page_title: History of Portland, Maine
section_title: The Great Fire and rebuilding
hierarchical_section_title: History of Portland, Maine / The Great Fire and rebuilding
caption_attribution_description: Old Library, Portland, ME; from a c. 1905 postcard.
context_page_description: The History of Portland, Maine begins when the area was called Machigonne, meaning "great neck," by Algonquians who originally inhabited the peninsula. It extends to the city's recent cultural and economic renaissance.
context_section_description: The Great Fire of July 4, 1866, ignited during the Independence Day celebration, destroyed most of the commercial buildings in the city, half the churches and hundreds of homes. More than 10,000 people were left homeless. After this fire, Portland was rebuilt with brick and took on a Victorian appearance. Prosperous citizens began building mansions in the city's fashionable West End. 
  The quality and style of architecture in Portland is in large part due to the succession of well-known 19th-century architects who worked in the city. Alexander Parris (1780–1852) arrived about 1800 and endowed Portland with numerous Federal style buildings, although some were lost in the 1866 fire. Charles A. Alexander (1822–1882) designed numerous Victorian mansions. Henry Rowe (1810–1870) specialized in Gothic cottages. George M. Harding (1827–1910) designed many of the commercial buildings in Portland's Old Port, as well as ornate residential buildings. Around the turn of the century, Frederick A. Tompson (1857–1919) also designed many of city's residential buildings. 
  But by far the most influential and prolific architects of the West End area were Francis H. Fassett (1823–1908) and John Calvin Stevens (1855–1940). Fassett was commissioned to build the Maine General Hospital Building (now a wing of the Maine Medical Center) and the Williston West Church as well as many other churches, schools, commercial buildings, apartment buildings, private residences, and his own duplex home on Pine Street. From the early 1880s to the 1930s Stevens worked in a wide range of styles from the Queen Anne and Romanesque popular at the beginning of his career, to the Mission Revival Style of the 1920s, but the architect is best known for his pioneering efforts in the Shingle and Colonial Revival styles, examples of which abound in this area.
  In 1895–1896, electric streetcars replaced horse-drawn carriages as the primary method of transportation into and around Portland. A week-long strike disrupted transportion beginning on July 12, 1916 and lasted until July 17. The laborers, with widespread community support, won union recognition and other improvements.
caption: Old Public Library c. 1905 (now the Baxter Building, The VIA Agency)
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