Parkside – A Historical Perspective

Parkside is the most densely populated and most ethnically diverse square mile of Maine. One of the first parts of the Portland peninsula to be settled, it was one of the last to be developed. Every stage of the European settlement of Portland - from battles between settlers and Native Americans, to the arrival of waves of the worlds refugees and immigrants - has made it's mark upon Parkside. In many ways, it's story is the story of a changing Maine, in miniature.

Well in to the 20th century, Parkside was sloping fields and thick woods bordering the marshy reaches of Back Cove. Here, by a tidal creek (today the tennis courts in Deering Oaks) Major Benjamin Church fought back a force of French and Indians in September 1689. So remote was the area that even a century later, in 1790, Bramhall Hill was used for the public hanging of murderer Thomas Bird, the first case of capital punishment in the United States under the terms of the then-new constitution.

For over 80 years, the Deering family owned these pastures below Back Street (today Congress Street), Portland's first major land route off the peninsula. Nearby, Deering Street was laid out in the 1850's, filling with the fine homes of families who made their fortunes along the old waterfront on Fore Street. Following the “Great Fire “of 1866, the city turned eagerly to these open lands as the bustling city rebuilt westward off the old peninsula. In the 1870's Grant and Sherman Avenues (now “streets”) were laid out, faced with the triple decker apartment houses that became home to waves of Irish, Italian, and French-Canadian arrivals who came to fill the factories and industries of a busy growing city.

To fill their spiritual needs, the twin baroque towers of Sacred Heart Church (1896), designed by Portland Francis Fasset, rose above the sandy lane that was Mellen Street. In 1879, the Deering family granted Portland title to “Deering's Oaks”, preserving 50 acres of open greenery and ponds beside the rumbling railways to Union Station (1888).

As late as 1913, Buffalo Bills' Wild West show set up in the open fields below High street (today the site of the Forest Avenue Post Office), but by the 1920's, the last lots on Park Avenue had filled with brick and wooden multi-story units facing Deering's ancient oaks. Parkside as we know it,was born.

Many Maine notables have made their home in Parkside, including crusader and Civil War General Neal Dow, Portland Mayor James Phinney Baxter and his son, Maine Governor Percival P. Baxter, Speaker of the US House Thomas Brackett Reed and Suffragette leader, Florence Brooks Whitehouse.

Today over 4000 people live and woark within Parkside's one square mile, many of them Asians, Africans, Middle Easterners, Central and Eastern Europeans, and a rainbow of other nationalities - new arrivals drawn, like predecessors a century ago, to the promise of a new life in a new country. For them, like for so many before, Parkside is the first rung up the ladder of American life.

“Deering's Woods are fresh and fair” wrote Longfellow in 1855. “ My heart goes back to wander there...” For past and present generations of Parksiders, the twin towers of Sacred Heart Church still beckon above the green reaches of Deering Oaks, direct links to Parkside's historic past and hopeful future.

– Herbert Adams, Sherman Street, 1997 CE