It has been perplexing to read about the developing plans by the Portland Museum of Art to raze the historic landmark building located at 142 Free St. Particularly as this is an institution entrusted with our cultural heritage. This 1830 building not only once served as the city’s Chamber of Commerce, but also was restored by celebrated Portland architect John Calvin Stevens.
Has Portland not lost enough of its architectural history? The justifications laid out in the Sept. 9 article were laughable (“Portland Museum of Art seeks city approval to tear down former Children’s Museum”). Creative director Graeme Kennedy asserts that “our communities have asked” for this casual destruction and extravagant expansion. Precisely what communities and what spokespeople? Was there a poll? The museum even hired a “historic building consultant” to shill for the denigration and delisting of the landmark, recalling Big Tobacco’s paid biologists, who assured us smoking was safe.
Museum director Mark Bessire justifies demolishing the landmark because it was restored during the Jim Crow era – wait until he hears how the Catholic Church built St. Peter’s Basilica. As the moral superiors of our ancestors, let’s burn every vestige of the past! By what tortured logic should any grand architecture be destroyed as punishment for the moral turpitude of its creators, let alone a building with literally no discernible or even plausible link to the historic crime offered as justification? Utter madness.
Finally, the argument that recreationally bulldozing a sturdy, elegant and quite functional piece of Portland history and constructing a vast new edifice in its place would be “sustainable” might be hilarious if it weren’t so crushingly depressing.
David Levi
Bath
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