Monday, March 9, 2009

Abyssinian Meeting House


From Wikipedia...

The Abyssinian Meeting House is an historic house built by free African-Americans in Portland, Maine at 73–75 Newbury St. Established in 1828, the Meeting House was the cultural center for African-Americans in southern Maine from its inception until foreclosure in 1917. The house was redeveloped into tenement apartments in 1924 before being seized by the City of Portland in 1991. After sitting vacant for 6 years, the Meeting House was bought for historic preservation by the Committee to Restore the Abyssinian. When established, it was just the third African American Meeting House in the United States after Boston and Nantucket, Massachusetts. It is one the few houses remaining following the1866 Great Fire of Portland, Maine.


Check out the Abyssinian restoration project's website here for some great pictures of the progress.

3 comments:

  1. Hee. In the portal, I thought the green and yellow were part of the building! Love its history and the beautiful stone. So nice to see that it's being preserved and restored.

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  2. Beat me to it! Thought about photographing this one two weekends ago, but so much confusion... Nice job though. You captured the state of affairs at this point.

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  3. Readers of this page may be interested in my new book, A Space for Faith: The Colonial Meetinghouses of New England, which just won the Independent Publishers 2011 Gold Medal for the best northeast regional nonfiction book of the year. See: www.aspaceforfaith.com .

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