prepared a detailed survey of the historic resources in the neighborhood for the city of Portland. She gathered information from historic images, maps, census data, city directories and genealogical information from local and national collections to find out about the people and families that shared the India Street or shaped the India Street neighborhood in ways large and small. As many of you know, the city of Portland has been developing a master plan for the India Street neighborhood along with several policy recommendations regarding zoning, housing and a potential historic district. If you're interested in becoming involved in this conversation, there's good information on the city's website, www.PortlandMaine.gov, including the schedule of public meetings and workshops. You can also be added to the city's interested list and by contacting the Portland's planning department. Now if you'd like to share your contact information with the organizations that have co-sponsored this event, which are Maine Historical Society, Maine Jewish Museum and the India Street neighborhood organization and Greater Portland Landmarks, there's a list circulating around the room so we'd love to have your contact information so we can stay in touch with you. I also want to mention that we are being filmed tonight, the program's being filmed tonight by CTN Channel 5 and that will make it available to the broader public through public tele or public community TV, Channel 5. So if you have friends who missed it, they can watch it on community TV. Now our purpose tonight is to build awareness of the results of Julie's latest research on the India Street neighborhood and this neighborhood goes back to the very first settlements of Portland and Julie's research will focus on the successive waves of immigrants who settled in the neighborhood and the impact that they had on the community. These stories and our city's stories are reflected in the architecture of the buildings that remain. Now I'd like to thank our speaker Julie Larry for sharing her research findings. Julie is an architect who is a principal at TTL Architects and serves as a landmark board member. Her firm specializes in historic preservation including architectural services, historical research and historic resource surveys and Julie is a Maine native who is a graduate of Tulane University in architecture. So I'm very pleased to welcome Julie Larry for this presentation. I'm a little shorter than Hillary. Here we go. Thank you, Hillary. All right. I want to thank you all as well for coming out tonight on this snowy evening. It's wonderful to see so many people who are interested in the history of the neighborhood. As Hillary mentioned, we began this survey work in 2013 for the city of Portland and the stories that we uncovered as we were doing our research were so compelling that I've continued to do research in the past year, year and a half since we've completed that work. So there'll be, for those of you who may have seen some of our presentations that we did following the conclusion of our work in 2013, this will be a little bit different because there's some more information out there now. I was greatly assisted in the original research by Gabrielle Daniello who lives just up, oh actually she's recently moved, she doesn't live in the neighborhood anymore, but she also works at the Portland library. So if she couldn't be here tonight because she's working, but if you see her sometimes say hello and thank her for her very hard work on this project. From its roots, the India Street neighborhood as was the site of the first European settlement in the 17th century. Throughout then to the 20th century, the neighborhood has been the first home for many of Portland's immigrant families. It has been physically altered by war, industrial development, fire, and mid-20th century revitalization plans. But despite all of this, the neighborhood still reflects the story of its immigrant past. Chris, if I could have the next slide please. This slide is a composite from the Osher map library here in Portland and it shows Falmouth, which was what Portland was originally called, circa 1777, overlaid on a 2001 aerial map. You can see that there's been a great deal of fill that's occurred in the city. India Street is to the far right of the pink area, it's the bright red line illuminated here. You can see that most of Portland's development in the 18th century was centered in what we now know as the Old Port area. Next slide please, Chris. This is a bigger zoomed in area of that section of the city. This is from around the same time at 1775, although it was drawn a little bit later, so it could be a little bit off, you know, drawing from memory here. This was meant to depict the city at the time that it was destroyed by the British fleet that bombed the city for about nine hours in 1775 leading up to the American Revolution. India Street was then known as King Street, it remained known as being known as King Street until about 1837. You'll see on the far right side of the slide in the upper right, a green patch, that is eastern cemetery, that is probably the oldest resource in the neighborhood that still exists from this time period. Near the bottom of the slide on the right hand side towards the harbor is a blue dot that I've shown and that represents the location of Fort Loyal, which was the very earliest fortification along the harbor. To the right, just slipping off screen, is a red house and that is the Longfellow House, that is the birthplace of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and if we could go to the next slide please, Chris. This is an image of the Longfellow birthplace, which is now of course just marked with a boulder and a plaque. This is the corner of Hancock and Fort Street, next slide. The Longfellow's, like many of the early residents of the neighborhood are buried in eastern cemetery. The earliest headstone that still exists is from 1717, although it's believed that burials were taking place as early as the 1660s. These are the Longfellow's, two members of the