National Register Listing
Lewiston was first settled in 1770 and incorporated as a town in 1795. Initially, small saw, carding and fulling mills along the river supplemented an agricultural economy, and it remained a farming community into the early decades of the 19th century when local businessmen realized the industrial potential of the Great Falls on the Androscoggin River. In 1834 the Maine State Legislature granted a charter to John and William Frye to establish the Lewiston Falls Manufacturing Company. Two years later the Great Androscoggin Falls Dam, Locks and Canal Company (later the Lewiston Water Power Company) was incorporated with a capital of $100,000, and stock was primarily sold to wealthy industrialists from Boston.
The Lewiston Water Power Company purchased the rights to the power from the river and land on both sides of the river, including most of the land on which the City of Lewiston was later built. The Lewiston Water Power Company built canals and dams, leased textile mill sites to its stockholders, and built boarding houses for the mill workers. Its stockholders encouraged the railroads to come to Lewiston in the late 1840s, and the Grand Trunk Railroad from Canada enabled agents of the mills to recruit French Canadian farmers from Quebec to come and work in the mills. During the Financial Panic of 1857, the Lewiston Water Power Company was reorganized as the Franklin Company. The Franklin Company laid out the streets of Lewiston and donated the land for the city hall, the park, the churches, and the library. In many ways, the Franklin Company determined what Lewiston would look like. Its Boston stockholders came regularly by train for board meetings at the DeWitt House, a hotel that housed the offices of the Franklin Company across from the park and the Lewiston City Hall. As the mills developed the population of Lewiston increased, rising from 1801 residents in 1840 to 7424 in 1860. In 1861 Lewiston was granted a city charter.
When the Civil War broke out, the price of cotton went up. Owners of the large textile mills in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, believing that the war would be brief, refused to pay the higher price. Seizing the opportunity, Boston industrialist Benjamin Bates and his Lewiston associates in the Franklin Company bought up all the cotton. The Lewiston mills were able to expand and prosper during the war, producing tent cloth and other cotton products for the Union Army. After the war, the mills hummed, and Lewiston grew to be the second-largest city in Maine. The population of the city reached 13,600 in 1870; 19,083 in 1880; 21,801 in 1890 and 23,761 in 1900, and along with the increasing number of residents came an increase in the city's commercial, professional, and political prestige.
In the mid-1850s Reverend Oren B. Cheney convinced the Maine State Legislature to create the Maine State Seminary to replace the original Parsonsfield Seminary, which had burned in 1855. Alonzo Garcelon and William R. Frye raised money from the Franklin Company and the town of Lewiston to induce Cheney to build the seminary in the growing population center of Lewiston.
In 1857 the Maine State Seminary opened as a co-educational college prep school, with Cheney as principal. But Cheney was anxious to add college classes to the curriculum. After a generous contribution from Franklin Company mill owner Benjamin Bates, a collegiate department opened in 1863, and in 1864 the seminary became a full-fledged college named for Bates. It was the first co-educational college in New England. Cheney, an abolitionist, saw to it that Bates was also one of the first colleges to admit African-American students. From 1870 to 1908, the college sponsored the Cobb Divinity School to train Free Baptist ministers.
Oren Cheney served as president of Bates College from 1864 to 1895, and during those years the college constructed a number of architecturally significant buildings on the campus. As the faculty grew, many faculty members had architects design homes for them on nearby Frye Street and on College Street."
The Main Street-Frye Street Historic District began as part of the large David Davis farm. The farm, over 300 acres, ran from College Street to the Androscoggin River and from Jepson Brook to Whipple Street. Near the center of the farm, Mount David (also called Mount Davis, Davis Mountain, and David's Mountain) rose 380 feet through wildflowers and tall pines to its bald granite peak. Davis pastured sheep and horses on the mountain, and what became Frye Street was an orchard. Davis's house was on Main Street at Whipple Street, just south of the historic district.
Davis's two daughters married and built houses on their father's land. Sarah Davis married Archibald Wakefield, and they built a frame Greek Revival farmhouse on the west side of Main Street in 1843. Alice Davis married John Frye, and they built a brick Greek Revival house on the east side of Main Street in 1845. David Davis died in 1851 without a will, and his two daughters inherited his farm. They divided it so that Sarah Wakefield owned the land on the west side of Main Street, plus the mountain; and Alice Frye owned the land on the east side of Main Street.
In the early 1860s, the Fryes and the Wakefields both sold land on the east side of Mount David to Bates College. Oren Cheney, the first president of Bates, built a large Second Empire house there in 1866. Then in the early 1870s, the Fryes subdivided their estate, creating Frye Street down the middle, and began selling lots to college professors and to Hiercy Day and his son and son-in-law. The earliest deed, to Professor Richard C. Stanley, required that houses on Frye Street had to be set back 25 feet from the street.
After Archibald Wakefield died in 1882, Sarah gave the Wakefield farm to her six children, and the children appointed their brother Seth Wakefield to manage the real estate. He built a house for his sister Sarah in 1882, but she never occupied it. Seth Wakefield began selling lots along Main Street in 1884, and houses went up on Wakefield property along Main Street in 1884 Wealthy business leaders, politicians, and college professors chose to build their homes on Main and Frye Streets because the area was just beyond what was owned by the Franklin Company, yet convenient to town, and it was adjacent to the college campus. Main Street was perhaps the most important street in Lewiston, running from Lisbon Street, the center of the business district, through Haymarket Square, where most of the grain merchants were, and continuing north to the state capital at Augusta."
