The Portland Company

The Portland Company was established in 1846 in conjunction with construction of the Atlantic & St. Lawrence Railroad which was built to connect Portland to Montreal. John A. Poor, the individual most responsible for Portland's successful bid over Boston to become Montreal's winter port via rail, was a Director of the Atlantic & St. Lawrence Railroad and became the first President of the Portland Company. Other Atlantic & St. Lawrence Directors were also stockholders in the Portland Company, including Portland's wealthiest individual John Bundy Brown, who would become President of the company in 1864; Congressman and later Senator and U. S. Secretary of the Treasury William P. Fessenden; and Captain George Turner, who was given a seat on the railroad's Board between the regular annual director's elections, shortly after selling property to the Portland Company for their works.

The period of significance for the Portland Company complex begins with the start of operations in 1847 and extends to the end of foundry work at the Portland Company in 1982. Within this period, specific periods of significance are identified for different areas of significance. During the period of significance, the plant experienced several substantial expansions and numerous small alterations.

In 1873, fire destroyed several buildings at the south end of the property which were then rebuilt. No substantial changes have been made since 1920 except for the demolition of the wooden blacksmith and tin shop and the replacement of the late-19th century wooden boiler shop by a large modem steel building in the second half of the 20th century. A modem brick and wood office building was built on the site of earlier stables circa 1950. Through all of this, a number of the pre-Civil War buildings have remained largely in tact and would be easily recognizable to John A. Poor and the original company directors and employees of the Portland Company.

The use of cast metals, particularly iron, was central to the rapid industrialization and expansion of the United States in the nineteenth century. Although the technology was ancientn the use of it at the scale undertaken during the period the Portland Company was founded was unprecedented. Cast iron has been called, "the plastic of the nineteenth century" for the way it transformed production and expanded the range of products available to industry and the public. Putting all of the stages of production for large machines, like steam locomotives, in one place was a radical advance over traditional practices. Combined with the use of patterned cast iron parts, as opposed to individually hand-crafted unique parts, this advance laid the foundation for Henry Ford's next step in the progression of efficient production, the assembly line. The Portland Company complex represents an important advance in this process and is possibly the only surviving example of such a complex documenting this stage of industrial production in the United States. Its survival is largely intact condition in 2014 is noteworthy and remarkable.

National, State and Local Historic Significance

The Portland Company has national historic significance because it appears to have been the first complex in this country built specifically for the manufacture of railroad equipment with all of the necessary shops and a foundry on a single site. The Portland Company complex as it stands today is a rare surviving example of a pre-Civil War foundry, machine shop, and car shop complex because it retains a number of its original and early buildings, whereas most, if not all, other pre-Civil War complexes have been substantially or wholly demolished. As such, the Portland Company complex contains the oldest surviving railroad shop buildings in the nation still within their historic manufacturing complex context. Recent research indicates the Portland Company appears to be the only surviving pre-Civil War locomotive manufacturing plant in the nation, making it the only one surviving where locomotives were built for the U.S. Government as part of that war effort.

The Portland Company has statewide historic significance because the company made a significant contribution to the development of Maine's railroads (including the state's iconic two-foot gauge lines) and maritime shipping industry. The locomotives, railroad cars, marine engines and boilers, and maritime navigation aids produced entirely or in part at the Portland Company were important to the development of rail and maritime transportation in the state of Maine from the middle of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century. Industrial expansion, natural resource extraction, commerce, and tourism all benefited from improved transportation made possible by products of the Portland Company.

The Portland Company was the state's largest nineteenth century foundry-machine shop, with those two shops combined in a way that was unprecedented in Maine. The company grew to be the state's most substantial engineering and machine manufacturing business, employing 150 of the 500 machinists in the state at one point. The Portland Company also played a significant role in the development of many important industries in Maine including the paper-making, textile, and canning industries. A number of industrial processes likewise benefitted from the research and development of electrical engineer and inventor William Chapman for the Portland Company and through the Chapman Electric Neutralizer Company at the Portland Company.

The Portland Company has local historic significance because it is the only intact nineteenth and early twentieth century industrial complex remaining in the city. Thirty-three manufacturing plants can be identified in the 1876 Bird’s Eye View of Portland. Only the Portland Company complex remains largely intact 138 years later. Portland had 60 sizable companies engaged in industrial production of various sorts in 1924, occupying more than 85 buildings. Of these 85 buildings, fewer than a dozen survive outside the Portland Company, none as complexes. The Portland Company has local historic significance for its association with several significant 19th century planning and development initiatives within the city of Portland. As part of John A. Poor's vision for creating a modem international port at Portland, he conceived of a wide new street along the waterfront which would contain railroad tracks to connect the Atlantic & St. Lawrence R. R. on the east end of the city to the Portland, Saco & Portsmouth R. R. on the west end while providing both railroads access to the numerous wharves between their terminals. The narrow original waterfront street, Fore Street, followed the natural landform, snaking along the shore around Clay and Broad coves. The new street would be built by filling between the existing wharves below Fore Street, far enough out into the harbor to allow the construction of large new warehouse buildings along the land side of the street. Broad Cove would be filled for construction of the Atlantic & St. Lawrence Railroad terminal and for the Portland Company works and Clay Cove would be filled for the street and new buildings. The Portland Company site alone is seven acres, the majority of it made by filling the mud flats and cove. This project was undertaken cooperatively by the two railroads, the Portland Company, and the city of Portland, with the railroads paying the cost of filling between the wharves and the City paying wharf owners for the value oftheir properties seized through eminent domain. The mile-long and one hundred foot wide street would be named Commercial Street(2) This project was the largest urban planning initiative undertaken in the city of Portland in the nineteenth century and was transformative in its effects.

(1) Poor, Laura Elizabeth, John A. Poor. The First International Railway and the Colonization of New England.

(2) Life and Writings of John Alfred Poor, 1890