Longfellow's headstones. Next slide please. This is another image of eastern cemetery. This is a painting that was done after the fire by George Frederick Morse. Morse was the treasurer of the Portland Company. He lived in a dwelling on Congress Street before moving over to the west side of town. He moved up, like many of the first people who first settled in the Indus Street neighborhood. As they could afford to, they moved out of the Indus Street neighborhood and he moved over to Spring Street. He was also a draftsman and he was one of the founders of a group called the Brushians. With John Calvin Stevens, they were plein air painters who traveled throughout the Portland area painting and later on to Spring, I believe there's going to be an exhibit at the University of New England, is that correct John? Of John Calvin Stevens paintings and many of them that he did while he was a member of that group. Next slide. This is a map from 1831. The area outlined in orange is the focus of the neighborhood as we know it today. In the upper right, again, you'll see the green to help orientate you. That is eastern cemetery. At this point, the harbor was originally following 4th Street, which was the very windy street that we see, but we're starting to see infill at the bottom of what is shown as King Street on here, which is now Endier Street. We start to see the development of 10th Street and the connection of the different wharves. Next slide, please. Part of what happened in the early part of the 19th century was development beyond King Street. In the earlier maps, there was very little development towards Monjoy Hill. One of the buildings that was constructed to the northeast of India Street was the Abyssinian Meeting House. Many of the laborers that worked on the Portland's waterfront were African-Americans. Slavery was abolished in May in about 1783. Throughout the early part of the 19th century, there were approximately 400 African-Americans living in the city of Portland. They were free black men and women and their children. About two-thirds of them lived in the India Street neighborhood. The other third ended up living off of St. John Street in the Valley Street neighborhood. And that was primarily because in a few decades there would be train stations in both neighborhoods. And many of them, in addition to many of those who worked along the waterfront, would work for the railroads. Being a mariner was a means to prosperity for a free African-American. It might potentially be the only livelihood available to them up until the time that they could start working for the railroad. Life at sea, however, was precarious. And in the late 19th century, a large portion of the mariners who were African-American in the city of Portland were all killed in one tragic accident at sea. This is an image from the 1836 Callum map of the Abyssinian meeting house. And of course, we know that that's currently under restoration today. You can see that it now looks remarkably similar to the historic depiction. Next slide, please, Chris. In the block occupied by the Abyssinian church, there were a large percentage of the African-Americans that lived in the India Street neighborhood, lived within the vicinity of the church. And we have a number of existing examples of those residences. This map, again, you can see the green to orientate you. That's Eastern Cemetery. The purple is the site of the Abyssinian church. To the left is the Abraham Niles house. The blue is the Reuben Ruby property. And the orangey red color is the John Parr's property. The next slide, please, Chris. This is the Abraham Niles house, immediately adjacent to the church. Abraham Niles and his wife. Abraham was from, I believe it was from, no, no, I'll take that back. I won't say that. He was a mariner. He came to Portland and was a mariner. Came about 1844. And he was one of the earliest founders of the Abyssinian church. Next slide, please. This is an excerpt. I'm sorry, it's kind of appearing off the slide here. This is an excerpt from the city of Portland Directory. Before the Civil War, African-Americans were listed separately in the city directories. So all of these names that you see here are African-American residents of the city of Portland. And we have, I have highlighted Abraham Niles, who was a mariner. At the time, this is 1844, he was living on Hancock Street because he was constructing his house on Newbury at the time. And as you look up and down this list, you'll see that there are many other names who lived on Hancock, a few on Newbury, a few over on Washington Street. Next slide, please, Chris. This is an excerpt from a US census record. And I apologize because this isn't showing the full page. This is Abraham, this is a page that Abraham Niles appears on. And the third column, the third skinny column, actually identifies the race of the individuals that were listed in the census. So I've highlighted there's M from Elado and B for Black. The horizontal line is his neighbor, John Pahrs. John came from Maryland. His wife was from Pennsylvania. Many of the other neighbors who are free blacks in the neighborhood came from Virginia, Georgia, Cuba, Rhode Island, as well as some other New England states. Next slide, please. This is one of John and Mary Pahrs buildings that they owned on Federal Street. They lived at 2 Federal Street while they were raising their children. And when John passed away, Mary moved into this house at 16 Federal Street where she lived with her son Braxton. Both John and Braxton were mariners, like many of the others in the neighborhood. Braxton married a woman named Amelia. After his marriage, he got out of the mariner business because that was a dangerous job. And he became a porter at the post office and then later became a postal clerk. Amelia continued to live in this house until 1913. The existing house is the image on the right-hand side. And although it doesn't look particularly historic, it's been vinyl-sided. It has replacement windows. When you compare it with the historic image, you can see that it was a fairly modest house. Many of the