In 1881 the city granted a franchise to the Lewiston and Auburn Horse Railroad Co., and the convenient street cars made the area even more desirable, running out Main Street as far as the brickyards at Jetson Brook. Later, the Lewiston Auburn Street Railroad was electrified, and from 1915 to 1932 the inter-urban street cars ran regularly along Main Street, all the way to Augusta.
The Main Street-Frye Street Historic District developed during the second half of the nineteenth century, the most prosperous years for Lewiston, and the years when architects were designing the most distinctive styles of American domestic architecture. The earliest houses in the district were Greek Revival houses built in 1843 and 1845, with corner pilasters, pediments, gables, entablatures, cornices, and columns inspired by classic Greek temples and national interest in Greek democracy. The next house, built in 1859, was Senator William P. Frye's first house, a small, Gothic Revival cottage with steep gable peaks and a pointed-arch window and shutters, a style made popular in Andrew Jackson Downing's pattern books of picturesque country cottages."
The Picturesque Movement developed among American architects from about 1840 until the turn of the century. It embraced the romantic and picturesque architecture of Europe rather than the formal, classical architecture of Greece. The Picturesque Movement included architectural styles made popular through pattern books and builders' manuals. Those styles overlapped in their years of popularity: Gothic Revival from 1830 to 1880, Italianate from 1840 to 1890, Second Empire style from 1855 to 1890, and Queen Anne from 1870 to 1910.
In 1866, a Boston architect designed a large Second Empire-style house with a mansard roof and round-arched hood mold dormers for the first president of Bates College. Three more Second Empire-style houses were built in the 1870s; one on Main Street in 1874, and two on Frye Street in 1873. Besides elaborate details such as bay windows and broad cornices supported by carved brackets, they had the typical mansard roofs and fancy dormers of the French Second Empire of Napoleon III.
During the 1870s and 1880s, five Italianate-style houses were built, two on Frye Street and three on Main Street. Two of the Italianate-style houses on Main Street have square towers projecting in the center of the front facades, while the two on Frye Street have prominent cross-gable projections in the center of their front facades, instead of towers. All five examples have bay windows, broad eaves supported by carved brackets, and tall narrow windows with arched tops or tops with elaborate cornices."
From 1875 to 1907, twelve Queen Anne-style buildings were built in the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District: five on Frye Street, three on College Street, and four on Main Street. During this same period, the Lewiston-Auburn Street Railway began running along Main Street in 1881, and Seth Wakefield began selling lots on Main Street in 1884. Nine of the Queen Anne-style buildings are known to have been designed by architects. These houses exhibit picturesque examples of asymmetrical massing, irregular shapes, bay windows, oriel windows, towers, textured brickwork, patterned shingles, decorative wood panels, large window panes sometimes surrounded by small window panes, and stained glass windows. Several of these houses have upper stories or massive dormers sided with shingles suggesting the rambling, asymmetrical Shingle Style that grew out of the Queen Anne style.
From 1888 to 1916, eleven Colonial Revival houses were built in the district: six on Main Street, three on Frye Street, and one on College Street. The Colonial Revival style of architecture became popular after the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 awakened an interest in our colonial architectural heritage. The Colonial Revival style brought a return to classical details, often exaggerated on a monumental scale. The front facades on over half of the Colonial Revival houses in the district are symmetrical, and all of the houses exhibit classical details, such as Greek columns, pilasters, pediments, friezes, entablatures, cornices, modillions, dentils, fanlights, sidelights, and Palladian windows. Two of the Colonial Revival houses on Main Street have monumental porticos. Eight of the eleven Colonial Revival houses in the district were designed by architects.
In 1929 Maurice Small tore down a house on Frye Street that George M. Coombs had designed for Senator Frye's sisters, and built a Tudor Revival cottage in its place. The Tudor Revival style with its romantic Medieval English flavor was very popular for residential architecture right before the Great Depression. This house exhibits some of the unique features of the Tudor Revival style: Flemish bond bricks on the first story, contrasting shingles on the upper stories, a steeply pitched front-facing gable with unequal eave-line heights, and casement windows.
Finally, in 1956, a local contractor filled in the last empty lot on Main Street with a small, Contemporary style apartment building. The Contemporary style, as in this example, is built into the landscape (here the building has a garage built into the hillside) and has a flat roof, flat walls, and windows skewed to the corners. This two-story building has a two-story sunroom projection on the north side and two stories of open wooden porches connected by open wooden stairs running up the back. These features suggest the New England mill workers' tenements with flat roofs, sunroom projections, and open porches that are found everywhere throughout Lewiston.
It is amazing that a city as remote and as modest in size as Lewiston had so many architects. Perhaps it was because of the needs of the mills and the tastes of the Franklin Company men from Boston. The architects of Lewiston were artists, designing huge Second Empire mills with mansard roofs, Italianate mills with square towers, neo-classical college buildings, gloriously Gothic churches, Queen Anne schools, Richardsonian Romanesque schools, and the Baroque Renaissance Revival city hall.
The earliest architect-designed house in the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District, Owen Cheney's Second Empire house at 262 College Street, was designed in 1866 by Boston architect John Stevens. Stevens first appeared as an architect in Boston directories in 1850. He subsequently practiced with his son, John W. Stevens, and with S. F. Pratt. He was known for designing Italianate churches and private school buildings in Massachusetts, Maine, and New Brunswick, Canada. In 1862 he designed the Italianate First Parish Congregational Church in Saco, another important mill town in Maine. He died in 1881 after designing his 113th church.
