As mother and son sharing a lifelong appreciation for the benefits of historic preservation, we were dismayed to see the recent editorial supporting the Portland Museum of Art’s desire to demolish the 200-year-old former Children’s Museum building at 142 Free St. to make way for a major expansion (“Our View: Portland Museum of Art plan deserves to proceed,” Dec. 14).
The editorial position and the dismissal of Portland’s Historic Preservation ordinance as an “inflexible rule” exhibit a lack of understanding of the decades of historic preservation efforts that have contributed to making Portland the exceptional place that it is today. As state historian and the longtime director of Maine’s Historic Preservation Commission Earle Shettleworth noted recently: “The success of these efforts is clearly apparent in the critical contribution of historic preservation to making Portland one of the most desirable small cities in America.”
The City of Portland’s Historic Preservation Ordinance, enacted in 1990, established clear rules for the creation of historic districts and the classification of structures within those districts, prompting Shettleworth to note: “Those areas protected by the ordinance have experienced major private and public investment that has enhanced the entire city.”
When the Congress Street Historic District was established in 2009, all the buildings within it were classified under the terms of the ordinance as landmark, contributing, or non-contributing. After a rigorous, professional evaluation, 142 Free St. was deemed a contributing structure within the district, meeting four of the six criteria spelled out in the ordinance for such a designation. (Only one is necessary.)
As a contributing structure the building cannot be demolished. The Portland Museum of Art knew this when it purchased it in 2019. The museum knew it when pursuing a design competition for the expansion of its campus, which includes some of the city’s most significant historic buildings.
It is also important to note that the PMA design solicitation package disingenuously depicted an empty lot at 142 Free St., not the familiar building that bears the imprint of noted Portland architect John Calvin Stevens and his son John Howard Stevens, who oversaw extensive renovations in 1926. The PMA proceeded with its plans and made its final selection under the misguided belief that the classification of the Free St. building could be changed simply because it stood in their way. It can’t be.
So we now find ourselves amid a carefully orchestrated attempt to get the Portland City Council to change the building’s status. The first step was the recent consideration of the PMA request by the city’s Historic Preservation Board, which voted to recommend that 142 Free St. not be re-classified. The board heard overwhelming opposition to the reclassification request from the public. The issue is now before the Planning Board, which is expected to hold a public hearing early next year and will make its own recommendation to the Portland City Council, which has the final say.
The sad reality of all this is that it did not have to be this way. The PMA could have recognized and accepted the status of 142 Free St. and encouraged the competing design firms to incorporate the building into their concepts, which one did. Instead, we now find ourselves in a difficult and contentious public battle which threatens not only a historically significant building but also the integrity of a historic preservation ordinance that has served our city well for over 30 years. The ordinance was designed so that we all play by the same rules and that no private property owner, developer, or public institution – regardless of its power and influence – gets to choose which buildings remain and which can be destroyed. If the city council wants to change the classification of 142 Free St. it will have to evaluate the request using the same criteria that deemed the building a contributing structure in the first place. That won’t work.
The alternative is to get creative. This does not have to be either-or. Surely the PMA can develop its ambitious expansion without destroying a historic building and undoing decades of hard work to preserve what gives Portland its special character.
That is an approach we could all get behind.
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