homes of the African-Americans, and indeed many of the subsequent immigrant families that lived in the neighborhood, these were not high-style homes, primarily. These were their starter homes when they were young and when they were starting off. These were mainly the first homes that they could afford to buy. So this neighborhood is not like the West End. It's a very different beast. But yet it's equally important to the history of the city of Portland. Next slide, please, Chris. This is the site of the Reuben Ruby House. This is a house that I'd love to get into and see if there's anything left of the original Reuben Ruby House. This dwelling has been very significantly altered since the eight, when it was constructed in the 1850s. It was altered about 1912 as the population in the neighborhood expanded. More and more single-family homes were replaced by multi-family dwellings, and this is a good example of that. The existing dwelling is in the bottom right. You can see the historic image. They've infilled the side porch in this case to make it an enclosed three-bay dwelling. It had a store on the first floor. Reuben Ruby was an African-American who unlike many of his neighbors was from Maine. He was from Gray, Maine. He moved to the city for a better economic outlook for himself. He became a hack driver and was very successful. He left the city in the 1840s and went to California to mine for gold and was very successful. He came home with $600 and built his house here in this neighborhood on a large parcel of land that he then later sold off to some of his neighbors, including the Niles family. And he also sold the land to the Abyssinian church. He was extremely active as many of his neighbors were in anti-slavery movements. He was the founder of the Maine Anti-Slavery and very active in the Underground Railroad Network. Many of the African-Americans in this neighborhood because they either worked as mariners, worked on the docks or worked as hack drivers, were well placed to move people. They could take them from the water as they came in on ships. They could move them throughout town and then get them onto a train to Canada. Next slide, please. And that train to Canada very significantly changed the landscape of the neighborhood. In the 1840s, a young lawyer named John Pore would radically change the India Street neighborhood. In 1845, there was the groundbreaking for the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad, later known as the Grand Trunk Railroad. And I tend to use Grand Trunk, but it will be the same thing as I'm talking today. And you'll see on this map from 1856, again, you can orientate yourself with Eastern Cemetery in green. On the bottom right, across the water, we have the infill for the new tracks for the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad. And the far right, we have the construction around the same time period for the Portland Company, originally known as the Portland Iron Manufacturing Company. The Portland Company was built to construct the steam locomotives for the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad. And then to allow for the convenience of connecting this new railroad terminus to the existing terminus at Union Station, we see the construction of Congress on Commercial Street, rather, excuse me, across the heads of the wharfs to the left of the image. Next slide, please. This is the Portland Company complex. Next slide. This is the Grand Trunk Railroad Station that was built in 1855. This was at the corner of, if you were standing on Commercial Street, looking towards the Portland Company. That would be about the approximate location of this. This was torn down in 1902. Next slide. This is a map of the Grand Trunk Railroad site. We have the Portland Company at the far right. The far left, you see the circular building. That was the engine house for the railroad. And then we see just below that the station building that we saw in the earlier image. Interestingly, in some of the earlier maps, just below the Eastern Cemetery was this swampy area that's depicted on all the early maps. And I know that originally when they started doing some of the renovation work on the Abyssinian Church, they discovered that there was a fair amount of water on their site, because it used to be a swamp. And that water was actually channeled into the engine house for the Grand Trunk Railroad. And on this map, there is a thin gray line that connects the engine house to that water supply just up the hill. Next slide. The same, about the same year that the 1855 station was torn down, we have construction of the existing office building for the Grand Trunk Railroad. This was originally a two-story building, and a third floor was added in 1913. Next slide. And a new station was constructed in 1903, and sadly torn down in 1966. Unfortunately, it's just slipping off the slide again, but in this image to the far right, you can see the two-story configuration of the Grand Trunk Railroad office building. Next slide. Many of the laborers who worked to construct all of these projects, building the railroad, filling in for Commercial Street, construction of the grain warbs along the waterfront was actually done by a new wave of immigrants, my people, the Irish. Some of them became a little bit more successful. They were joined by other more skilled laborers from Scotland. This is the William Mundy House, sadly, no longer with us. This was Newbury Street near the corner of Mount Fort Street. He was born in Scotland in 1834, came to the United States about the time of the fire in 1866, and he became the agent of the Grand Trunk elevator, the grain elevators. He first lived on Mount Fort Street and then built this house circa 1875. After his death, his family constructed another building, which is still with us. Next slide, please, Chris. And that's this building across from the Abyssinian Church. This is the William Mundy Block at 70 Newbury Street. It's a multifamily dwelling. The small little house to the left in the historic image was part of the Mundy property, probably an outbuilding