William H. Stevens was one of the first architects who actually lived in Lewiston. Born in West Gardiner in 1818, he moved to Lewiston in 1849. After participating in the California Gold Rush, Stevens returned to Lewiston in 1855 and worked as a carpenter. By 1864 he was working for the Franklin Company. Stevens developed an expertise in mill design and hydraulic engineering. designing the Worumbo Mill at Lisbon Falls, the Lincoln Mill Boarding House in Lewiston, and remodeling the DeWitt Hotel. He designed the Second Empire Bates Street School in 1868, served as mayor of Lewiston in 1870, designed the Second Empire commercial block for Jacob Roak in Auburn in 1871, and designed the Farwell Cotton Mill in Lisbon and the water wheel for the Barker Mill in Augusta in 1872. In 1873 Stevens formed a partnership with Francis H. Fassett of Portland. During this brief partnership, Stevens designed the sprawling Second Empire house with ornate features at 457 Main Street for Senator William P. Frye, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 (NR 76000189.) In 1874 Stevens practiced on his own, and in 1875 he formed a partnership with George M. Coombs of Lewiston which lasted until his death in 1880.
Jefferson L. Coburn is an early Lewiston architect about whom little is known. He was born in 1835 and served as a lieutenant in the 1 Maine Cavalry during the Civil War. He opened an architectural business in Lewiston and executed commissions in Presque Isle and Vassalboro as well as in Central Maine. In 1886, he designed the Queen Anne house for John Perry at 481 Main Street; and in 1897, he designed the dramatic Italianate house for James C. Lord at 497 Main Street, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 (NR 78000158.)
Another early Lewiston architect was Charles F. Douglas who designed the elaborate Second Empire house at 10 Frye Street for Albert B. Nealey in 1873. Douglas was born in Brunswick and grew up in Dover, Maine. At 18 he was apprenticed to a house builder for three years. He studied architecture while working as a carpenter. In the early 1860s, Douglas opened an architectural office in Skowhegan, and in 1868 he built his own Italianate house in Norridgewock. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. He designed picturesque Italianate and Second Empire houses and the Methodist Church in Waterville, but he went bankrupt and lost his house in 1869. He moved to Lewiston in 1870 and designed the Second Empire Barker Mill in Auburn and the Second Empire Continental Mill in Lewiston. He designed banks, commercial blocks, the courthouse in Skowhegan, the Lewiston Firehouse, and the fabulous Second Empire house for W. H. Glover in Rockland. And then in 1874 he moved to Philadelphia where he sold building supplies.
The most prolific 19th and early 20th-century architect in Lewiston was George M. Coombs. Like Douglas, Coombs was born in Brunswick. He came to Lewiston in 1872 and worked for Douglas until Douglas moved to Philadelphia. Coombs formed a partnership with William H. Stevens in 1875 that lasted until Stevens died in 1880. During those five years, Stevens designed industrial and hydraulic projects, and Coombs designed picturesque Italianate, Greek Revival, and Stick Style residences. In 1880, Coombs established his own firm, and during the prosperous 1880s, he designed numerous commercial and public buildings, including several courthouses. In Lewiston, his commissions included the Dominican Block and the Sands Block, both with distinctive pedimented frontispieces crowning their roofs, and three Richardsonian Romanesque school buildings: Wallace School, Dingley School, and the Hedge Laboratory at Bates College. Drawings for three of his projects were published in American Architect and Building News, and the Dominican Block and the Dingley School are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. From the 1880s through the turn of the century, Coombs designed many architecturally fashionable Queen Anne and Colonial Revival houses, including four Queen Anne houses and four Colonial Revival houses in the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District and the elaborate Queen Anne Bauer Apartments. In 1896, Coombs formed a partnership with Eugene J. Gibbs and Harry C. Wilkinson.
Wilkinson stayed with the firm for only three years, during which time the firm designed Peck's Department Store and additions to Hiram Ricker's resort hotels at Poland Springs and Rockland, Maine. The firm of Coombs & Gibbs continued designing schools, churches, the Carnegie Library in Lewiston, commercial blocks, hotels, factories, banks, cottages, and houses. In the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District, they designed two more Queen Anne houses and three more Colonial Revival houses (. Coombs's sons, Harry and Fred, joined the firm in 1905 and 1908 respectively. George Coombs died in 1909.
Coombs's long-time partner, Eugene J. Gibbs, was born in Lewiston and learned the architecture business from Coombs. Gibbs's obituary mentions several important buildings that Gibbs worked on with Coombs: the public library, the Central Maine General Hospital, and the Wallace School. Two outstanding houses in the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District that Gibbs is responsible for are John Clifford's Queen Anne house on Main Street and George Bonnallie's Colonial Revival house on Main Street. Coombs & Gibbs were in partnership from 1896 until Coombs died in 1909. Gibbs stayed on with Coombs's sons until 1913 when he formed a partnership with Addison Pulsifer. The firm of Gibbs & Pulsifer was responsible for Ralph Crockett's Colonial Revival house on Main Street. The firm of Gibbs & Pulsifer continued until 1927. Gibbs died in 1929.
Elmer I. Thomas was another Lewiston architect who had worked for George M. Coombs. Born in Lewiston in 1863, Thomas graduated from Lewiston High School and attended Wesleyan University and MIT, where he studied architecture. He worked for George Coombs for four years and then went to Europe for several months to study architecture. He opened an office in Auburn and then moved to Lewiston a year or two later. He had a brief, but brilliant career, designing Shingle Style houses and churches, the Renaissance Revival Fairfield Block in Biddeford, the Renaissance Revival Syndicate Block in Rockland, the Renaissance Revival Atkinson Block in Lewiston, the Renaissance Revival Cobb Divinity School for Bates College, and a Queen Anne house for George Armstrong on Frye Street as well as a Colonial Revival house for Byron Armstrong on Frye Street in the historic district. Thomas died of typhoid, in 1896, at age 33.
