Bayside's Cedar Street

by Julie Larry and Evan Brisentine

Bayside is full of some of the earliest homes in Portland, as they escaped the Great Fire of 1866. While other Portland neighborhoods lost most of their Federal and Greek Revival architecture during the Great Fire, Bayside suffered less damage with most of western Bayside left untouched by the flames. Some of the earliest homes on Portland’s peninsula are still standing in Bayside.

During the mid 20th century’s urban renewal period, Portland’s newly created Slum Clearance and Redevelopment Authority highlighted Bayside as a target neighborhood. In 1958 the Authority demolished 92 dwellings and 27 small businesses in what we now call East Bayside. Another 54 dwelling units were razed for the Bayside Park urban renewal project, an area that now includes Fox Field and Kennedy Park public housing. The razing of Franklin Street began in 1967 when a 100 structures were demolished and an unknown number of families relocated or were displaced.

The City’s urban renewal projects had a great effect on immigrant communities in Bayside including Italian-American, Armenian-American, and Jewish families that had settled in Portland from Eastern Europe. However many Armenian families remained in Bayside after Urban Renewal, but their numbers are dwindling and their homes are disappearing.

The first Armenian immigrants arrived in Maine in 1896 to escape growing persecution in Turkey. Starting in the early part of the 20th century, the Bayside neighborhood was home to an substantial Armenian community. More than 250 Armenian families settled in the neighborhood. The Armenians in Portland were a close-knit community. As their numbers grew, they established a school, stores, restaurants, a social club, and a bank.

Cedar Street, just downhill from Portland High School and uphill from the Oxford Street shelter, is home to a number of dwellings once owned by Portland’s Armenian community. Armenian families also lived on Lancaster, Alder, Oxford, and Smith Streets.

44 Cedar Street built c1855. Surrounded by parking lots, this wonderfully detailed brick building was recently for sale.

44 Cedar Street was owned for many years by members of the Tavanian [Tevanian] family (Book 1496, Page17 in 1936). Bagdasar & Gerigos Tavanian were listed as the owners in 1924 tax assessor documentation, having purchased the dwelling in 1921.

Bagdasar Tavanian (1889-1939) came to the United States in in 1906 and settled in Portland, working as a baker’s helper in a hotel at 638 Congress Street according to the 1910 US Census.

Gerigos Tavanian arrived in the United States from Turkey in 1915 according to census records. In April 24, 1915 several hundred Armenian intellectuals were rounded up, arrested and later executed at the start of a period of systematic mass murder of around one million ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Many Armenians came to Portland 1915-1917 to escape the violence. A year before he purchased 44 Cedar Street, US Census records show Gerigos, age 24, was working as a cook and boarding with another Armenian family, the Amerigians, on Lancaster Street.

In the 1930s, 44 Cedar was owned by Louis Tevanian (36) a cook. He lived in the dwelling with his wife Rakel and their children. Rakel and Louis owned and operated a restaurant in Portland for 21 years. She also was a cashier for several years at the Pride's Corner Drive-In Movie Theater in Westbrook, a business opened by her sons John and Avadis in 1953. Also living at 44 Cedar Street in the 1930s was Robert Tevanian, a baker, and his wife Shaka and children. Until recently the dwelling was still owned by members of Shaka Tevanian’s family.

44 Cedar Street in 1924. City of Portland

44 Cedar Street was originally owned by Sarah E. Loring. She purchased the lot occupied by 44 Cedar Street in 1853. Sarah was the wife of Charles Loring, and the couple lived on the street, taking out a mortgage on their new brick house in 1855. Sarah owned the dwelling until her death in 1885. Their son George B. Loring (c1835-1896) was a founding partner of Loring, Short, & Harmon, a stationery and business supply company.

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19 Cedar Street was built c1859 for Mary Jane and Peter Lane. It was demolished in August 2021.

19 Cedar Street’s earliest history shows that it was built for Mary Jane and Peter Lane in 1859. It was later owned by Sarah S. Hall, the widow of Stephen Hall, from 1867 until her death. It was purchased in the 1920s by Mesak (or Misak) Papazian 'Martin'.

