The former H.H. Hay building is located at the intersection of Congress and Free streets in Portland, Maine. Geographer Loretta Lees documented gentrification in this district as a case study of “small city gentrification” [PDF]. Lees wrote in 2003,
Recessions in the late 1980s and early 1990s slowed but did not entirely stop the pace of redevelopment downtown. By the mid-1990s investment was spreading up the slope from the Old Port and along Congress Street under the auspices of the city’s Arts District and the philanthropic efforts of Portland native and microchip heiress Elizabeth Noyce.
The City of Portland documented the area in a historic designation report for the Congress Street Historic District:
Congress Street is Portland’s “Main Street,” the peninsula’s primary east-west commercial and transportation axis. The richness and diversity of its architecture and public spaces, particularly along the section extending from Franklin Arterial to Bramhall Square, constitutes a unique record of Portland’s residential and commercial
development history …… It was not until the 1970’s that Portland’s economic stagnation began a long slow path to recovery. With the availability of Federal “Urban Renewal” money, the ambitious Maine Way public infrastructure program signaled a new interest in and concern about downtown by city leaders … At the same time historic commercial buildings such as the Congress Square Hotel (#110) and the Upper H.H. Hay Building (#109) were rehabilitated for new uses.
Last week’s Society for Industrial Archeology conference was based in the heart of gentrified Portland and the conference hotel was only a few blocks away from this highly photogenic building. Below are some views that show the building between c. 1890 and now.
H.H. Hay building, Portland, ca. 1890. Credit: Maine Memory Network, Maine Historical Society.
Credit: Congress Street Historic District Designation Report, City of Portland, Me.
Congress and Free streets, May 2014.
Hay building, May 2014.
© 2014 D.S. Rotenstein
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Thought you’d like to know that the top photo (Greenough Block/Lower Hay’s, corner of Middle and Free Streets, now four stories) is not the same building as the lower three (Clapp Block/Upper Hay’s, corner of Free and Congress Streets). Both were flatirons. Tim