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we arrived in sight of Portland, fifty-four miles from Portsmouth. Nothing can be handsomer than Portland as yon approach it, floating as it were on the bosom of Casco Bay, it being a long handsome bridge ox er part of Casco Bay. The square brick houses and the observatory seventy feet high, is beautiful beyond description.”
-Anne Royall The Black Rook; or A Continuation ofTravels in the United States 1826-1827 (Washington, 1828)
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A^Concise History Of TKel
Portland Waterfront .J*-#****'
A Story By William David Barry
hese words recall to mind more forcefully than ever, that visitors have always marveled at and valued the Portland waterfront and its surroundings. One could quote from a storehouse of accounts by the likes of Talleyrand, Yale’s Timothy Dwight, Anthony Trollope and Louise Clossker Hale. Yet, despite this trove, the sad fact is that nobody, in the course of 360 years, has managed to produce a history' of the port.
24 • Portland Monthly Magazine • July/august
During my own quarter century of work in local history, I've 'observed a tangible, longstanding ambivalence toward the work- *' ing waterfront. This is not just a matter of yuppies in wharf-hug¬ ging condos annoy'ed by' the smell of manual labor and chum. Rather it seems to go to the feet that for more than a century and a half, Portlanders have preferred architectural buildings to ships, landscape paintings to marines, sculptures to shipcarvings, Longe-