Since the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District was a fashionable neighborhood for the wealthy, it is a neighborhood that reflects the transition from carriage houses to garages which took place around the turn of the century. The average American walked to work or rode the street car, and only the wealthy had their own horses and carriages.
In Carriage House to Auto House Roger Reed and Greer Hardwicke describe a typical carriage house. It was two stories tall with a ventilator at the peak of the roof and a second-story hayloft opening. There are two such carriage houses on Frye Street, three on Main Street, and one on College Street. They all have upper stories, and all except the Cheney carriage house have ventilators and haylofts. The ventilator and the hayloft on the Cheney carriage house were removed when it was remodeled in 1922. The Cheney carriage house and the Nealey carriage house have been attached to the main house since they were built. All of the carriage houses were built between 1866 and 1886. A seventh carriage house was attached to the Heircy Day house, built in 1873, but it was torn down when the house was converted to apartments in the 1950s. All of the carriage houses in the district have been adapted as apartments or offices. Only the Perry carriage house is used as a garage.
Lewiston should be a town of early garages since Lewiston is the town where the Stanley twins invented the Stanley Steamer. Free-standing garages were built in the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District from 1890 until the 1950s, and there are eleven garages in the district today: five on Main Street, five on Frye Street, and one on College Street.
Garages are smaller than carriage houses, usually only one story high. Reed and Hardwicke point out that journals at the turn of the century recommended that a garage should provide room for two cars, its dimensions should allow for ease of entering and leaving, it should be fireproof, and it should harmonize with the house and its surroundings, i.e. it should be set back from the street and the house. Most of the garages in the district are two-car garages. There are two one-car garages and two three-car garages. All of the garages in the district are one story high, except for the one-and-a-half-story George Bonnallie garage which has a jerkinhead dormer. Two of the properties have garages with front-facing gable roofs; seven have hip roofs; and one has a flat parapet roof.
All of the garages are framed, except for the Thomas Angell garage which is made of concrete blocks. The Colonel John Frye garage, the Wallace White garage, and the Heircy Day garage have modern overhead doors, while all the other garages have double doors that swing out, some folding and swinging out. Several garages have been torn down to make room for extra parking, or because they were a problem to maintain.
The inter-urban street cars stopped running along Main Street in 1932, and the mills closed, one at a time, throughout the second half of the twentieth century. So, what has kept the houses in the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District from being neglected?
Several of the families for whom the houses were built continued to occupy them for three or more generations. Some of the houses on Main Street and Frye Street remained in the same families, receiving appreciation and care, until the 1950s or '60s; two houses were in the same families until the 1970s.
Beginning in 1918, retired, long-time faculty members of Bates College, living on Frye Street, sold or donated their homes to Bates College. Today the college owns seventeen of the nineteen houses on Frye Street. The college has adapted them for student housing, faculty apartments, a student union, a coffeehouse, and the Office of Career Services. The architectural firm of Harriman Associates of Auburn, the successor firm to Coombs & Harriman, did most of the renovations, so changes were sympathetic to the original architecture. Now that Bates owns all of the houses on Frye Street, except 6 Frye and 10 Frye, the college looks after the streetscape, caring for trees, shrubs, and lawns as part of the campus.
The situation that helped to preserve the ambiance of Main Street was the adoption of zoning in 1947. Zoning began in New York City in 1916 to regulate land use and thereby stabilize property values. The large factories of the Industrial Revolution were not wanted in residential neighborhoods. Communities adopted zoning ordinances to divide land into classifications such as: residential, commercial, and industrial, to regulate lot size, building heights, setbacks, and uses, within each classification to protect property values. To protect the beautiful homes along Main Street, the City of Lewiston zoned this stretch of Main Street "Office/Residential," allowing single-family, multi-family, tourist home, and business office use. Stores, shopping malls, gas stations, and free-standing restaurants are prohibited. Thus, Main Street has become an attractive location for upscale professional offices in lovely old homes. Frye Street is zoned "Institutional/Office," which allows single-family, multi-family, office, hotel, or restaurant uses in conjunction with a private school, but not retail uses. By limiting the uses of the properties on Main and Frye Streets, the City of Lewiston assures an attractive use for these old buildings and the preservation of the historic flavor of the neighborhood. Local significance of the district:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
Main Street-Frye Street Historic District
Frye St. and portions of Main St. and College St., Lewiston, METhe Main Street-Frye Street Historic District lies just north of the Lewiston business district and adjoins the Bates College campus in the city of Lewiston. It is locally significant in the areas of Community Development and Architecture. The district is significant in the area of Community Development as a fashionable residential neighborhood that developed on former farmland between Bates College and the land owned by the Franklin Company, the latter of which included all of the business district and the textile mills. The district is located along the main road and the inter-urban streetcar line to the state capital, and it was where business leaders, politicians, and college professors chose to build their homes.
Containing over 50 buildings, the district is significant in the area of Architecture because it developed during the years from before the Civil War to the 1950s, and contains examples of most of the distinctive styles of American domestic architecture that flourished during this period: Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne, Stick Style, Shingle Style, Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, and Contemporary. The district is a showplace for those styles of architecture in part because architects designed 22 of the 37 houses. One architect in particular, George M. Coombs, designed twelve of the houses, making this district an excellent place to study his residential designs. To a lesser extent resources in the district also represent the architectural and functional transition from carriage houses to garages after the turn of the century. The period of significance, 1843-1956, represents the first and last years that the contributing resources were constructed and during which the district to its form. The district is also significant under Criterion B for its association with a prominent political family, the Fryes, who lived in the district. Col. John M. Frye was a Maine state senator from 1834- 1836, and his son, William P. Frye, was a U.S. Senator, who during a thirty-year career served as the president pro-tempore from 1896 to 1911. Wallace H. White, Jr, the great-grandson and grandson of Colonel and Senator Frye, respectively, served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1917 to 1931 and in the Senate from 1931 to 1948. For the last five years of his career, he was either the Senate Minority Leader or Majority Leader.