of some kind associated with his home. And the next slide, please. Like the William Mundy Block, which was built to accommodate a large number of people, we also had rooming houses that grew up around the train station. This is the building, Benkei Building, at the corner of India and commercial. Next slide. We also see in the mid-19th century multifamily dwellings like this. This was the Joseph Barber House built around 1845-ish. He was a Revolutionary War soldier and didn't live long past the construction of this house. He died in 1849 and is buried in Eastern Cemetery. The dwelling was occupied in the 1870s to about 1905 by the Milaw family. They were an Irish immigrant family. And William had a store at 225 Congress Street. Next slide, please. The next major alteration to the neighborhood was the Great Fire of 1866. It started approximately down towards where Becky's diner is and Rufus Steering Lumberyard and went all the way across the Oldport area, destroyed most of the India Street neighborhood, and continued up nearly to the observatory on Munjoy Hill before it was stopped. Next slide, please. This is a double image of this is from Middle Street looking up India Street towards this building site right after the fire. The next image, please. This is a map depicting the neighborhood and how much of it was consumed by the fire. The orange is the area that was consumed. And so you can tell that there was just a very small area of the neighborhood that was not touched by the fire, primarily where the Abyssinian Church is, down towards the waterfront. So really the only things that are left because of the industrial development that happened in the neighborhood are really those homes right immediately around the Abyssinian Church. Next slide. The Great Fire of 1866 also destroyed a new church that was being built in the neighborhood, primarily for the use of the Irish Catholics in the city, on the east end of the city. The chapel was under construction at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in 1866 when the fire occurred. The fire destroyed the elementary school, the chapel, a girls' academy, and the convent that were present there. It was immediately rebuilt. And the bishop's house at the bottom of the right of the screen and the cathedral were both substantially completed in 1869. Interestingly, in 1875, the new bishop for the Roman Catholic Diocese in the city of Portland was James Healy. James Healy was the son of an Irish immigrant and a former slave. So he was uniquely able to cater to many of the residents of the neighborhood. So he was the first black bishop in the United States. Next slide, please. Later, built on the site of the church, we have the Guild Hall, which was built in 1923, and the Cathedral School, which is 1927. Next slide. One of the more prominent Irishmen in the neighborhood was James McGlinche. James McGlinche was a brewer. He came to Ireland with his brother, Patrick, and they opened a brewery across from the Portland Company. I think that's an ideal location. His men are getting off work, have a little drink. However, shortly after they opened their brewery, Maine enacted its very early form of prohibition. And the brothers were able to sell legally by transporting alcohol outside the state. And allegedly, they did a fairly good job of selling within the state as well. It's purported that James made a great deal of money, bootlegging, money that he invested into real estate throughout the city, immediately after the fire in particular. And when he died, he was one of the most wealthiest Irishmen in the state of Maine. This is the James McGlinche block, excuse me, at 39 to 47 Middle Street. Next image, please. And this is a sketch of the brewery up on 4th Street across from the Portland Company. Next slide. Another prominent Irish-American family that lived in the neighborhood with the Duddy family. Richard Duddy came from Ireland. And he worked along the wharfs as an agent and then eventually became a city counselor. His son, Edward, was also a city counselor. Edward opened a funeral home in the India Street neighborhood with his son, Richard. And eventually that funeral home, Richard would move it to State Street and was the funeral home on the same side as Mercy Hospital for many years. They built this home a few years after the fire on Congress Street. Various members of the Duddy family lived upstairs. In particular, the daughter of Edward Duddy, Margaret Duddy, McPhee, lived here with her sister-in-law, Margaret McPhee, which is very confusing. And they operated the Duddy and McPhee dry goods store. Lana Ron, we'll move to the next slide. Margaret McPhee's family would build this building next door to the Duddy and McPhee house and store. They moved their dry goods store into the shop front here. And then Margaret, who had lived with the Duddy family for many, Margaret McPhee, who'd lived with the Margaret Duddy McPhee family for many years, moved into one of the apartments. Later on, the store was occupied by the Catier brothers. George and his brother operated two stores in the city. This was George's store. They were born in Syria. George came to the United States about 1905. And the Catier family owned this building as late as the 1950s. The next slide, please. Another Irishman, Edward Murphy. He actually came via Canada. He was Canadian, but his family were Irish. He came in about 1870. He became a naturalized citizen a few years later. He lived in an adjacent building. But his family, just as he was dying, built this large double block here in 1923 and 1924. He died the subsequent year in 1925. The small building to the right of this is their original property. And that building was designed by John Calvin Stevens. Next slide, please. James Cunningham. The Cunningham family is extremely interesting to me, because of my architectural background. They were masons. They were masons in Ireland. James's father was a mason in Ireland. And when the family came to this country, they continued that. James's nephew, rather, became an architect and worked with Francis Fassett