what was henry wadsworth longfellows home famous for? It was the first to have this in america.?

Answer 1

possibly a third story?

[quote] The Wadsworth–Longfellow House is also an important architectural artifact of New England's past. Originally a two–story structure with a pitched roof, it was the first wholly brick dwelling in Portland. Zilpah and Stephen Longfellow (Henry's parents) added a third story in 1815. The only single–family residence to survive downtown Congress Street's change from a mixed commercial and residential neighborhood on the edge of town to an urban business district, it is the oldest standing structure on the Portland peninsula.

Answer 2

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lived in one of two houses for most of his life: the Wadsworth-Longfellow House on Congress Street in Portland, Maine, where he grew up; and Craigie House, the 1759 colonial mansion in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lived from 1837 until his death in 1882.

The Wadsworth-Longfellow House is also an important architectural artifact of New England's past. Originally a two-story structure with a pitched roof, it was the first wholly brick dwelling in Portland.

Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Maine, with a 2004 population of 63,882. Portland is Maine's cultural, social and economic capital. Tourists are drawn to Portland's historic Old Port district along Portland Harbor, which is at the mouth of the Fore River and part of Casco Bay. Portland Head Light in nearby Cape Elizabeth is also a popular tourist draw.

The city seal depicts a phoenix rising out of ashes, which goes with its motto, Resurgam, Latin for "I will rise again", in reference to Portland's recoveries from four devastating fires.[1] The city of Portland, Oregon, was named for Portland, Maine.

The Portland Public School District is the largest school system in Maine. The city is also the county seat of Cumberland County.

Portland was originally called "Machigonne" by the native people who first lived there. It was settled by the British in 1632 as a fishing and trading settlement and renamed Casco. In 1658 its name was changed again, this time to "Falmouth." A monument at the end of Congress Street where it meets the Eastern Promenade is a tribute to the four historical names for Portland.

In 1675, the village was completely destroyed by the Wampanoag people during King Philip's War. The community was rebuilt, to be destroyed by the same natives again several years later. On October 18, 1775, the community was destroyed yet again, bombarded during the American Revolutionary War by the Royal Navy under command of Captain Henry Mowat. While visiting the town on a voyage earlier that same year, Mowat had been taken hostage at Marston’s Tavern on Middle Street near the square (close by the site of present-day Longfellow Books). His captors were renegades from Brunswick.

Following the war, a section of Falmouth called "The Neck" developed as a commercial port and began to grow rapidly as a shipping center. In 1786, the citizens of Falmouth formed a separate town in Falmouth Neck and named it "Portland." Portland's economy was greatly stressed by the Embargo Act of 1807 (prohibition of trade with the British) and the War of 1812. In 1820 Maine became a state and Portland was selected as its capital. By this time both the Embargo Act and the war had ended, and Portland's economy began to recover. In 1832 the capital was moved to Augusta.

Portland was a center for protests concerning the Maine law of 1851 culminating in the Portland Rum Riot on June 2, 1855.

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. Citizens began building huge Victorian mansions along the city's Western Promenade.


First National Bank, Middle and Exchange Streets, c. 1910The 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 left Portland with numerous Federal style buildings, although some would be lost in the 1866 fire. Charles A. Alexander (1822–1882) provided many designs for 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 many of Portland's ornate residential buildings. Around the turn of the century Frederick A. Tompson (1857–1906) designed many of Portland's residential buildings.

But by far the most influential and prolific architects of the Western Promenade area were Francis Fassett (1823–1906) and John Calvin Stevens (1855–1940). He was commissioned to build the Maine General Building (now a wing of the Maine Medical Center) and the Williston West Church as well as several schools and his own home. 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.

The Victorian style architecture, which was popular during Portland's rebuilding, has been preserved very well by an emphasis on preservation on the part of the city government. In 1982 the area was entered on the National Register of Historic Places. In modern lifestyle surveys, it is often cited as one of America's best small cities to live in.

The erection of the Maine Mall, an indoor shopping center established in the suburb of South Portland during the 1970s, had a significant effect on Portland's downtown. Department stores and other major franchises, many from Congress Street or Free Street, either moved to the nearby mall or went out of business. This was a mixed blessing for locals, protecting the city's character (chain stores are often uninterested in it now) but led to a number of empty storefronts. Residents had to venture out of town for certain products and services no longer available on the peninsula.

Since the mid-1990s, Maine College of Art has been a revitalizing force in the downtown area, bringing in students from around the country, and restoring the historic Porteous building on Congress Street as its main facility. The school has also maintained the Baxter Building, once home to the city's public library, as a computer lab and photography studio.

Portland is currently experiencing a building boom, though much more controlled and conservative than a previous building boom during the 1980s. In recent years, Congress Street has become home to more stores and eateries, spurred on by the expanding Maine College of Art and the conversion of office buildings to high-end condos. Rapid development is occurring in the city's historically industrial Bayside neighborhood, as well as the emerging harborside Ocean Gateway neighborhood at the base of Munjoy Hill.