As the economic vigor of Lewiston has waned with the closing of the textile mills in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, it is fortunate that these fine mansions have not deteriorated. Instead, the large homes on Main Street have been adapted for professional offices, and the homes on Frye Street and College Avenue are being used by Bates College as dormitories and offices. The period of significance for the district starts in 1843, when Archibald Wakefield built his Greek Revival style farmhouse on the west side of Main Street, and ends in 1956 when Adolphe Plourde built a small Contemporary style apartment building on the last empty lot on the east side of Main Street. The Main Street-Frye Street Historic District contains 47 contributing resources and five non-contributing
resources.
The Development of Lewiston, A Company Town
Lewiston was first settled in 1770 and incorporated as a town in 1795. Initially, small saw, carding and fulling mills along the river supplemented an agricultural economy, and it remained a farming community into the early decades of the 19th century when local businessmen realized the industrial potential of the Great Falls on the Androscoggin River. In 1834 the Maine State Legislature granted a charter to John and William Frye to establish the Lewiston Falls Manufacturing Company. Two years later the Great Androscoggin Falls Dam, Locks and Canal Company (later the Lewiston Water Power Company) was incorporated with a capital of $100,000, and stock was primarily sold to wealthy industrialists from Boston.
The Lewiston Water Power Company purchased the rights to the power from the river and land on both sides of the river, including most of the land on which the City of Lewiston was later built. The Lewiston Water Power Company built canals and dams, leased textile mill sites to its stockholders, and built boarding houses for the mill workers. Its stockholders encouraged the railroads to come to Lewiston in the late 1840s, and the Grand Trunk Railroad from Canada enabled agents of the mills to recruit French Canadian farmers from Quebec to come and work in the mills. During the Financial Panic of 1857, the Lewiston Water Power Company was reorganized as the Franklin Company. The Franklin Company laid out the streets of Lewiston and donated the land for the city hall, the park, the churches, and the library. In many ways, the Franklin Company determined what Lewiston would look like. Its Boston stockholders came regularly by train for board meetings at the DeWitt House, a hotel that housed the offices of the Franklin Company across from the park and the Lewiston City Hall. As the mills developed the population of Lewiston increased, rising from 1801 residents in 1840 to 7424 in 1860. In 1861 Lewiston was granted a city charter.
When the Civil War broke out, the price of cotton went up. Owners of the large textile mills in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, believing that the war would be brief, refused to pay the higher price. Seizing the opportunity, Boston industrialist Benjamin Bates and his Lewiston associates in the Franklin Company bought up all the cotton. The Lewiston mills were able to expand and prosper during the war, producing tent cloth and other cotton products for the Union Army. After the war, the mills hummed, and Lewiston grew to be the second-largest city in Maine. The population of the city reached 13,600 in 1870; 19,083 in 1880; 21,801 in 1890 and 23,761 in 1900, and along with the increasing number of residents came an increase in the city's commercial, professional, and political prestige.
Bates College
In the mid-1850s Reverend Oren B. Cheney convinced the Maine State Legislature to create the Maine State Seminary to replace the original Parsonsfield Seminary, which had burned in 1855. Alonzo Garcelon and William R. Frye raised money from the Franklin Company and the town of Lewiston to induce Cheney to build the seminary in the growing population center of Lewiston.
In 1857 the Maine State Seminary opened as a co-educational college prep school, with Cheney as principal. But Cheney was anxious to add college classes to the curriculum. After a generous contribution from Franklin Company mill owner Benjamin Bates, a collegiate department opened in 1863, and in 1864 the seminary became a full-fledged college named for Bates. It was the first co-educational college in New England. Cheney, an abolitionist, saw to it that Bates was also one of the first colleges to admit African-American students. From 1870 to 1908, the college sponsored the Cobb Divinity School to train Free Baptist ministers.
Oren Cheney served as president of Bates College from 1864 to 1895, and during those years the college constructed a number of architecturally significant buildings on the campus. As the faculty grew, many faculty members had architects design homes for them on nearby Frye Street and on College Street."
The Development of Main Street and Frye Street
The Main Street-Frye Street Historic District began as part of the large David Davis farm. The farm, over 300 acres, ran from College Street to the Androscoggin River and from Jepson Brook to Whipple Street. Near the center of the farm, Mount David (also called Mount Davis, Davis Mountain, and David's Mountain) rose 380 feet through wildflowers and tall pines to its bald granite peak. Davis pastured sheep and horses on the mountain, and what became Frye Street was an orchard. Davis's house was on Main Street at Whipple Street, just south of the historic district.
Davis's two daughters married and built houses on their father's land. Sarah Davis married Archibald Wakefield, and they built a frame Greek Revival farmhouse on the west side of Main Street in 1843. Alice Davis married John Frye, and they built a brick Greek Revival house on the east side of Main Street in 1845. David Davis died in 1851 without a will, and his two daughters inherited his farm. They divided it so that Sarah Wakefield owned the land on the west side of Main Street, plus the mountain; and Alice Frye owned the land on the east side of Main Street.