here in the city, and then decided that he'd become a builder and designer as well. And the family did a number of projects around town where John was the architect. And then the family were the masons that constructed the project. James was responsible for the construction of Union Station in the Lafayette Hotel. This is his home on Congress Street. James was widowed very early, and he lived with his sister. And at her death, she gave the building to the church next door, the Episcopal Church, which currently owns the property. Next slide, please. This is St. Paul's Anglican Church. This was rebuilt immediately following the fire as well. It was the first non-Puritan church in the city of Portland. It was founded in 1763. It was a built of native stone, and the rectory is wood-framed. It's a remarkable grouping of buildings that are both local landmarks in the city's historic preservation program. And its original intent was to serve the seagoing community, which is a good reason for its location in the India Street neighborhood. Next slide, please. Also, after the fire, during the fire of 1866, the city lost four of its schools, and they immediately had a municipal rebuilding program. The North School was built in 1867, immediately following the fire. It was built to hold about 1,300 students, and almost immediately after it was constructed, it was overcrowded. The neighborhood was expanding exponentially. And also at the same time, we had a number of people who had been living in the India Street neighborhood, who suddenly began living on Monjoy Hill, which the school also served. Many of the Irish-American daughters in the neighborhood became either nurses or teachers, and a number of them would work at the school or at City Hospital, which of course is out on the Westbrook town line. Because of its unique location within an immigrant community, the school had a number of innovative programs, many of which were the first in the state. They had a school banking program, which if you're like me, you used to put the dollar in the envelope and send it in, because that was meant to teach children about American money and the process of saving. And they had a manual training program, and they also offered the first adult education classes in the state. Excuse me, this building was altered in the 1920s by John Calvin Stevens. You can tell by looking at the historic image, there was a mansard roof on the top that was removed, and the upper floor was expanded to accommodate some of those manual training programs that the school offered. Next slide, please. Also, a necessity in a neighborhood that has just been burned down is a fire station, also built in 1867. This was the latter one on India Street. It was designed by George Harding. Harding was very active in the city, immediately following the fire. He designed many of the buildings on Middle Street. For those of you who are from here, and have been here for a long time, FAO Bailey is at the corner of, what would that be? Pearl? Pearl in middle? That whole row, right there, most of all, those are George Hardings. There were a number of architects who were from the Boston, New York, and Canadian provinces who came to Portland immediately after the fire and only practiced in this area for a very small amount of time, some as little as a year. A few of them stayed, but most of them went back to the cities where they were practicing from. So Portland had the benefit of some extremely talented architects immediately following the fire. And the next slide, please. This is the Bowdoin College dispensary. I never knew Bowdoin College ever had a medical school until I started doing the research for this. One of the things at the turn of the century that was extremely bothersome to some in the community was that there was a certain perceived notion of a lack of cleanliness and hygienic sensibilities amongst the newcomers. And a particular concern for small children was unpasteurized milk. There were not as great of sanitary rules in the dairy industry as we have today. And so one of the things that was developed was a milk dispensary in the neighborhood. And that was actually at 55 India Street for the first year until this building was completed and then they moved into this building with the Bowdoin Medical School, which offered a free clinic or a very reduced rate to the immigrant community that lived in the neighborhood. Neither of those lasted very long here because in the 1920s was when a number of the rules came into effect that affected the dairy industry and the pasteurization of milk, which substantially meant that we didn't have a need for the milk dispensary that was here. And also the medical school of Bowdoin College was closed down and Bowdoin gave the property to the city of Portland with a covenant that it always be used for some sort of healthcare or medical purpose, which it does continue to this day. And as you can tell, it has been altered with an additional floor. The original part of the building is again a John Calvin Stevens building. Next slide. Then we have one of the earliest synagogues in the state on Newbury Street, no longer a synagogue of course. Starting in about the 1880s, there were a number of Jewish immigrants that began arriving in the Port of Portland, mainly fleeing Austria-Hungary and the Russian-controlled sections of Poland. And they settled primarily in this neighborhood. Again, another community that would eventually move in large numbers out of the neighborhood to the suburban areas as soon as they were prosperous. Many of the men who came worked initially as peddlers or junk dealers until they could earn enough money and then they opened their own retail shops, clothing stores, furniture stores, grocery stores. Unlike many of the African-American immigrants and some of the Italian immigrants that would come later, this community was extremely focused on being self-employed. And so that's reflected in a number of the businesses that's sprang up in the community, in the Indian Street neighborhood. Next slide. And then we have the beautiful building