It’s Preservation Action’s virtual Preservation Advocacy Week, and we’re joining the #InMyDistrict campaign to show the impact of Historic Preservation Tax Credits in Maine!

The Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives program encourages private sector investment in the rehabilitation and re-use of historic buildings. It is one of the nation’s most successful and cost-effective community revitalization programs. Each year approximately 1,200 projects are approved. Since 1976, the program has leveraged over $73 billion in private investment to preserve 40,380 historic properties nationwide. This program preserves our architectural heritage while stimulating economic growth by bringing new life to under-utilized properties, and is often used to help create affordable housing and bring commercial investment to neighborhoods.

Here are some recent projects in our district (ME01) that used the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Credit to create affordable housing and commercial space.

The Motherhouse (Portland)

The St. Joseph’s Convent, also known as the Motherhouse, is a significant architectural landmark in Deering Center. Completed in 1909, the Classical Revival building was designed by the Boston architectural firm of Chickering and O’Connell, one of New England’s preeminent ecclesiastic design firms. The building was the principal residence for the Sisters of Mercy until it closed in 2005 due to the dwindling numbers of Sisters residing in the building. The Motherhouse is a key feature of the neighborhood and for almost 100 years served as an important educational, residential, and spiritual center for the Sisters of Mercy in the local community.

Developers Collaborative and Sea Coast Management leveraged federal and state tax credits to complete a complex adaptive reuse project that converted the space into 66 affordable and 22 market rate housing units for seniors. The project preserved much of the character and history of the property. Its grand stairways, stained glass windows, three-story chapel with altar, and grand organ have been restored and preserved. Interior window trim, wainscoting, and ceiling details were removed and reinstalled after the application of insulation and utilities.
Stevens Square at Baxter Woods: The Motherhouse

Hyacinth Place (Westbrook)

The Saint Hyacinth’s School (1893) and Convent (1921) were built on Walker and Brown Streets in Westbrook to serve the French-Canadian immigrants that settled in Westbrook to work in the area’s mills. The School was designed by Coburn and Son of Lewiston and the convent was designed by Timothy O’Connell of Boston. The school closed in 1974. The buildings were then home to a Center of Religious Education, a House of Prayer, St. Hyacinth Historical Society, and the Westbrook Food Pantry before being vacated. The buildings were long neglected by deferred maintenance.

In 2013, the buildings were listed in the National Register of Historic Places for their architectural and educational significance and association with Westbrook’s Franco-American community. Financed in part by Federal and State Historic Tax Credits, the vacant and neglected buildings were restored and the interiors rehabilitated for use as 37 units of affordable housing.

Avesta Housing: Hyacinth Place

Bessey Commons (Scarborough)

The Elwood G. Bessey School (1927) in Scarborough was converted in 2010 to 54 affordable apartments for seniors, financed in part by Federal Historic Tax Credits. The project was completed by a developer with a connection to the property: Cynthia Milliken Taylor of Housing Initiatives attended the Bessey School when it was an elementary school, and her father attended Bessey when it was Scarborough High School.

Bessey Commons

Southgate (Scarborough)

The historic Southgate farmhouse (1805) in Scarborough is one of the town's oldest structures and has had a variety of uses over two centuries, including a "gentleman’s farm" and country retreat, a restaurant and inn, and rental housing. The house was originally owned by Dr. Robert Southgate, who moved to Scarborough from Massachusetts in 1771 and builder of the first ‘turnpike’ in Maine across Scarborough Marsh, today’s US Route 1. In 2014, Avesta Housing purchased the property, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018 which allowed Avesta to use tax credits as one of the financing tools. The redevelopment project created 38 units of affordable housing within a half-mile of a grocery store, bank, elementary school, bus stop, and drugstore.

Avesta Housing: Southgate

96 Federal Street (Portland)

The brick apartment building at 96 Federal Street (1867) housed generations of immigrant families in the 19th and 20th centuries until it fell into disrepair and was condemned and abandoned. In 2015, developer Dan Black worked with Maine Preservation and Greater Portland Landmarks to expand the recently-approved India Street Historic District to include the building. State and Federal Historic Tax Credits enabled the developer to save this building and complete extensive stabilization and rehabilitation necessary to create a 6-unit rental building.