In the early 1860s, the Fryes and the Wakefields both sold land on the east side of Mount David to Bates College. Oren Cheney, the first president of Bates, built a large Second Empire house there in 1866. Then in the early 1870s, the Fryes subdivided their estate, creating Frye Street down the middle, and began selling lots to college professors and to Hiercy Day and his son and son-in-law. The earliest deed, to Professor Richard C. Stanley, required that houses on Frye Street had to be set back 25 feet from the street.
After Archibald Wakefield died in 1882, Sarah gave the Wakefield farm to her six children, and the children appointed their brother Seth Wakefield to manage the real estate. He built a house for his sister Sarah in 1882, but she never occupied it. Seth Wakefield began selling lots along Main Street in 1884, and houses went up on Wakefield property along Main Street in 1884 Wealthy business leaders, politicians, and college professors chose to build their homes on Main and Frye Streets because the area was just beyond what was owned by the Franklin Company, yet convenient to town, and it was adjacent to the college campus. Main Street was perhaps the most important street in Lewiston, running from Lisbon Street, the center of the business district, through Haymarket Square, where most of the grain merchants were, and continuing north to the state capital at Augusta."
In 1881 the city granted a franchise to the Lewiston and Auburn Horse Railroad Co., and the convenient street cars made the area even more desirable, running out Main Street as far as the brickyards at Jetson Brook. Later, the Lewiston Auburn Street Railroad was electrified, and from 1915 to 1932 the inter-urban street cars ran regularly along Main Street, all the way to Augusta.
The Architecture
The Main Street-Frye Street Historic District developed during the second half of the nineteenth century, the most prosperous years for Lewiston, and the years when architects were designing the most distinctive styles of American domestic architecture. The earliest houses in the district were Greek Revival houses built in 1843 and 1845, with corner pilasters, pediments, gables, entablatures, cornices, and columns inspired by classic Greek temples and national interest in Greek democracy. The next house, built in 1859, was Senator William P. Frye's first house, a small, Gothic Revival cottage with steep gable peaks and a pointed-arch window and shutters, a style made popular in Andrew Jackson Downing's pattern books of picturesque country cottages."
The Picturesque Movement developed among American architects from about 1840 until the turn of the century. It embraced the romantic and picturesque architecture of Europe rather than the formal, classical architecture of Greece. The Picturesque Movement included architectural styles made popular through pattern books and builders' manuals. Those styles overlapped in their years of popularity: Gothic Revival from 1830 to 1880, Italianate from 1840 to 1890, Second Empire style from 1855 to 1890, and Queen Anne from 1870 to 1910.
In 1866, a Boston architect designed a large Second Empire-style house with a mansard roof and round-arched hood mold dormers for the first president of Bates College. Three more Second Empire-style houses were built in the 1870s; one on Main Street in 1874, and two on Frye Street in 1873. Besides elaborate details such as bay windows and broad cornices supported by carved brackets, they had the typical mansard roofs and fancy dormers of the French Second Empire of Napoleon III.
During the 1870s and 1880s, five Italianate-style houses were built, two on Frye Street and three on Main Street. Two of the Italianate-style houses on Main Street have square towers projecting in the center of the front facades, while the two on Frye Street have prominent cross-gable projections in the center of their front facades, instead of towers. All five examples have bay windows, broad eaves supported by carved brackets, and tall narrow windows with arched tops or tops with elaborate cornices."
From 1875 to 1907, twelve Queen Anne-style buildings were built in the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District: five on Frye Street, three on College Street, and four on Main Street. During this same period, the Lewiston-Auburn Street Railway began running along Main Street in 1881, and Seth Wakefield began selling lots on Main Street in 1884. Nine of the Queen Anne-style buildings are known to have been designed by architects. These houses exhibit picturesque examples of asymmetrical massing, irregular shapes, bay windows, oriel windows, towers, textured brickwork, patterned shingles, decorative wood panels, large window panes sometimes surrounded by small window panes, and stained glass windows. Several of these houses have upper stories or massive dormers sided with shingles suggesting the rambling, asymmetrical Shingle Style that grew out of the Queen Anne style.
From 1888 to 1916, eleven Colonial Revival houses were built in the district: six on Main Street, three on Frye Street, and one on College Street. The Colonial Revival style of architecture became popular after the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 awakened an interest in our colonial architectural heritage. The Colonial Revival style brought a return to classical details, often exaggerated on a monumental scale. The front facades on over half of the Colonial Revival houses in the district are symmetrical, and all of the houses exhibit classical details, such as Greek columns, pilasters, pediments, friezes, entablatures, cornices, modillions, dentils, fanlights, sidelights, and Palladian windows. Two of the Colonial Revival houses on Main Street have monumental porticos. Eight of the eleven Colonial Revival houses in the district were designed by architects.
In 1929 Maurice Small tore down a house on Frye Street that George M. Coombs had designed for Senator Frye's sisters, and built a Tudor Revival cottage in its place. The Tudor Revival style with its romantic Medieval English flavor was very popular for residential architecture right before the Great Depression. This house exhibits some of the unique features of the Tudor Revival style: Flemish bond bricks on the first story, contrasting shingles on the upper stories, a steeply pitched front-facing gable with unequal eave-line heights, and casement windows.
Finally, in 1956, a local contractor filled in the last empty lot on Main Street with a small, Contemporary style apartment building. The Contemporary style, as in this example, is built into the landscape (here the building has a garage built into the hillside) and has a flat roof, flat walls, and windows skewed to the corners. This two-story building has a two-story sunroom projection on the north side and two stories of open wooden porches connected by open wooden stairs running up the back. These features suggest the New England mill workers' tenements with flat roofs, sunroom projections, and open porches that are found everywhere throughout Lewiston.