that we're standing in today, founded in part because of a disagreement in religious practices, is my understanding. I'm sure there was someone here tonight who could tell me much more about that. This building was built by Louis Sarota, who was a member of the congregation and a construction, a contractor here in the city. He came to the city of Portland about 1910 from Russian control Poland and he worked at first as a cabinet maker and carpenter until he founded his own construction company and worked on a number of buildings in the city. Like many immigrants who came before him, he came initially by himself. I believe he had some other family here initially when he arrived and his wife and children joined him a little bit later on, about four years after he arrived. Most of the information that talks about when immigrants came to the country can be found in the US Census Records. They're a wonderful database of information, particularly when it regards to the immigration between 1900 and 1930. The next slide, please. This is another building that was built immediately after the fire and I apologize, the historic image is not very good. This is the Joseph Durand block. Joseph Durand had a house and store, much like the Duddy store that we saw earlier on on Congress Street. This is at the corner of Federal and Hampshire Street and he immediately rebuilt after the fire but he didn't live in the neighborhood. He moved on up and out too and took his store with him and rebuilt this multi-family dwelling. It was later owned by Abraham Schwartz who made some changes to the building, adding an additional floor. He was a shoemaker. This was a six-unit building and most of the tenants that lived in this building throughout the census, according to the Census Records, came from France, Lithuania, Russia, and of course Italy. Because just down the street, of course we have the Italian church. Next slide, please. This is the Abrams block on Middle Street. Abrams was a clothier and he owned the brick building at this address and he lived upstairs but it appears from different apartments. He moved around in his own building. He also ran a dining room within this building and a restaurant. Isaac Abrams' son, Hiram, owned a number of theaters within the city of Portland and then he moved to Hollywood and he was one of the founders of Paramount Pictures. Isaac was from the Russian area of Poland as well. Next slide. This is mainly to show the little building at the corner of Congress Street and Franklin which is just slipping off the slide. I apologize for that. It's the Elias Kaplan office building. Dr. Kaplan came to the United States in 1891 and he was purportedly the second Jewish physician in the city of Portland. He originally had an office at 316 which is the larger Queen Anne type building to the left of the little building and then built the small building for his practice. He served in World War I in the Medical Corps and he and his wife were both extremely active in the state of Maine and in local Jewish affairs. The next slide, please. This is the Bristol apartments. This was a 20 unit building. It's a fantastic building. Just a few houses over from Dr. Kaplan's office. This was also the home of a number of doctors in the neighborhood and I'm not gonna say all their names but a couple of the doctors also had their practices in their apartment which now we would never do that, right, seems a little strange. Next slide, please. This is this very small building on India Street kind of a cross from Amados and Coffee by Design. There are these two little buildings smushed in between houses. The one on the left was a grocery store owned by and I apologize if I screw up this name, Peter Tabak-Chanek, does that sound good? He lived in the dwelling that faces onto Newbury Street and then he built this little store behind his house and then his neighbor on the other side on India Street, Mrs. Israelson, built the other little shopfront to butt up against it. This was an extremely dense neighborhood and as they could afford to open their own stores, they kind of crammed them into wherever they could find a little bit of room and I think these are two of the most sweetest little buildings in the neighborhood. Next slide, please. This is the Abraham Levy building on Middle Street. Again, another Russian-Polish immigrant. He was a former house painter and as soon as he could afford to, he opened a furniture store in this building that he owned and built at the corner of Middle and Franklin Streets. The clothing store was called the Reliable Furniture and Clothing Store and there was also a public parking garage. Now this is fairly early, this was 1920s. So this was when cars were first becoming very popular and he opened a public parking garage right here on the edge of the commercial center of the city. Next slide, thank you. And then the beloved building, Levinsky's. Jacob Levinsky's father, Philip, would actually go to Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth and acquire surplus clothes from the military and sell them out of his barn, which is the historic image on the lower left on Oxford Street, this is house an outbuilding and a barn in the center. When Jacob became a teenager, he began to do the same thing and worked with his father and eventually opened a store in his apartment which was in the building on the upper left, which of course expanded through a series of corridors. It was so much fun to shop in into the building on the corner and that's an image of Jacob Levinsky in the upper right. Next slide. The next wave of immigrants in the neighborhood were the Italians. They began arriving in large numbers around 1890, 1895. First they worshiped with the Irish Catholics at the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception but then were given permission to open their own church in 1911 and it was in a converted barn which I think is kind of appropriate considering Jesus was born in a state manger. That is actually, I can't find a very good photo of the converted barn but in the historic image these are