19 Cedar Street in 1924. City of Portland.

Mr. Papazian (1874-1930) came to the United States in 1900 and established an Armenian grocery store. His son John Papazian Martin (1917-2010) attended nearby Portland High School and upon returning from World War II, started the 20th Century Supermarkets. John Martin built his stores into a chain of supermarkets, later known as Martin's grocery stores, that he sold to Hannaford Brothers in the early 1970's. He then began his second career in the restaurant business creating John Martin's Restaurants. John owned 19 Cedar Street following his mother's death from 1934-1944. John's daughter Andrea Martin became an Emmy and Tony Award winning actress.

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15 Cedar Street was likely built prior to the Great Fire of 1866, as it had elements of Greek Revival details before the second floor was added sometime between 1924 and 1954.

15 Cedar Street in 1924. City of Portland.

15 Cedar Street’s early history is unknown, but it was probably built in the mid 19th century as it originally was a one story Greek Revival dwelling. To date in our research, Charles P. Rolfe is the first known owner of this home purchasing the dwelling c1871. He gave the property to his daughter Mary S. Deane in 1891. David W. Deane and Mary S. Deane (formerly Rolfe) married in 1861, and lived on Congress Street before owning the home on Cedar Street. David W. Deane (1838-1924) was born in Massachusetts but lived most of his life in Portland. His first career was a railroad car maker, but around 1870 became a furniture dealer. In 1879, Deane Bros. furniture store was located at 204 Franklin Street, until he added on a partner and became Deane Bros & Sandborn furniture shop and moved to 335 Congress Street. Upon Mary’s death in 1924, the property was left to David W. Deane who died later that same year.

In 1930, the property was owned by Arshag Kochian and his wife Bazza (often spelled Bazzar). Arshag and Bazza were Armenian immigrants who came to the U.S. in 1913 and 1920, respectively. Arshag worked as a laborer at a nearby pottery, possibly Winslow Pottery. In 1930s the dwelling’s second unit was occupied by the Litrocrapes family. The Litrocrapes family included Charles, his wife Helen, son George, daughter Evelyn, and Charles’ brother Lausarus. Charles (1897-1976) came to the United States from Greece in 1911 and became a citizen in 1918. His first job was a bootblack at a shoe parlor.

The Boys and Girls Club of Southern Maine bought the properties located at 15 and 19 Cedar Street behind their Cumberland Avenue clubhouse. The Boys and Girls Club of Southern Maine has yet to announce what they would like to do with the properties, but the historic homes were demolished in early August of 2021.

These Cedar Street houses not only represent Portland’s mid-19th century architectural history as well as the history of Portland’s immigrant population. You can learn more about the history of the neighborhood on our East Bayside, West Bayside, and Portland’s Chinese Community in 1920 Walking Tours

Saying Goodbye to the UMaine School of Law Building

The Home of the University of Maine Law School is being demolished after 50 years of looming over Oakdale.

By Archer Thomas

Since 1972, the hulking concrete mass of the University of Maine School of Law Building has quite literally loomed over the otherwise low-rise and residential Oakdale neighborhood. There is nothing quite like it in Portland, or Maine for that matter. In a city whose historic character is well reflected in the restrained traditionalism of most of its architecture, the Law Building is audaciously modern and unapologetically controversial.

UMaine Law’s home building is being demolished after 50 years of looming over Oakdale.

Admittedly, the structure is hard to love. For one, the Law Building sticks out like a sore thumb, an eight-story behemoth in the last state where the tallest building is a church. Being one of Maine’s very few Brutalist or Brutalism-adjacent structures, its raw concrete siding matches the drab gray of an overcast sky. The turret-like form of its main tower, complete with quasi-medieval crenellation, emphasizes the lack of correspondence between the building and its surroundings. Adding these aesthetic issues on top of its function as a law school and connotations surrounding the world of litigation, one can begin to understand the weariness that Portlanders have generally expressed towards the structure.

The building was designed by Wadsworth, Boston, Dimick, Mercer, and Weatherill, a local architecture firm.