The Architects
It is amazing that a city as remote and as modest in size as Lewiston had so many architects. Perhaps it was because of the needs of the mills and the tastes of the Franklin Company men from Boston. The architects of Lewiston were artists, designing huge Second Empire mills with mansard roofs, Italianate mills with square towers, neo-classical college buildings, gloriously Gothic churches, Queen Anne schools, Richardsonian Romanesque schools, and the Baroque Renaissance Revival city hall.
The earliest architect-designed house in the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District, Owen Cheney's Second Empire house at 262 College Street, was designed in 1866 by Boston architect John Stevens. Stevens first appeared as an architect in Boston directories in 1850. He subsequently practiced with his son, John W. Stevens, and with S. F. Pratt. He was known for designing Italianate churches and private school buildings in Massachusetts, Maine, and New Brunswick, Canada. In 1862 he designed the Italianate First Parish Congregational Church in Saco, another important mill town in Maine. He died in 1881 after designing his 113th church.
William H. Stevens was one of the first architects who actually lived in Lewiston. Born in West Gardiner in 1818, he moved to Lewiston in 1849. After participating in the California Gold Rush, Stevens returned to Lewiston in 1855 and worked as a carpenter. By 1864 he was working for the Franklin Company. Stevens developed an expertise in mill design and hydraulic engineering. designing the Worumbo Mill at Lisbon Falls, the Lincoln Mill Boarding House in Lewiston, and remodeling the DeWitt Hotel. He designed the Second Empire Bates Street School in 1868, served as mayor of Lewiston in 1870, designed the Second Empire commercial block for Jacob Roak in Auburn in 1871, and designed the Farwell Cotton Mill in Lisbon and the water wheel for the Barker Mill in Augusta in 1872. In 1873 Stevens formed a partnership with Francis H. Fassett of Portland. During this brief partnership, Stevens designed the sprawling Second Empire house with ornate features at 457 Main Street for Senator William P. Frye, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 (NR 76000189.) In 1874 Stevens practiced on his own, and in 1875 he formed a partnership with George M. Coombs of Lewiston which lasted until his death in 1880.
Jefferson L. Coburn is an early Lewiston architect about whom little is known. He was born in 1835 and served as a lieutenant in the 1 Maine Cavalry during the Civil War. He opened an architectural business in Lewiston and executed commissions in Presque Isle and Vassalboro as well as in Central Maine. In 1886, he designed the Queen Anne house for John Perry at 481 Main Street; and in 1897, he designed the dramatic Italianate house for James C. Lord at 497 Main Street, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 (NR 78000158.)
Another early Lewiston architect was Charles F. Douglas who designed the elaborate Second Empire house at 10 Frye Street for Albert B. Nealey in 1873. Douglas was born in Brunswick and grew up in Dover, Maine. At 18 he was apprenticed to a house builder for three years. He studied architecture while working as a carpenter. In the early 1860s, Douglas opened an architectural office in Skowhegan, and in 1868 he built his own Italianate house in Norridgewock. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. He designed picturesque Italianate and Second Empire houses and the Methodist Church in Waterville, but he went bankrupt and lost his house in 1869. He moved to Lewiston in 1870 and designed the Second Empire Barker Mill in Auburn and the Second Empire Continental Mill in Lewiston. He designed banks, commercial blocks, the courthouse in Skowhegan, the Lewiston Firehouse, and the fabulous Second Empire house for W. H. Glover in Rockland. And then in 1874 he moved to Philadelphia where he sold building supplies.
The most prolific 19th and early 20th-century architect in Lewiston was George M. Coombs. Like Douglas, Coombs was born in Brunswick. He came to Lewiston in 1872 and worked for Douglas until Douglas moved to Philadelphia. Coombs formed a partnership with William H. Stevens in 1875 that lasted until Stevens died in 1880. During those five years, Stevens designed industrial and hydraulic projects, and Coombs designed picturesque Italianate, Greek Revival, and Stick Style residences. In 1880, Coombs established his own firm, and during the prosperous 1880s, he designed numerous commercial and public buildings, including several courthouses. In Lewiston, his commissions included the Dominican Block and the Sands Block, both with distinctive pedimented frontispieces crowning their roofs, and three Richardsonian Romanesque school buildings: Wallace School, Dingley School, and the Hedge Laboratory at Bates College. Drawings for three of his projects were published in American Architect and Building News, and the Dominican Block and the Dingley School are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. From the 1880s through the turn of the century, Coombs designed many architecturally fashionable Queen Anne and Colonial Revival houses, including four Queen Anne houses and four Colonial Revival houses in the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District and the elaborate Queen Anne Bauer Apartments. In 1896, Coombs formed a partnership with Eugene J. Gibbs and Harry C. Wilkinson.
Wilkinson stayed with the firm for only three years, during which time the firm designed Peck's Department Store and additions to Hiram Ricker's resort hotels at Poland Springs and Rockland, Maine. The firm of Coombs & Gibbs continued designing schools, churches, the Carnegie Library in Lewiston, commercial blocks, hotels, factories, banks, cottages, and houses. In the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District, they designed two more Queen Anne houses and three more Colonial Revival houses (. Coombs's sons, Harry and Fred, joined the firm in 1905 and 1908 respectively. George Coombs died in 1909.
Coombs's long-time partner, Eugene J. Gibbs, was born in Lewiston and learned the architecture business from Coombs. Gibbs's obituary mentions several important buildings that Gibbs worked on with Coombs: the public library, the Central Maine General Hospital, and the Wallace School. Two outstanding houses in the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District that Gibbs is responsible for are John Clifford's Queen Anne house on Main Street and George Bonnallie's Colonial Revival house on Main Street. Coombs & Gibbs were in partnership from 1896 until Coombs died in 1909. Gibbs stayed on with Coombs's sons until 1913 when he formed a partnership with Addison Pulsifer. The firm of Gibbs & Pulsifer was responsible for Ralph Crockett's Colonial Revival house on Main Street. The firm of Gibbs & Pulsifer continued until 1927. Gibbs died in 1929.