the tax images because a church wouldn't have been taxed so there's no picture of the church. It's the barn to the right of this dwelling. The arch led through the alley to a building in the back which was St. Peter's Hall. Then in 1929 they built the Basilica-like church that we know today on Federal Street and of course this is still the heart of the Italian-American community in the city of Portland. Next slide please, Chris. In the 1920s, the very early 1920s, if you were an Italian immigrant you could even go to an Italian bank. This was a building that was at the corner of Middle and India Street and it has the Banco di Napoli which I think sounds so romantic considering it was in a very industrialized section of the city. It was very quickly no longer a bank that didn't survive very long and by 1928 the shop fronts were mainly grocery stores and barbers and the entire lot was vacant by 1932 so the building really didn't survive the Great Depression and I believe this is a vacant lot to this day. This is the George Jewett building. This is another survivor of the fire of 1866. It was rented around the turn of the century and for much of the early part of the century by the Rossi family. The Rossis came from Italy to the city in 1904 in 1907 and again another period where the family didn't come at the same time. James Rossi worked for the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad. Next slide please. This is, we'll talk a little bit about the Amados. Giovanni Amado had his first bakery and the family home on this corner where Coffee by Design is now. There was a fire in 1921, 1922, sometime in there and that building burned down and they moved across the street which will be the next slide which we won't look at quite yet. And then he immediately rebuilt what is a wood-framed building that has since been covered in brick which is a little unusual but a great means of fireproofing I guess. And then rented that building out for a number of years until the family then opened a bakery again in the back of the building. Chris, next slide please. This was the building they moved to across the street. They lived upstairs, had the family store in bakery downstairs until the bakery moved across the street again. And of course the two buildings that we now know that are owned by the Riali family who purchased Amados from Giovanni Amado family. The Riali family of course also lived on Newbury Street and operated a small cafe next to their house. Their house was at 106 Newbury. They had a cafe at 108 Newbury and of course that later became the Village Cafe. Which is where Bayhouse is now. The next slide please, Chris. At the foot of India Street where we have Mukuchis, it's a very interesting building and I suppose many people would say, oh, what is that, that's ugly. But it's actually a very cool building. This is the building as it was until it suffered a fire which has apparently happened under very interesting circumstances. Apparently the couple that were running the hotel were living on the thin line of the law, shall we say. Serving alcohol when they weren't supposed to and apparently then the hotel burned because of arson and it was never proved that he had anything to do with it. So I apologize if anyone's related to the Vakianos. But Joseph and Rosa Vakiano owned the hotel which had been a hotel for a number of years and had very many different names. Following the fire, well just a few weeks before the fire, the building was vacant except for the meat market which was on the store front and then there was the arson and the top floors burned. So they removed the top floors and this rather beautiful street front piece that was wood framed. And then it remained a market which eventually was purchased in 1965 by Leo Mukuchi. The next slide. And then this of course we know is, well I call it the right aid building but it is the federal supermarket plaza technically in historic terms. The federal supermarket was originally located on federal street and when Franklin Arterio was put in it cut off the ability of traffic to get to federal street. So the owner Michael Talianto petitioned the city for a zoning request to rezone this block and to build the new supermarket here. The two buildings at the top are a couple of the buildings that face Congress street that were torn down. About 21 families I believe were displaced for the construction of the plaza. The next slide. And we draw to a close here. About four-fifths of Canada's grain exports are coming through the port of Portland at the turn of the century. Canada with changes in breaking of ice which we see happening on our rivers now was able to keep its ports open in the winter time and they significantly reduced the amount of cargo that was coming through the city of Portland. The Grand Trunk Railroad started losing money, passenger rail service dropped off after World War II. It's a story we hear time and time again in every community. And the Great Depression of course just exacerbated matters and not even World War II could buoy what was happening in the neighborhood. Turn of the century, immediately following after World War II there were a number of alterations that happened in the city. We have destruction of the vine and daring neighborhood which is in the area where the police station was. This was a section of the city that was very much like the India Street neighborhood. We also had Manjoy South which was torn down. That was an extension of the African American community that existed along the northeastern end of Newbury Street. And then of course eventually some of the industrial properties. The Thomas Laughlin block which is now the brewery which I used to call as a child the banging factory because it was really loud when we go to dinner at Village Cafe. Grand Trunk was torn down in 1966. By that point it had already stopped serving passenger rail service and there was a discount grocery store that had been operating in the former waiting room. But for more than 300 years people had been discussing the decline and the revitalization of the India Street