SACRPH holds a national conference every two years. The conference provides a forum for historians and planners to present current papers as well as to attend workshops on current planning history topics. The conference also features in-depth tours and workshops on historical and contemporary planning issues in the host city.
Society for American City and Regional Planning History
And
The Northern New England Chapter: American Planning Association
Present
The 12th National Conference on Planning History
PORTLAND, MAINE
October 25 - 28, 2007
Conference Program
Conference Headquarters (hotel information)
Conference Registration Form (online or download)
About the Conference
For practitioners and historians of planning the host city for this year’s biennial SACRPH conference, Portland, Maine, provides a unique venue for exploring the past, present, and future of urbanism. Maine’s premier city, and the economic if not the political capital of the state, Portland contains barely 64,000 people. A port city, which still boasts an active fishing fleet and fish exchange, historically the city powered its economy by shipping grain not fish. As early as the 1870s city boosters capitalized on the city’s excellent rail and steamship connections, its Winslow Homer- enshrined rockbound coastline, and its proximity to the Maine Woods to herald itself: “Gateway to Vacationland.”
Portland’s deep, well-protected harbor potentially rivaled Boston. In 1775 the British Navy under Henry Mowat, eyeing the strategic significance of the town then called Falmouth and to punish its patriot community, demolished the Massachusetts outpost during a four hour naval bombardment. But, Portland rose from the ashes and in the ante-bellum era, after Maine became a state following the 1820 Missouri Compromise, the city built a flourishing economy around shipbuilding, fishing, timber, molasses, and granite. That maritime leadership was enhanced in 1807, when Captain Lemuel Moody gathered subscriptions to build a maritime signal tower on the top of Munjoy Hill, which announced the arrival of ships by a unique system of colorful signal flags. Now celebrating its 200th year, flags still fly daily from the top of the Portland Observatory, including the insignia of cruise ships in port.
Portland’s economy shifted in the 1850s to railroading and grain storage when city businessmen bested Boston’s in the contest for the right to receive, store, and transship seasonally ice-locked Canadian wheat. Even the disastrous July 4th fire of 1866, which consumed most of the pre-Civil War cityscape, failed to slow progress. Portland rebuilt in the red brick now emblematic of the city’s historic Old Port. The Canadian Grand Trunk Railroad made post-Civil War Portland a railroad hub as well as a port. Its old oceanfront and 18th century piers were filled creating a wide, multi-tracked Commercial street lined with warehouses, train sheds, and long wharves, many still operating. Today Portland’s impressive, National Register quality architecture reveals that prosperity. At the edge of the Old Port, in the early 19th century, two Portland merchant princes, the brothers Hugh and Stephen McClellan, built magnificent Federal-style mansion. One now forms part of the Portland Museum of Art close to the Eastland Hotel. Nearby is the celebrated 1832 Charles Q. Clapp House, one of America’s finest examples of Greek Revival architecture. This effulgence of urbanity culminated in 1859 when Maine native, New Orleans enriched, Ruggles Sylvester Morse built his Italian-Villa style summer home at Spring and Danforth Streets. It is now the exquisite Victoria Mansion.
Unlike New Bedford or Providence, Portland never became a New England mill city, although railroading, shipbuilding, stove works even a chewing gum manufactory, provided industrial jobs. Its location convenient to the great Maine Woods (memorialized by Thoreau), its rugged, rocky, pine-tree studded coast and crashing waves hallowed in Longfellow’s poems and Winslow Homer’s art, enthroned Portland and the Maine coast as an escape from the ravages of industrialism. After the Civil War wealthy “rusticators,” the Rockefellers and Cyrus Curtis to mention two, discovered places like Bar Harbor and Camden and commenced the reshaping of Maine as “Vacationland.” Portland became a destination not only for Canadian wheat, but also for tourists traveling from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston to Camden, Bar Harbor and elsewhere in Maine. Great hotels and seaside inns sprang up and by the 1880s tourism had become big business in Portland. To further enhance the aesthetic lure of Portland local leaders, including architect John Calvin Stevens, mayor James Phinney Baxter, and city engineer William Goodwin (with inspiration from the Olmsted Brothers landscape designers) planned summer colonies on places such as Cushing Island, and in Portland laid out promenades overlooking the ocean and the mountains on the city’s eastern and western edges. In 1895, again aided by the Olmsted firm, the city designed a boulevard circling the Back Cove, which linked with a park whose name memorialized the land’s donor, the Deering family. Some of the wistful character of this romantic era can still be visualized in Portland’s Cape Elizabeth suburb, a summer-like community situated in the shadow of the famous Portland Head Light. Lining the shore there are some of the finest examples of architect John Calvin Stevens shingle and stick style “cottage” residences, including the well-known C.A. Brown House, 1885-1886. All of these Cape Elizabeth gems, together with the Victoria Mansion and the city’s vast Greek Revival architectural heritage attest to Portland’s historical richness. That, of course, includes the Old Port where today a stone’s throw in any direction will hit a superb restaurant, more testimony that Portland is an urban treasure, despite its diminutive size.