In 2017, Architectural Digest—one of the most popular architecture magazines in the country—published a list featuring “The 7 Ugliest University Buildings in America.” Lo and behold, the UMaine Law Building made the cut. Though the building escaped some of the harsher critiques levelled at the other unlucky finalists—including “prisonlike” (the Health Sciences Center at Louisiana State University) and “like a Disney villain’s lair” (Crosley Tower at the University of Cincinnati)—the listing caught the attention of local news outlets, who playfully reveled in the negative attention the structure was receiving. The Portland Press Herald noted that the building’s recognition as a “real stinker” was “surprising no one who works there,” including Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Dmitry Bam, for whom “there are days when he thinks it would be nice to have an office in a traditional brick building overlooking the water.”

Well, it appears that Bam and the rest of the Law Building’s critics are in luck—the University of Maine System announced this past spring that the concrete giant would be coming down. Temporarily, the School of Law will be relocating to an office building at 300 Fore Street in the Old Port. Ostensibly, the most pressing reason behind the decision is the continued deterioration of the structure. According to Dean Leigh Saufley, “What is wrong with the building is a four-hour conversation.”

The deterioration of concrete mid-century buildings (Brutalist or otherwise) is a rising concern in this country—look no further than the tragic collapse of a condo building in Surfside, Florida which claimed around 100 lives this summer. While concrete by itself is enormously resilient (the dome of the Pantheon in Rome, for instance, has lasted almost two millennia), the vast majority of concrete buildings erected in the past century are reinforced, meaning that rebar (steel bars) is embedded within the concrete. While this practice dramatically increases the tensile strength of concrete, both it and steel possess properties which threaten the integrity of the composite material as they weather. Concrete, although appearing extremely solid, can actually allow the infiltration of moisture after years of exposure. While moisture is not necessarily a threat to concrete on its own, steel can rust, gradually breaking down the rebar and leading to flaking and fracturing in the surrounding concrete, a process called spalling.

Moreover, once it begins, the degradation of reinforced concrete is extremely difficult and costly to stop. In order to preserve Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, for instance, most of the concrete had to be reapplied one side at a time so as to replace all the rusted rebar, requiring the structure to be held up by temporary supports. In effect, the restoration necessitated the piecemeal replacement of the almost the entire structure, a feat which cost a whopping $25 million for a single church.

A 1967 photograph of Unity Temple in Oak Park, Ill. from the Library of Congress

Though the challenges facing the Law Building could likely be addressed for less than that sum, the difficulties associated with concrete preservation will probably lead to the sacrifice of hundreds of aesthetically and historically significant modernist buildings in coming decades. Furthermore, the decision to demolish rather than rehabilitate aging Brutalist buildings is relatively common because until recently it was easy to forget that these concrete structures were once loved and seen as beautiful. According to an associate dean at the School of Law, the building’s architect was so pleased with his design that (allegedly) “he used to set up a folding chair out front and just stare at it some days.” Nevertheless, the Press Herald’s recent coverage of the building’s woes fails to include a single contemporary voice who values the structure as a piece of Portland’s modernist heritage.

The recognition that modernist buildings are valuable and warrant the same kind of attention and protection directed at other historic structures is growing. Over the past few decades, several international organizations have arisen to promote the preservation of the world’s modernist heritage. Activists have adeptly utilized the internet and social media to introduce Brutalism and other modernist subgenres to a new generation and rally the public around preservation. In 2015, the SOS Brutalism project was launched, including a global, publicly available database of Brutalist buildings. Maine only possesses one listing on SOS Brutalism—the Law Building—and soon it will have none.

Efforts to preserve modernist concrete buildings represent an ironic turning point in the preservation movement. In many cases, the structures currently under threat are the same ones which arose from the wholescale decimation of earlier historic sites in the mid-20th century, a process which kicked off the preservation movement in the first place. Scollay Square, a lively European-style city plaza located in downtown Boston, was bulldozed in the 1960s to make way for the Government Center complex including the new Boston City Hall. The decision was almost immediately upheld as an archetypical example of urban renewal’s harmful excesses. The Boston City Hall increasingly came to be seen as a regrettable mistake. In the 2000s, however, when the city considered selling the property to developers, preservation activists and members of the community stood in support of the concrete giant. Redevelopment gradually faded from the city’s agenda, and City Hall was saved.