neighborhood and that continues to this day. But it has always been a transitional area between the largely, what grew up to be a largely residential area on Manjoy Hill and the commercial center which developed immediately after the fire in the Oldport and along Commercial Street. The neighborhood has struggled with a lack of a clearly defined identity and it defies easy categorization. It's not like many of the other neighborhoods that we have in the city. It has slipped in and out of decline. It has embraced changed and occasionally rejected it but it has provided opportunities for a great many first generation and second generation Americans who have come to this city. It's also provided an opportunity for grand visions as we're seeing now in some of the new developments along the waterfront. It's always been a neighborhood in transition both in terms of the people who live there and the types of properties that are within the neighborhood. But it remains a reflection of the many people from the very many countries that have called the India Street neighborhood home. Thank you very much. I guess I could take questions. No one told me if I needed to or not. Does anybody have any? Yes, ma'am. Yes ma'am. Why was King Street changed to be called India Street? I don't know for certain but using my historian's hat I would imagine that it probably had something to do with the marine life because we have the India Street, I mean we have the East Indian Company. We have a lot of trade going on and I imagine that it probably had something to do with that and I would imagine also a rejection of anything having to do with Great Britain at the time. This was also a period of rising nationalism with Jeffersonian ideals and I would imagine having anything called King Street was easily rejected. Yes. I have two questions. First of all, can you tell us from what perspective this picture is taken? Yes, this is taken from the grain elevator that used to be on the waterfront adjacent to the Grand Tranquil Road. And I also noticed that you commented on the Abyssinian church having a swamp. I had recently attended a meeting about the Abyssinian church at the Irish Heritage Center and they said it's actually a spring and you can go there and get water from it. Yes, now it is, but originally it was depicted as a swamp but I think it's been compressed. Please. Yes. Two questions. As an immigrant area, I wonder if there are stories of racial and detention and racial and ethnic harmony and also I know there was, I believe, one large employer with a brewery is now a forage. Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, it started off, there was actually a sugar refinery on that site very early on, Eagle sugar refinery and then that was replaced by a foundry that then got purchased by Thomas Laughlin which then became whatever it was that owned the bagging factory until it became a brewery. They had that stretched all the way from Four Street back up towards the Abyssinian. There were a number of brick warehouse type buildings that are very similar to what we see at the Portland Company that faced onto Four Street that were part of the Thomas Laughlin Company. Initially many of Thomas Laughlin's buildings were actually wood frame buildings and then I presume were either torn down because it was a fire hazard and replaced with these brick buildings like what we see, which happened also at the Portland Company, a very similar history and work. There were a number of other smaller foundries in the neighborhood. I recently did some work for an owner of a house up on Congress Street on top of the hill and the original builder of that house also owned a foundry on Four Street across from Portland Company. So there was a lot of that kind of work happening right there. What was the other question? Oh yes, yeah, of course. We're human beings. I'm sure there was some tension with some people who didn't like the fact that there were free blacks in the city and then when the Irish came, nobody liked the Irish. And there were always tensions there. In fact, there's a story that I don't know if it's true or not, that's in a number of the texts that the Cathedral of the Macular Conception faces back cove because the Catholics were not perceived to be welcome in the neighborhood so they turned away from what was essentially the main street in the business area and faced the church in the other direction. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But yes, throughout the history of the city, I mean the Ku Klux Klan was here in the city. The Irish in some respects didn't get along with some of the successive waves that came in. It's, we hear about these things on the news now, people don't change. And actually when you read some of the early newspaper accounts, I think they're a lot more inflammatory than some of the things you can read now on or see on TV. They used flower language, but they were equally inflammatory. And in the end, yes ma'am. Who designed that beautiful Grand Trunk Railroad building and where exactly was it? The Grand Trunk Railroad building? The Grand Trunk Railroad building, the second one, was at the corner of Four and India where the pump station is now. That little concrete building across from the new parking garage. And I'm not gonna recall the architect off the top of my head, I apologize. Anyone else? All right. Oh, yes ma'am. Are you going to publish this? Well, it will be on public access TV. A number of the images and there's a much larger history of the neighborhood that we wrote for the city of Portland that is available on the city's website. It's much more in depth than what I could present to you tonight. It's about a 14 page document. And then there was a survey conducted that documented the history of each of the existing buildings within the neighborhood. So that's available. But I don't, that's about as far as I've gotten. Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Well, thank you all for coming out on a snowy evening. I put the snowy picture up so that we could know that it snows forever. Thank you.