National Register Listing

Lower Lisbon Street Historic District

Lisbon St. between Cedar and Chestnut, Lewiston, ME

The Lower Lisbon Street Historic District is a concentration of 18 commercial structures that form a single block in Lewiston's central business district. The district is significant as the only intact concentration of commercial buildings from the city's most important period of development, 1850-1915. Moreover, this rare surviving representation of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century architecture is unusual for the great variety of materials, ornamentation, and building heights found concentrated in a single block. As a product of intermittent development, there are structures that survive every major phase of the city's history.

Developed as a company town by Boston investors beginning in 1850, Lewiston rapidly grew to become the largest industrial city in Maine. It became particularly important as a textile center for the region. Until its decline in the 1920s, Lewiston experienced fairly steady prosperity as the developers, known as the Franklin Water Power Company, sold off lots for housing and commercial structures. Lisbon Street quickly became the central business district where most of the stores and office buildings were located. The lower end, which includes the area of this district, did not develop as intensively as the upper end. Consequently what survives includes stores dating from the earliest period of significance, as well as those constructed in the 1900's. This section of the street has traditionally served as the location for a variety of small businesses and this contributes to its varied historical character.

Local significance of the district:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1985.