Contrast Boston’s Scollay Square in the late 19th century (left) with this 1968 image of Government Center.

Similarly, the Law Building replaced a row of quaint Victorian single-family homes along Deering Avenue. If they had survived to the present day, it is very possible that they would be protected under a historic preservation ordinance. Nevertheless, this is not what occurred, and we find ourselves in a similar circumstance to the 1960s when the Law Building was first being conceived. In the rush to move on from our past, we are at risk of depriving our descendants of their architectural heritage. If any lesson should be taken from the urbanism of the mid-20th century, it is that tastes change. One person’s eyesore is another’s gem. If the Law Building is truly beyond saving, as it might well be, it is imperative that we as a public at least pay it the homage it deserves. Who knows? Maybe one day we will remember it like we remember Portland’s Union Station—a venerable victim of regrettably shortsighted times.

Archer Thomas is a recent graduate of Bowdoin College, having majored in history and minored in government and legal Studies. Growing up in Buxton, Archer has loved Portland and appreciated Greater Portland Landmarks’ work from a young age. Architectural history and urbanism have been passions of his for a long time, with his undergraduate thesis having focused on the historical and theoretical relationship between Brutalist and postmodern architecture. He is also a 2021 Thomas J. Watson Fellow and will embark on a year of learning about urban rail infrastructure around the world as soon as State Department travel advisories allow. Afterwards, he hopes to enroll in a graduate program in historical preservation, architectural history, or architecture.

Visualizing the impact of urban renewal in Bayside

By Kate Burch

One of the topics we are asked about most frequently at Landmarks is the widespread demolitions in the Bayside neighborhood during Portland’s urban renewal efforts. Like cities across the country, urban renewal was in full swing in the 1950s-1970s in Portland, with the city eager to clear neighborhoods designated as slums and to improve automobile infrastructure by building high-traffic arterial streets and parking lots.

Bayside was particularly affected by urban renewal policies. The neighborhood around Franklin Street was a dense, mixed-use neighborhood of residences, religious buildings, and stores with Jewish and Italian immigrant communities. This map from Portland’s 1943 report on Bayside shows how the city graded various neighborhoods, from best (A rating) to worst (E rating means the neighborhood is a slum.) These assessments were used to justify the razing of entire neighborhoods and move residents to new housing, fragmenting these communities. Families were compensated for relocation and offered additional relocation assistance.

Driving on Franklin Street today, it can be difficult to visualize what the area looked like before urban renewal demolition. This map is an overlay of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company’s 1909 maps of the area to demonstrate what the streets looked like before the bulldozers came through.

View the full map as a PDF by clicking here.

To provide a better picture of what these neighborhoods were like, this next map reconstructs the buildings in from the 1909 Sanborn maps, color-coded according to use and overlaid on a contemporary map. You can see the dense residential blocks anchored by stores and religious buildings (both an Italian Catholic Church and a synagogue) in a walkable, mixed-use neighborhood.

View the full map as a PDF by clicking here.

You can explore the neighborhood buildings that were spared by the bulldozers in our West Bayside Virtual Walking Tour.

To learn more about urban renewal in Bayside, check out these resources:

Vine-Deer-Chatham Project, 1959 report

Does Bayside Need Rebuilding?, 1944 report

Model Cities, Housing, and Renewal Policy in Portland, Maine

1909 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Portland, Maine

Historic Preservation in the Urban Renewal Era (Greater Portland Landmarks blog)

Historic Preservation Today

Founded in 1964, Landmarks is now more than 55 years old. Portland’s Historic Preservation Ordinance, passed in 1990, is now thirty years old. While not every community in greater Portland has a preservation ordinance, most recognize the importance of preservation and the role older neighborhoods and buildings play in strengthening their community.

“The virtues of saving and reusing older
places are now much more broadly recognized across
America. Nor are we voices in the wilderness anymore:
time and again, preservation has proven an invaluable
tool in spurring economic growth, meeting critical
social needs, and bringing communities together. ”

— The National Trust for Historic Preservation

Although the current pandemic may slow growth, as happened in the 2007 economic recession, it is likely that greater Portland will continue to grow. It is an attractive choice for remote workers that can now choose to live anywhere. Below are several challenges that Landmarks is working to address in our education and advocacy work.

