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History on tour: September 18th
by Doris Sherrow, September
1999
On September 18th (1999), there will be a historical
walking tour of downtown Portland. We will start at 2 PM in front of the
Town Hall. Between 1852 and 1894, Town Hall was a private home. At that
time, the block from Freestone Avenue to Marlborough Street held three
large, elegant homes set on tree-shaded lots, each belonging to a member
of the influential Hall family.
Main Street is old. It was probably created by native
Americans for their own extensive trade and travel networks. But
Commerce Street is also over 300 years old. Today, it may be a sleepy
little dead-end street, but Portland's first two settlers, James
Stanclift and John Gill, chose to live on it, plus it led to the town
quarry, Stanclift's quarry, and the graveyard, established in 1713.
Unfortunately, it would be impossible to plaque these
historically significant sites: they hang in thin air out over the deep,
flood-filled quarry hole beyond the end of the street. In 1870, a few
leading quarry owners convinced the town to sell them the old cemetery -
the cemetery! - a because its soil covered good, marketable
deposits of brownstone. Consequently, the sloping hill from the current
end of Commerce Street down to the Connecticut River was minded away to
produce profits for the quarry owners (handsomely represented by some of
Portland's finer architecture) and the fantastic quarry holes, which may
soon become a local tourist attraction.
In 1995, a walking tour of downtown
Portland was mentioning in promotional literature for that year's
Downtown Festival. I called around to try to get information. I had
worked on the Greater Middletown Preservation Trust's Portland book, but
we had given short schrift to downtown, because the architecture had
been so altered ("transmogrified" was the word we employed;
I'm not proud of it, but there it is). After several calls, I learned
there would be no such walking tour, because no none knew much history
about downtown Portland. So, during the next year, I researched the
properties from 141 Main Street, which was a gable-to-street house
demolished by Standard Knapp about 20 years ago, to 318 Main, the Post
Office.
What I found was fascinating. The center had been
home to some very influential people in the 19th century,
less Puritan than the late 17th, early 18th
century settlers had been. Their stories seem to have been largely
forgotten, although their fortunes were large, and they held
considerable power in town. Their houses, most of which no longer stand,
had been large and beautiful. The downtown area had a much more
"residential" feeling to it, although small shops have always
been spliced into the street-scape, near their owners' houses. I suspect
that their stories wer forgotten largely because their neighborhood was
destroyed. Sometimes we talk about the landscape we have lost, as we
look at old photographs of gingerbread trimmed houses, perhaps. But we
have lost several: there have actually been several waves of
development, each of which has plowed under the settlement before it.
The Wangunk occupancy was the earliest (unless they were preceded by
other tribes). Their land was taken over and reshaped by the incoming
English of the colonial period. (Back then, "we" were the
"English;" that threw me for a loop when I first read it in an
old petition, asking that the "English" be allowed to settle
some Wangunk area).
The earliest developments would have been rather
stark colonial houses. I know of one partial remnant, one possible
ancient ell, and one possible survivor from that period in the downtown
area. That settlement (by the "English") was wiped out without
a thought by forward-thinking 19th century Americans. As
theirs is the architecture that we admire in the downtown, solid
buildings with graceful trim, fancy woodwork, or stonework, that would
cost a fortune to duplicate today. Federal, Greek Revival, Italianate,
Queen Anne - downtown Portland has a few of all these styles.
So join us at 2 PM in front of the Town Hall on
Saturday, September 18th, for the walking tour. I can't show
you any downtown Wangunk sites, but I can point out the three very old
house survivals, and tell you a bit about the lives of people who built
the buildings you drive or walk past every day.
When you know some of the old stories, it becomes a
much richer landscape!
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