Maine Memory Network

Eastern Maine Insane Hospital, Bangor, 1896

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1896 Location: Bangor Media: Architectural drawing

House sketch, Cushing Island, ca. 1883

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: circa 1883 Location: Portland Media: Architectural drawing

Cowan residence, Brooksville, 2013

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 2013 Location: Brooksville Clients: Sophie Sides Cowan; Douglas Cowan Architect: Elliott and Elliott Architecture

Cox-Keller residence, Seal Harbor, 2003-2007

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 2003–2007 Location: Mount Desert Clients: T. A. Cox; Arthur Keller Architect: Elliott Elliott Norelius Architecture

The Barns of the St. John River Valley: Maine's Crowning Jewels

Maine's St. John River Valley boasts a unique architectural landscape. A number of historical factors led to the proliferation of a local architectural style, the Madawaska twin barn, as well as a number of building techniques rarely seen elsewhere. Today, these are in danger of being lost to time.

Good Will-Hinckley: Building a Landscape

The landscape at the Good Will-Hinckley campus in Fairfield was designed to help educate and influence the orphans and other needy children at the school and home.

Architecture & Landscape database - Maine Architectural Renderings

"Maine Architectural Renderings By Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr. Bramhall by Charles A. AlexanderMaine Historical Society With the emergence of…"

Architecture & Landscape database - Database Overview

"… and designed environment, this database includes architecture and landscape design commissions from ca. 1850 through the present."

A tour of unique features at St. Andre's Catholic Church
by Biddeford Cultural & Heritage Center

A tour of unique features at St. Andre's Catholic Church

Biddeford City Hall: an in-depth tour of this iconic building
by Biddeford Cultural & Heritage Center Voices of Biddeford project

Visual tour and unique insights of Biddeford’s historical landmark

Building Community/Community Buildings

Grade Level: 6-8 Content Area: Social Studies
Where do people gather? What defines a community? What buildings allow people to congregate to celebrate, learn, debate, vote, and take part in all manner of community activities? Students will evaluate images and primary documents from throughout Maine’s history, and look at some of Maine’s earliest gathering spaces and organizations, and how many communities established themselves around certain types of buildings. Students will make connections between the community buildings of the past and the ways we express identity and create communities today.

Longfellow Studies: "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport"

Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12 Content Area: English Language Arts, Social Studies
Longfellow's poem "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport" opens up the issue of the earliest history of the Jews in America, and the significant roles they played as businessmen and later benefactors to the greater community. The history of the building itself is notable in terms of early American architecture, its having been designed, apparently gratis, by the most noted architect of the day. Furthermore, the poem traces the history of Newport as kind of a microcosm of New England commercial cities before the industrialization boom. For almost any age student the poem could be used to open up interest in local cemeteries, which are almost always a wealth of curiousities and history. Longfellow and his friends enjoyed exploring cemeteries, and today our little local cemeteries can be used to teach little local histories and parts of the big picture as well. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited the Jewish cemetery in Newport, RI on July 9, 1852. His popular poem about the site, published two years later, was certainly a sympathetic portrayal of the place and its people. In addition to Victorian romantic musings about the "Hebrews in their graves," Longfellow includes in this poem references to the historic persecution of the Jews, as well as very specific references to their religious practices. Since the cemetery and the nearby synagogue were restored and protected with an infusion of funding just a couple years after Longfellow's visit, and later a congregation again assembled, his gloomy predictions about the place proved false (never mind the conclusion of the poem, "And the dead nations never rise again!"). Nevertheless, it is a fascinating poem, and an interesting window into the history of the nation's oldest extant synagogue.