Cambridge is a city in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts, United States. It was named in honor of Cambridge, England. Cambridge is most famous for the two prominent universities that call it home: Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 101,355. It is the fifth most populous city in the state.

Cambridge is a county seat of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, along with Lowell. Though the county government was abolished in 1997, it still exists as a geographical and political region. The employees of Middlesex County courts, jails, registries, and other county agencies now work directly for the state.

Cambridge is noted for its diverse population, both racially and economically. Residents, known as Cantabrigians, range from affluent MIT and Harvard professors to working-class families to immigrants. The first legal applications in America for same-sex marriage licenses were issued at Cambridge's City Hall.[1]

The city and its universities, particularly Harvard, have strong leftist traditions, with some (typically outside the city) even referring to the city as the PRC, or the "People's Republic of Cambridge" and Harvard as the Kremlin on the Charles. Cambridge is also known as "Boston's Left Bank" (although it is not part of the city of Boston).

Cambridge was established as the town of "Newtowne" in 1630, located at the first convenient Charles River crossing west of Boston. Newtowne was one of a number of towns (including Boston, Dorchester, Watertown, and Weymouth) founded by the 700 original Puritan colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony under governor John Winthrop. The original village site was the heart of today's Harvard Square, while the town included a much larger area than the present city, with various outlying parts becoming independent towns over the years: Newton (originally Newtown) in 1690, Lexington (Cambridge Farms) in 1712, and Arlington (West Cambridge) and Brighton (Little Cambridge), which was annexed by Boston in 1807.

In 1636 Harvard College was founded by the colony to train ministers and Newtowne was chosen for its site by Thomas Dudley. In 1638 the name was changed to "Cambridge" (after Cambridge, England) to reflect its status as the center for higher education in the colony.

Cambridge grew slowly as an agricultural village eight miles by road from Boston, the capital of the colony. By the American Revolution, most residents lived near the Common and Harvard College, with farms and estates comprising most of the town. Most of the inhabitants were descendants of the original Puritan colonists, but there was also a small elite of Anglicans "worthies" who were not involved in village life, made their livings from estates, investments, and trade, and lived in mansions along "the Road to Watertown" (today's Brattle Street), which is known as Tory Row. Most of these estates were confiscated after the revolution and sold to Loyalists. On January 24th of 1776, Henry Knox arrived with the artillery that was captured from Fort Ticonderoga.

Between 1790 and 1840, Cambridge began to grow rapidly with the construction of the West Boston Bridge in 1792 that connected Cambridge directly to Boston, making it no longer necessary to travel eight miles through the Boston Neck, Roxbury, and Brookline to cross the Charles River. A second bridge, the Canal Bridge, opened in 1809 alongside the new Middlesex Canal. The new bridges and roads made what were formerly estates and marshland prime industrial and residential districts. Soon after, turnpikes were built: the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike (today's Broadway and Concord Ave.), the Middlesex Turnpike (Hampshire St. and Massachusetts Ave. northwest of Porter Square), and what are today's Cambridge, Main, and Harvard Streets were roads to connect various areas of Cambridge to the bridges. In addition, railroads crisscrossed the town during the same era, leading to the development of Porter Square as well as the creation of neighboring town Somerville from the formerly rural parts of Charlestown.

Cambridge was incorporated as the second city in Massachusetts in 1846. Its commercial center also began to shift from Harvard Square to Central Square, which became the downtown of the city. Between 1850 and 1900, Cambridge took on much of its present character — streetcar suburban development along the turnpikes, with working-class and industrial neighborhoods focused on East Cambridge, comfortable middle-class housing being built on old estates in Cambridgeport and Mid-Cambridge, and upper-class enclaves near Harvard University and on the minor hills of the city. The coming of the railroad to North Cambridge and Northwest Cambridge then led to three major changes in the city: the development of massive brickyards and brickworks between Massachusetts Ave., Concord Ave. and Alewife Brook; the ice-cutting industry launched by Frederic Tudor on Fresh Pond; and the carving up of the last estates into residential subdivisions to provide housing to the thousands of immigrants that moved to work in the new industries.

By 1920, Cambridge was one of the main industrial cities of New England with nearly 120,000 residents. As industry in New England began to decline during the Great Depression and after World War II, Cambridge lost much of its industrial base. It also began the transition to being an intellectual, rather than an industrial, center. Harvard University had always been important in the city (both as a landowner and as an institution), but began to play a more dominant role in the city's life and culture. Also, the move of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from Boston in 1912 ensured Cambridge's status as an intellectual center of the United States.

After the 1950s, the city population began to decline slowly, as families were replaced by single people and young couples, and by the end of the twentieth century, Cambridge had one of the most expensive housing markets in the Northeastern United States. The 1980s brought a wave of high technology start ups, creating software such as Visicalc and Lotus 1-2-3, and advanced computers, but many of these companies fell into decline with the fall of the minicomputer and DOS based computers.

While maintaining much diversity in class, race, and age, it became harder and harder for those who grew up in the city to be able to afford to stay. As of 2006, while the Cambridge real estate market is widely considered to be overvalued, its mix of amenities and proximity to Boston have kept housing prices relatively stable.