Day, Holman, House
2 Goff St., Auburn, MEIn addition to its value as an outstanding example of the Queen Anne Style, the Holman Day House is rich in Its association with this famous Maine author. Remembered for their colorful Maine characters and accurate depiction of Maine customs and life, the works of Holman F. Day are an important part of the literary heritage of Maine.
Born in 1865 in Vassalboro, Maine, Day long served as a newspaper correspondent and editor in the state. He started by publishing the Weekly Vassalboro News for 2 years while still in high school. Upon graduation from Colby College in 1887, he worked for the Fairfield Journal, was managing editor of the Union Publishing Company of Bangor which printed 17 weeklies, and then became owner and editor of the Dexter Gazette. By merging with two of his competitors, using his father-in-law's capital, Day established the Eastern Gazette, a journal still, published today. He left the Gazette when hired by the Lewiston Journal to cover the Maine Legislature.
In 1898, still reporting for the Journal, and also filing special articles with the Boston Herald and Globe and the New York Tribune, Day began writing a daily column of poetry. Called "up in Maine," this column was carried by newspapers across the country for 6 years. These poems were collected in Day's first book, also entitled Up in Maine. Two more books of catchy verse were printed in the next 4 years, and the three entertained more than 30,000 readers.
While in the Lewiston area for the 17 years of his Journal career, Day was married to Helen Rowell Gerald, whose father built them the house on Goff Street. It was into this house that Day retreated from journalistic pressures to write first his poetry, and then his prose. He wrote at least 18 novels in his lifetime, his first Squire Plum, was also made into a play. His most famous novel was King Spruce, which became a prototype for books about Maine lumbering. This book firmly established Day's reputation as a novelist and delighted President Theodore Roosevelt so much that he invited Day to the White House. The formula Day employed in these early volumes of poetry and fiction continued to be a success in later works. He had an eye for unusual Maine characters and an ear for their unique dialect. He then wove stories around the personalities and exploits of the woodsmen and seafarers he had observed and with whose ways he was familiar.
Day's interest was soon directed to the infant motion-picture industry. Beginning in 1918, he and his associates made two-reel pictures in Augusta, often dramatizations of his own stories. Day then moved to the west coast to become a scenario writer for the Hollywood film community, while he continued to write novels. Later, he also went into radio broadcasting as "The Old Salt", a portrayal of a Maine deep-sea fisherman.
Holman Francis Day died in Mill Valley, California in 1935.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
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.