Maine Preservation Honor Award: 96 Federal Street

Engine Company No. 9 (17 Arbor St, Portland)

Engine Company Number Nine Firehouse (1902, also known as the Arbor Street Firehouse) was built shortly after Deering was annexed to Portland. This station housed Engine Number 9 and Ladder Number 4 until 1972, when they moved to a new station on Forest Avenue. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010. The former home of Portland’s Parks Department, it was sold by the City and rehabilitated into new commercial offices, financed in part by Historic Tax Credits, in 2012.

Grand Trunk Office Building (Portland)

This three-story Neoclassical style brick building, built in 1903, is the only building which survives from the extensive Grand Trunk Railroad complex in Portland. It was vacant and derelict when Gorham Savings Bank and development partners purchased the building. Using Historic Tax Credits, the building’s interior and exterior were restored, and it has become the bank’s busy, new downtown Portland office.

share the impact of htcs in our district with our representatives!

Ask our members of Congress to support the Historic Tax Credit as a part of future stimulus legislation by copying this template and sending it to our representatives:

Contact Senator Angus King

Contact Senator Susan Collins

Contact Representative Chellie Pingree

As you consider what programs will help to stimulate the economy in the next round of recovery legislation, I urge you to support the Historic Tax Credit program and the provisions of the HTC-GO Act (H.R. 2825/S. 2615). Please support additional proposed enhancements including a temporary increase in the value of the HTC from 20% to 30% as well. The HTC is a proven economic development tool in Maine and across the nation. These changes would increase rehabilitation activities, create jobs, and support communities across Maine.

In Maine a recent study highlighted that since 2008, the Federal Historic Tax Credit in conjunction with the Maine Historic Tax Credit (HTC), has generated $525 million in construction investment through more than 100 rehabilitation projects, spanning 3.6 million square feet of commercial and residential space, and have created or preserved 1,911 housing units (of which nearly 1,300 were affordable.)

In Greater Portland historic tax credit projects are helping to provide much needed affordable housing, especially for seniors, and facilitating the reuse of existing buildings in our town and city centers. For example, the complex adaptive reuse of the Motherhouse (St. Joseph's Convent, in Portland), financed in part by historic tax credits, created 66 units of affordable housing and 22 market-rate units, all for seniors. The Saint Hyacinth's school in Westbrook, formerly vacant, was rehabilitated to create 37 units of affordable housing. And in Scarborough, the redevelopment of the historic Southgate Farmhouse created 38 units of affordable housing within a half-mile of a grocery store, bank, elementary school, bus stop, and drugstore. Please support this program that works for Maine and puts Maine people to work.

By Kate Burch

John Calvin Stevens (1855-1940) is one of our hometown heroes – he designed more than 1,000 buildings in Maine, many of them in greater Portland, and his grandson John Calvin Stevens II was one of the founders of Greater Portland Landmarks. JCS, as we call him, could fill several blog posts, but for our August Architect of the Month, we’re focusing on his iconic summer cottages in the Shingle style.

Stevens was born in Boston in 1855 and moved to Portland, Maine with his family at the age of 2. He wanted to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but couldn’t afford it, so he apprenticed in the Portland office of architect Francis Fassett instead. Stevens was a fast learner and a skilled draftsman, and in seven years rose from office boy to partner in the firm, which was renamed Fassett and Stevens. In 1884, he established his own office in Portland, with Fassett’s blessing.

The John Calvin Stevens House (1884) on Bowdoin Street

Shingle Style was coming to prominence around 1880, when JCS was working in Fassett’s short-lived Boston office. The firm worked in the same office building as William Randolph Emerson, who by then was working in his signature Shingle Style, and his work was very influential to JCS. In 1884, upon establishing his own office in Portland, Stevens built his own home at 52 Bowdoin Street in the Shingle Style. One of Portland’s earliest examples of the style, JCS often used it for promotion. The house received international notice after its construction.

Shingle-style architecture developed in the late 19th century as a departure from the lavish decoration of other Victorian styles. Inspired by the simplicity of materials and form of early New England architecture, these houses used natural colors and unembellished shingles on both walls and roof to form a uniform surface. The graying of the cedar shingles as they aged lent a sense of history and connection to New England’s past, and some architects even pre-aged the shakes before installation to achieve a weathered look. Shingle style houses borrow elements from other popular styles of the time, such as the wide porches of Queen Anne homes, the Palladian windows of the Colonial Revival, and the rusticated masonry of the Romanesque Revival.

