1866 Portland fire
A01=John F. Bauman
aging downtown revitalization
Author_John F. Bauman
British and French colonial conflict
Canadian grain trade
Casco Bay geography
Category=JBSD
Category=JHBD
Category=NHB
Category=NHK
civic leadership initiatives
civic planning and reinvention
coastal city development
coastal tourism history
coastal urban studies
colonial American trade
cultural and historical identity
cultural geography of Portland
economic and aesthetic balance
economic growth versus environmental preservation
environmental stewardship in cities
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Gateway to Vacationland history
Great Depression urban impact
historic architecture preservation
historic city redevelopment
historic downtown preservation
historic preservation movement
hotel and promenade construction
industrial and commercial balance
livable city initiatives
maritime commerce history
maritime industry legacy
maritime trade decline
New England port cities
New England urban planning
nineteenth-century railroad hub
nineteenth-century urban growth
Old Port restoration
port city economic transformation
port city resilience
port infrastructure evolution
Portland Maine history
post-Revolution port growth
postwar deindustrialization
regional trade networks
shipbuilding heritage
suburban expansion effects
tourist destination evolution
twentieth-century city planning
urban fire reconstruction
urban heritage management
urban redevelopment challenges
urban renewal efforts
urban tourism economy
waterfront district history
waterfront tourism revival
Product details
- ISBN 9781558499096
- Weight: 420g
- Dimensions: 153 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 07 Feb 2012
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Situated on a peninsula jutting into picturesque Casco Bay, Portland has long been admired for its geographical setting - the ""beautiful city by the sea,"" as native son Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called it. At the same time, Portland's deep, ice-free port has made it an ideal site for the development of coastal commerce and industry. Much of the city's history, John F. Bauman shows, has been defined by the effort to reconcile the competing interests generated by these attributes - to balance the imperatives of economic growth with a desire to preserve Portland's natural beauty.
Caught in the crossfire of British and French imperial ambitions throughout the colonial era, Portland emerged as a prosperous shipbuilding center and locus of trade in the decades following the American Revolution. During the nineteenth century it became a busy railroad hub and winter port for Canadian grain until a devastating fire in 1866 reduced much of the city to ruins. Civic leaders responded by reinventing Portland as a tourist destination, building new hotels, parks, and promenades, and proclaiming it the ""Gateway to Vacationland.""
After losing its grain trade in the 1920s and suffering through the Great Depression, Portland withered in the years following World War II as it wrestled with the problems of deindustrialization, suburbanization, and an aging downtown. Efforts at urban renewal met with limited success until the 1980s, when a concerted plan of historic preservation and the restoration of the Old Port not only revived the tourist trade but eventually established Portland as one of America's ""most livable cities.
Caught in the crossfire of British and French imperial ambitions throughout the colonial era, Portland emerged as a prosperous shipbuilding center and locus of trade in the decades following the American Revolution. During the nineteenth century it became a busy railroad hub and winter port for Canadian grain until a devastating fire in 1866 reduced much of the city to ruins. Civic leaders responded by reinventing Portland as a tourist destination, building new hotels, parks, and promenades, and proclaiming it the ""Gateway to Vacationland.""
After losing its grain trade in the 1920s and suffering through the Great Depression, Portland withered in the years following World War II as it wrestled with the problems of deindustrialization, suburbanization, and an aging downtown. Efforts at urban renewal met with limited success until the 1980s, when a concerted plan of historic preservation and the restoration of the Old Port not only revived the tourist trade but eventually established Portland as one of America's ""most livable cities.
John F. Bauman, a historian, is visiting research professor of planning, development, and environment at the Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, USA.