The Portland 2007 conference offers a host of exciting events. Thursday’s
symposium on “Portland as a Planning Laboratory: Working Waterfronts
in a Postindustrial Economy” features guided bus and boat tours
of Portland’s Casco Bay where commercial and research functions
share space with a still vital fishing industry. Following these tours
a panel of planners, historians and city and civic leaders will explore
Portland’s waterfront history and waterfront development issues.
Friday’s plenary session will assemble a group of distinguished
speakers who will examine these same issues in national and global perspective.
Other topics to be discussed during Friday and Saturday sessions are
the tensions over contested waterfront space, historic preservation in
waterfront planning, tourism as an economic driver, and housing affordability
and clean, efficient transportation as factors shaping post-industrial
urban futures. Internationally renowned architect Denise Scott Brown
will deliver the conference’s keynote address. Sunday’s tours
will spotlight Portland’s Olmsted legacy, the “Old Port” as
a historic preservation treasure, Portland’s historic residential
architecture, and the commercial history of Freeport.
Conference Headquarters
The conference will take place at the historic Eastland Park Hotel in downtown Portland. The hotel first opened in June 1927, just on day after Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic. Designed by local architect Herbert Rhodes, the 241-room hotel was conceived and built by Portland hotelier Henry P. Rines. Mr. Rines and his wife had frequently traveled to Europe and the Middle East and the hotel design incorporated Spanish, Danish and Egyptian themes. The Eastland lobby features a beamed ceiling, wrought iron candelabras copied from old fixtures in a Madrid café and Spanish wall sconces, and an Egyptian Dining Room, now known as Adeline’s Grill.
The hotel is located in the heart of Portland’s arts and shopping district, and is only moments away from Portland's famed Old Port waterfront and the financial district. Visit http://www.eastlandparkhotel.com for additional information. To make reservations, please call the hotel directly and mention the group name to be sure you get the discounted rate. The cut-off date for the group rate is October 1, 2007 for both hotels.
Eastland Park Hotel
157 High Street
Portland, ME 04101
Telephone 207-775-5411
FAX 207-775-2872
Toll free 888-671-8008
Group name: Society of American City Regional Planning 12th National
Conference on Planning History
One block of 100 rooms @ $119
Additional block of 40 rooms @ $149
Rooms also have been reserved at La Quinta Inn & Suites Portland
340 Park Avenue
Portland, ME 04102
207-871-0611
Group name: City Planners
Block of 75 rooms at $82
The La Quinta Inn & Suites Portland is located in the heart of Portland's Ball Park District, near several popular attractions including the State Theater, Merrill Auditorium, Cumberland County Civic Center and Portland Stage Company. Take advantage of the hotel's complimentary airport shuttle service to and from the Portland Jetport and other local venues (5am-10pm). Features such as free high-speed Internet access and a delicious complimentary continental breakfast.
Portland International Jetport is serviced by ten commercial carriers
(including Continental, Delta, USAir, United Express, Northwest, Jet
Blue, and AirTran) with daily arrivals from 14 hub cities. Just minutes
(3 miles) from Downtown Portland, quick and affordable transportation
is available upon arrival. Visit http://www.portlandjetport.org for
more information.