Modernism is now historic.

While there is a growing appreciation for mid-century buildings and landscapes, they are sometimes criticized as being soulless or outright ugly. Take Brutalism, an architectural style that emerged in the 1950s featuring poured concrete, bold geometric shapes, and stark landscape settings. The name, Brutalism, does not exactly evoke positive feelings, but for some preservationists, the uniqueness of the style and an appreciation of how good examples of the style contribute to a sense of place and reflect its period in history, mean it is beloved by some. (Confession - I am one of those people. Many of my recent travels involve dragging reluctant friends and family to see Brutalist buildings before they are demolished or altered. I may be one of the few people in Portland that admits to liking the pump station at Fore and India Street).

Modernist places may not be loved or may be coming to the end of their life cycle, like the Maine Medical Center Employee Parking Garage on Congress Street. They may also have been built on the site of a beloved historic building that was demolished to make way for the new. This provides a dilemma. Should we preserve places that we once fought against in the early days of the preservation movement? History sometimes represents events, actions, and outcomes we would like to forget. We should always be asking, “Are we preserving the full history of a place, or only the parts that form our preferred image of history?” For preservation, this is a constant challenge.

Preserving a broad historic narrative.

Current preservation approaches, including the National Register of Historic Places, locally designated districts and landmarks, and historic site interpretation, have not fully represented the stories of all Americans. Our preservation practice needs to be more inclusive in the identification, understanding, and protection of historic places. Changes in technology, social media and new research offer the opportunity to rethink how we focus our work and how we share these stories with our community.

In 2017 the National Trust for Historic Preservation outlined a new vision for the future of historic preservation and set out three key principles:

• Honor the full diversity of the ever-evolving American story.

• Nurture more equitable, healthy, resilient, vibrant, sustainable communities.

• Collaborate with new and existing partners.

Landmarks has been evaluating its current programs and advocacy work as part of its strategic planning process and these principles play an important role in our assessment and recommendation for the organization’s future.

Expand preservation trades training.

Historic Preservation is more labor intensive than new building construction. Jobs like these can't be outsourced or automated, each project is unique. The time it can take to get on many preservation contractors' schedules illustrates the demand for these professionals (We know firsthand, we have a lot of work to do on our historic building too!). The demand for people with traditional building skills is growing, as the artisans who practiced these trades are aging out. It will take a cooperative effort between preservation organizations, educational institutions, and tradespeople to help develop programs that teach skills leading to well-paying jobs and encourage young people to seek out a future in historic preservation. The Maine School of Masonry is one such program already in place in Maine.

Sustainability and Adaptation

We know we say it often, the greenest building is the one already built. Historic Preservation is sustainable and will play a role in helping our communities reach sustainability goals. In 2011 we published, The Energy Efficient Old House: A Workbook for Homeowners, to help guide homeowners in ways to reduce their historic home’s energy consumption. However, reducing our carbon footprint is only part of the solution. We should be thinking about the long term future of our communities and demand better buildings that aren’t just designed for the next 40-50 years, but will be around for the next 100-200 years - and hopefully future landmarks!

The stringent application of the National Parks Services Standards for Rehabilitation, the de facto preservation policy governing preservation locally as well as at the state and national level, may be challenging when adapting a building threatened by rising tides or extreme storm events. Recurrent flooding and the impacts of more frequent and intense storms can have a serious impact on historic resources, and we must be prepared to help owners make their buildings more resilient to flooding and high winds. That may mean altering a building in ways discouraged by the standards. Beyond that, we need to rethink what it means to “save” places and sites that are important to our cultural heritage, because saving them physically may not be feasible.

This spring the staff at Landmarks are busy even though we are apart. We are planning our Un-Gala, investigating ways to give safe walking tours, and deciding how we can reopen the Observatory to visitors. On the advocacy side, we are ‘attending’ virtual planning board and preservation board meetings and planning how to host our first remote internships! We miss being together in person and we miss seeing you at our events, but we are working hard each day to ensure that greater Portland’s history and sense of place is protected and celebrated.

Julie Larry