The Portland, Maine, 1924 Tax Records were created as part of a city-wide tax reevaluation. The 2 3/4" x 4" original black and white photographs provide extraordinary documentation of the appearance and condition of every taxable property in the city at that time. The accompanying tax forms provide equally valuable information, including the use of the property, the original building materials and finishes and the property's assessed value as of 1924. On the back of each form, a pencil sketch illustrates the size and shape of the building footprint on the property.
The collection consists of 131 books containing approximately 30,000 pages, each page recording a single property (properties with more than one building will generally have a page for each building). The records were kept in a cabinet in the Portland tax assessor's office in City Hall until 2009 and were scanned by a team of volunteers to provide greater public access while allowing the original documents to go into proper archival storage.
Thank you to the generous supporters who made this project possible.
Read more about the records, the project, and find efficient ways to search this collection.
Learn more about the 1924 tax records by viewing the online exhibit, A Snapshot of Portland, 1924: The Taxman Cometh.
The City of Portland Assessor's office also has digitized the records from the 1950s, 1980s and 1990s. Very few have photographs but you can these access records on the Portland Tax Assessor Property Search page.
with additional support from:
- Scott Benson
- East Brown Cow Management
- J. B. Brown & Sons
- Eleanor Kohn Fund
- Maine Historic Preservation Commission
- Maine Historical Society
- Portland Public Library
- Port Property Management
- SMRT Architects
- Scott Teas and Pamela Hawkes
- Crandall Toothaker
