For months, friends and colleagues who I admire have spoken out on both sides of the debate over the future of the 142 Free St. The increasingly divisive and personal tone in conversations, public hearings and the press leaves me sad and worried. Preservation is at the heart of the Portland Museum of Art, the cultural center of my childhood.
John Calvin Stevens conserved and adaptively reused the McLellan House while adding his own distinctive touch in the L.D.M.
Sweat Galleries. As lead architect for the museum’s restoration of those buildings, as well as the expansion of the landmark Currier Museum of Art in Manchester and renovation of the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor, I know that museums are only sustained if they evolve to express the needs of the communities they serve. Portland and the museum’s bold vision deserve no less.
Pamela W. Hawkes FAIA was inspired to create lives for historic sites after wandering through abandoned 19th-century Fort Williams on Portland’s Casco Bay as a teenager. She is a resident of Munjoy Hill.
Preserving and renewing historic resources has been my life’s work, beginning with illustrations for the Greater Portland Landmarks newsletter in 1976. GPL’s long advocacy for Portland’s historic character has, with distinguished contemporary planning and design, helped create a more beautiful, diverse and dynamic city than the one I grew up in. Demolition in a historic district should never be undertaken without deliberati.
