Maine Memory Network

Frank Dexter, Springvale, ca. 1900

Contributed by: Sanford-Springvale Historical Society Date: circa 1900 Location: Sanford Media: Print from Glass Negative

A shopper's guide map of Portland, 1965

Contributed by: Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education Date: 1965 Location: Portland; South Portland; Cape Elizabeth Media: Lithograph

26 Temple Street, Portland, 1924

Owner in 1924: Globe Laundry Use: Laundry

29-31 Cotton Street, Portland, 1924

Owner in 1924: Globe Laundry Use: Stable

CODE RED: Climate, Justice & Natural History Collections

Explore topics around climate change by reuniting collections from one of the nation's earliest natural history museums, the Portland Society of Natural History. The exhibition focuses on how museums collect, and the role of humans in creating changes in society, climate, and biodiversity.

400 years of New Mainers

Immigration is one of the most debated topics in Maine. Controversy aside, immigration is also America's oldest tradition, and along with religious tolerance, what our nation was built upon. Since the first people--the Wabanaki--permitted Europeans to settle in the land now known as Maine, we have been a state of immigrants.

Portland Press Herald Glass Negative Collection - Sports

"The Portland Press Herald Glass Plate Collection contains many examples of sports photography, from high school sports to photographs of famous…"

Portland Press Herald Glass Negative Collection - Portland Press Herald Glass Negative Collection

"… for Guy; and his father William flew across the globe, from the tip of South America to Alaska. While on international trips, Gannett would receive…"

History of Forest Gardens
by Gary Libby

This is a history of one of Portland's oldest local bars

Longfellow Studies: Celebrity's Picture - Using Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Portraits to Observe Historic Changes

Grade Level: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12 Content Area: Social Studies, Visual & Performing Arts
"In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" Englishman Sydney Smith's 1820 sneer irked Americans, especially writers such as Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Maine's John Neal, until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's resounding popularity successfully rebuffed the question. The Bowdoin educated Portland native became the America's first superstar poet, paradoxically loved especially in Britain, even memorialized at Westminster Abbey. He achieved international celebrity with about forty books or translations to his credit between 1830 and 1884, and, like superstars today, his public craved pictures of him. His publishers consequently commissioned Longfellow's portrait more often than his family, and he sat for dozens of original paintings, drawings, and photos during his lifetime, as well as sculptures. Engravers and lithographers printed replicas of the originals as book frontispiece, as illustrations for magazine or newspaper articles, and as post cards or "cabinet" cards handed out to admirers, often autographed. After the poet's death, illustrators continued commercial production of his image for new editions of his writings and coloring books or games such as "Authors," and sculptors commemorated him with busts in Longfellow Schools or full-length figures in town squares. On the simple basis of quantity, the number of reproductions of the Maine native's image arguably marks him as the country's best-known nineteenth century writer. TEACHERS can use this presentation to discuss these themes in art, history, English, or humanities classes, or to lead into the following LESSON PLANS. The plans aim for any 9-12 high school studio art class, but they can also be used in any humanities course, such as literature or history. They can be adapted readily for grades 3-8 as well by modifying instructional language, evaluation rubrics, and targeted Maine Learning Results and by selecting materials for appropriate age level.