Elmer I. Thomas was another Lewiston architect who had worked for George M. Coombs. Born in Lewiston in 1863, Thomas graduated from Lewiston High School and attended Wesleyan University and MIT, where he studied architecture. He worked for George Coombs for four years and then went to Europe for several months to study architecture. He opened an office in Auburn and then moved to Lewiston a year or two later. He had a brief, but brilliant career, designing Shingle Style houses and churches, the Renaissance Revival Fairfield Block in Biddeford, the Renaissance Revival Syndicate Block in Rockland, the Renaissance Revival Atkinson Block in Lewiston, the Renaissance Revival Cobb Divinity School for Bates College, and a Queen Anne house for George Armstrong on Frye Street as well as a Colonial Revival house for Byron Armstrong on Frye Street in the historic district. Thomas died of typhoid, in 1896, at age 33.
Carriage Houses to Garages
Since the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District was a fashionable neighborhood for the wealthy, it is a neighborhood that reflects the transition from carriage houses to garages which took place around the turn of the century. The average American walked to work or rode the street car, and only the wealthy had their own horses and carriages.
In Carriage House to Auto House Roger Reed and Greer Hardwicke describe a typical carriage house. It was two stories tall with a ventilator at the peak of the roof and a second-story hayloft opening. There are two such carriage houses on Frye Street, three on Main Street, and one on College Street. They all have upper stories, and all except the Cheney carriage house have ventilators and haylofts. The ventilator and the hayloft on the Cheney carriage house were removed when it was remodeled in 1922. The Cheney carriage house and the Nealey carriage house have been attached to the main house since they were built. All of the carriage houses were built between 1866 and 1886. A seventh carriage house was attached to the Heircy Day house, built in 1873, but it was torn down when the house was converted to apartments in the 1950s. All of the carriage houses in the district have been adapted as apartments or offices. Only the Perry carriage house is used as a garage.
Lewiston should be a town of early garages since Lewiston is the town where the Stanley twins invented the Stanley Steamer. Free-standing garages were built in the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District from 1890 until the 1950s, and there are eleven garages in the district today: five on Main Street, five on Frye Street, and one on College Street.
Garages are smaller than carriage houses, usually only one story high. Reed and Hardwicke point out that journals at the turn of the century recommended that a garage should provide room for two cars, its dimensions should allow for ease of entering and leaving, it should be fireproof, and it should harmonize with the house and its surroundings, i.e. it should be set back from the street and the house. Most of the garages in the district are two-car garages. There are two one-car garages and two three-car garages. All of the garages in the district are one story high, except for the one-and-a-half-story George Bonnallie garage which has a jerkinhead dormer. Two of the properties have garages with front-facing gable roofs; seven have hip roofs; and one has a flat parapet roof.
All of the garages are framed, except for the Thomas Angell garage which is made of concrete blocks. The Colonel John Frye garage, the Wallace White garage, and the Heircy Day garage have modern overhead doors, while all the other garages have double doors that swing out, some folding and swinging out. Several garages have been torn down to make room for extra parking, or because they were a problem to maintain.
Preservation Through Zoning and Bates College Stewardship
The inter-urban street cars stopped running along Main Street in 1932, and the mills closed, one at a time, throughout the second half of the twentieth century. So, what has kept the houses in the Main Street-Frye Street Historic District from being neglected?
Several of the families for whom the houses were built continued to occupy them for three or more generations. Some of the houses on Main Street and Frye Street remained in the same families, receiving appreciation and care, until the 1950s or '60s; two houses were in the same families until the 1970s.
Beginning in 1918, retired, long-time faculty members of Bates College, living on Frye Street, sold or donated their homes to Bates College. Today the college owns seventeen of the nineteen houses on Frye Street. The college has adapted them for student housing, faculty apartments, a student union, a coffeehouse, and the Office of Career Services. The architectural firm of Harriman Associates of Auburn, the successor firm to Coombs & Harriman, did most of the renovations, so changes were sympathetic to the original architecture. Now that Bates owns all of the houses on Frye Street, except 6 Frye and 10 Frye, the college looks after the streetscape, caring for trees, shrubs, and lawns as part of the campus.
The situation that helped to preserve the ambiance of Main Street was the adoption of zoning in 1947. Zoning began in New York City in 1916 to regulate land use and thereby stabilize property values. The large factories of the Industrial Revolution were not wanted in residential neighborhoods. Communities adopted zoning ordinances to divide land into classifications such as: residential, commercial, and industrial, to regulate lot size, building heights, setbacks, and uses, within each classification to protect property values. To protect the beautiful homes along Main Street, the City of Lewiston zoned this stretch of Main Street "Office/Residential," allowing single-family, multi-family, tourist home, and business office use. Stores, shopping malls, gas stations, and free-standing restaurants are prohibited. Thus, Main Street has become an attractive location for upscale professional offices in lovely old homes. Frye Street is zoned "Institutional/Office," which allows single-family, multi-family, office, hotel, or restaurant uses in conjunction with a private school, but not retail uses. By limiting the uses of the properties on Main and Frye Streets, the City of Lewiston assures an attractive use for these old buildings and the preservation of the historic flavor of the neighborhood. Local significance of the district:
Architecture; Community Planning And Development; Politics/government
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
About National Register Listings
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.