Kragsyde (1883-1885, demolished 1929), designed by the Boston firm Peabody & Stearns

Though inspired by the rusticity of the local vernacular, these early Shingle Style buildings were far from simple. Shingle Style was popularized by large-scale commissions for seaside summer homes for the wealthy in places like Manchester-By-The-Sea, Massachusetts and Newport, Rhode Island. The style never really spread too far from the New England coast – it’s uncommon in vernacular housing. In Maine, it became the style of choice for grand summer homes and resorts that in the late 19th century were increasingly cropping up on Maine’s coast and islands.

C.A. Brown Cottage (1886-87) in Delano Park, Cape Elizabeth, designed by JCS.

Stevens’ Shingle style coastal homes were recognized not just for their style but for their relationship with the landscape. Large piazzas and picture windows, with interior space planned to take advantage of the scenery, made these buildings feel harmonious with their surroundings. It’s perhaps not surprising that Stevens was so good at designing buildings that felt connected to their landscape – he was also an accomplished landscape painter and a member of the Portland-based art group that called themselves the “Brushuns”, who went on weekend sketching expeditions along the Maine coast (Winslow Homer and Charles F. Kimball were also members). Of his design work, his grandson John Calvin Stevens II wrote “The ‘seeing of the site’ is to him ceremonial. Every contour, tree, rock, stream, spring is recorded on the drawing board in his brain. Orientation, vistas and outlooks, prevalent windows and neighborhood developments are studied.”

(If you’re interested in learning more about JCS’s paintings, our book The Paintings of John Calvin Stevens is currently on sale in our shop!)

“Delano Park, Cape Elizabeth” (1904) by JCS

JCS designed dozens of seaside summer homes, from grand estates to more modest cottages, all along the coast of Maine and on the islands. Here are just a few examples of Stevens’ summery projects:

The Homers on Prouts Neck

Prouts Neck in Scarborough was one of many Maine coastal areas that became a fashionable summer resort in the late 19th century. Painter Winslow Homer vacationed there with his brothers Arthur and Charles. All three brothers commissioned JCS to design homes for them on Prouts Neck, the most famous of which is the Winslow Homer Studio (1884), now owned by the Portland Museum of Art. Stevens, in partnership with Francis Fassett, also designed “The Ark”, a summer home for Charles S. Homer Jr. (1882). Later, the three brothers also had JCS design rental cottages for them. For Winslow Homer’s rental cottage, Stevens billed him asking for payment “Any production of Winslow Homer”, a request which delighted Homer, who sent Stevens the painting The Artist’s Studio in an Afternoon Fog.

“The Artist’s Studio in Afternoon Fog” (1894), Winslow Homer

Delano Park

In 1885, a group of Portland businessmen created the Delano Park Association to establish a seaside summer colony in Cape Elizabeth. Four of the 25 original lot owners had JCS design Shingle style cottages for them around the turn of the 20th century. By then, Stevens had twenty years of experience working in the style and his projects in Delano Park ranged from the unique yet modest “Birds’ Nest” cottage designed for musician Harvey S. Murray, to the Frederick E. Gignoux Cottage, a large home with broad porches to take advantage of the elevated site with ocean views on three sides.

Cushing Island

The Ottawa House Hotel opened on Cushing Island in 1862 and the island became a summer resort destination. In 1883, the Cushing family, who owned the island, hired landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead to create a plan for the island’s development, and JCS was commissioned to design the summer cottages. JCS also designed a grand home for the owner of the Ottawa House which was never built.

Stevens made about 12 Shingle style cottages intended to be compatible with the island’s natural beauty, as well as a recently-restored gazebo. The largest cottage was the Charles M. Hays Cottage, designed for the then-president of the Grand Trunk Railroad, which Stevens created in partnership with his son John Howard Stevens. (Hays died 2 years after the house was built, as a passenger on the Titanic).

Cushing Island gazebo restored by Taggart Construction

#InMyDistrict - Historic Tax Credits in Greater Portland