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- Historical Items (241)
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- Architecture & Landscape (7)
- Online Exhibits (34)
- Site Pages (36)
- My Maine Stories (6)
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Online Exhibits
Your results include these online exhibits. You also can view all of the site's exhibits, view a timeline of selected events in Maine History, and learn how to create your own exhibit. See featured exhibits or create your own exhibit
Exhibit
Maine Streets: The Postcard View
Photographers from the Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Co. of Belfast traveled throughout the state, especially in small communities, taking images for postcards. Many of these images, taken in the first three decades of the twentieth century, capture Main Streets on the brink of modernity.
Exhibit
Maine Medical Center, Bramhall Campus
Maine Medical Center, founded as Maine General Hospital, has dominated Portland’s West End since its construction in 1871 on Bramhall Hill. As the medical field grew in both technological and social practice, the facility of the hospital also changed. This exhibit tracks the expansion and additions to that original building as the hospital adapted to its patients’ needs.
Exhibit
The novelty of organized auto racing came to Maine in 1911 with a hill-climbing event in Poland and speed racing at Old Orchard Beach. Drivers and cars came from all over New England for these events.
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Doing Good: Medical Stories of Maine
Throughout Maine’s history, individuals have worked to improve and expand medical care, not only for the health of those living in Maine, but for many around the world who need care and help.
Exhibit
At the heyday of trolleys in Maine, many of the trolley companies developed recreational facilities along or at the end of trolley lines as one further way to encourage ridership. The parks often had walking paths, dance pavilions, and various other entertainments. Cutting-edge technology came together with a thirst for adventure and forever changed social dynamics in the process.
Exhibit
Home: The Longfellow House & the Emergence of Portland
The Wadsworth-Longfellow house is the oldest building on the Portland peninsula, the first historic site in Maine, a National Historic Landmark, home to three generations of Wadsworth and Longfellow family members -- including the boyhood home of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The history of the house and its inhabitants provide a unique view of the growth and changes of Portland -- as well as of the immediate surroundings of the home.
Exhibit
Art of the People: Folk Art in Maine
For many different reasons people saved and carefully preserved the objects in this exhibit. Eventually, along with the memories they hold, the objects were passed to the Maine Historical Society. Object and memory, serve as a powerful way to explore history and to connect to the lives of people in the past.
Exhibit
Longfellow: The Man Who Invented America
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a man and a poet of New England conscience. He was influenced by his ancestry and his Portland boyhood home and experience.
Exhibit
We Used to be "Normal": A History of F.S.N.S.
Farmington's Normal School -- a teacher-training facility -- opened in 1863 and, over the decades, offered academic programs that included such unique features as domestic and child-care training, and extra-curricular activities from athletics to music and theater.
Exhibit
Drawing Together: Art of the Longfellows
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is best know as a poet, but he also was accomplished in drawing and music. He shared his love of drawing with most of his siblings. They all shared the frequent activity of drawing and painting with their children. The extended family included many professional as well as amateur artists, and several architects.
Exhibit
Lillian Nordica: Farmington Diva
Lillian Norton, known as Nordica, was one of the best known sopranos in America and the world at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. She was a native of Farmington.
Exhibit
Summer Folk: The Postcard View
Vacationers, "rusticators," or tourists began flooding into Maine in the last quarter of the 19th century. Many arrived by train or steamer. Eventually, automobiles expanded and changed the tourist trade, and some vacationers bought their own "cottages."
Exhibit
Many different types of trolley cars -- for different weather, different uses, and different locations -- were in use in Maine between 1895-1940. The "field guide" explains what each type looked like and how it was used.
Exhibit
Educating Oneself: Carnegie Libraries
Industrialist Andrew Carnegie gave grants for 20 libraries in Maine between 1897 and 1912, specifying that the town own the land, set aside funds for maintenance, have room to expand -- and offer library services at no charge.
Exhibit
Immigration is one of the most debated topics in Maine. Controversy aside, immigration is also America's oldest tradition, and along with religious tolerance, what our nation was built upon. Since the first people--the Wabanaki--permitted Europeans to settle in the land now known as Maine, we have been a state of immigrants.
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For one hundred years, Acadia National Park has captured the American imagination and stood as the most recognizable symbol of Maine’s important natural history and identity. This exhibit highlights Maine Memory content relating to Acadia and Mount Desert Island.
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Sagadahoc County through the Eastern Eye
The Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Company of Belfast, Maine. employed photographers who traveled by company vehicle through New England each summer, taking pictures of towns and cities, vacation spots and tourist attractions, working waterfronts and local industries, and other subjects postcard recipients might enjoy. The cards were printed by the millions in Belfast into the 1940s.
Exhibit
Good Will-Hinckley: Building a Landscape
The landscape at the Good Will-Hinckley campus in Fairfield was designed to help educate and influence the orphans and other needy children at the school and home.
Exhibit
From Sewers to Skylines: William S. Edwards's 1887 Photo Album
William S. Edwards (1830-1918) was a civil engineer who worked for the City of Portland from 1876-1906. Serving as First Assistant to Chief Engineer William A. Goodwin, then to Commissioner George N. Fernald, Edwards was a fixture in City Hall for 30 consecutive years, proving indispensable throughout the terms of 15 Mayors of Portland, including all six of those held by James Phineas Baxter. Edwards made significant contributions to Portland, was an outstanding mapmaker and planner, and his works continue to benefit historians.
Exhibit
John Bapst High School was dedicated in September 1928 to meet the expanding needs of Roman Catholic education in the Bangor area. The co-educational school operated until 1980, when the diocese closed it due to decreasing enrollment. Since then, it has been a private school known as John Bapst Memorial High School.
Exhibit
Since the establishment of the area's first licensed hotel in 1681, Portland has had a dramatic, grand and boisterous hotel tradition. The Portland hotel industry has in many ways reflected the growth and development of the city itself. As Portland grew with greater numbers of people moving through the city or calling it home, the hotel business expanded to fit the increasing demand.
Exhibit
The Swinging Bridge: Walking Across the Androscoggin
Built in 1892 to entice workers at the Cabot Manufacturing Corporation in Brunswick to move to newly built housing in Topsham, the Androscoggin Pedestrian "Swinging" Bridge or Le Petit Pont quickly became important to many people traveling between the two communities.
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Washington County Through Eastern's Eye
Images taken by itinerant photographers for Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Company, a real photo postcard company, provide a unique look at industry, commerce, recreation, tourism, and the communities of Washington County in the early decades of the twentieth century.
Exhibit
Student Exhibit: Historic Buildings on Madison Ave in Skowhegan
Take a tour and see some of the beautiful old buildings that used to be on Madison Avenue, Skowhegan? A few still remain, but most have been torn down.