Historic Landmark – Victoria Mansion

If you are looking for a last minute activity for the holiday weekend we recommend a visit to the Victoria Mansion in Portland, ME.  The Italianate estate was the ambitious undertaking of Ruggles Sylvester Morse and his architect Henry Austin.

Here is some background on the mansion from New England Home magazine.

Ruggles Sylvester Morse fashioned his summer retreat in Portland, Maine, after the Italian palaces of the fifteenth century, grand in scale with bold ornamentation. That the massive brownstone villa stood in sharp contrast to the white clapboard and red brick houses of the neighborhood didn’t concern the wealthy hotelier at all. Rather, he quite wanted his summer palace to stand out.

A native of rural Maine, Morse left the state in his teens to seek his fortune. By the late 1840s, his career had landed him in New Orleans, where he grew wealthy as the proprietor of several of the city’s most magnificent hotels.

In 1858, Morse commissioned a summer estate on the coast of Maine. New Haven architect Henry Austin, a recognized master of the Italianate style, designed Morse’s asymmetrical villa around a soaring square tower with a striking view toward Portland Harbor. The design features varied rooflines, deep overhanging eaves and graceful verandas, porches and balconies. Arched and rectangular windows, capped with arched or triangular pediments, play against one another on all façades.

Click here to read more.

Victoria Mansion is open for guided tours from May through October, Monday through Saturday 10 a.m.–4 p.m., Sunday 1 p.m.–5 p.m. $10 adults, $5 children six to seventeen, free under age six. 109 Danforth St., Portland, Maine, (207) 772-4841.

Architectural Fantasy Camp

You’ve probably heard of adult Baseball Fantasy Camps but Architectural Fantasy Camps?  It’s true.  The Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust is offering a four day adult architectural fantasy camp this October in Oak Park, IL.  The class is geared to non-architects who are passionate about design.  Campers will learn basic drafting techniques and create their own original floor plans.

Participants will work with architects in Wright’s original drafting studio in Oak Park.  What an inspiration!

The Power of Architecture

Architecture is a powerful tool for community building. This story about the Park Street Clinic in New Haven demonstrates how a building can not only be used to help heal the sick but the community as well.

Laboratories don’t usually stand out as works of architecture; most are tucked out of sight. The new Park Street Clinical Laboratory in New Haven, however, is something else entirely—a building that not only aids medical diagnoses but is a quite visible attempt to heal longstanding physical and psychological rifts in the surrounding community.

The latest addition to the Yale-New Haven Hospital complex—one of the most respected and heavily used medical campuses in the country—the six-story Park Street building was privately developed by Fusco Corp. and leased to the hospital. It is one of three close-knit structures in a $627 million expansion, including the Smilow Cancer Hospital that opened last fall and a garage plus apartment building for patients’ families completed in January. The lab’s randomly checkered façade of gray panels and yellow, orange, white and clear glass is designed to glow day and night as a beacon on the western edge of the medical campus looking toward downtown New Haven. Wedged between the gargantuan, 9,000-car public Air Rights Garage and the new hospital across the street, it is also the entry portal for 1,000 or more cancer patients arriving by car each day for treatments.

Click here to read the entire article from The Wall Street Journal.

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