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Historically Portland's piers acted as extensions of the streets with buildings on both sides only with water underneath. |
In 2010 Portland Maine's waterfront code and future was a big topic and
having analyzed it from the beginning of my career, I wrote this July 2010 Maine Sunday Telegram article to lay
down a blueprint for a successful approach to development there. Using that
same analysis as my thesis combined with a form-based approach I suggested we
treat the piers as streets with buildings along the sides of the piers. Great read for those who care about building better places to live especially those with waterfronts. Here's the article text first half:
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My July 2010 article and excerpt. |
Portland
Piers Are Streets
By
Michael Belleau copyright 2010
Special
to the Maine Sunday Telegram
July
7, 2010
When
we walk down to Portland’s waterfront and stroll through the fabric of the Old
Port or meander along Commercial Street, our senses are focused inevitably on
the water. The smell of the ocean when the weather warms up and the sounds of
boats and birds beckon but the site of the water is what we yearn for. Our
visual connection to this place is constantly broken by buildings and then
re-established through view corridors. Views from a distance are balanced by
walkways along the water’s edge. This variety of water view experiences is what
makes Portland itself a distinct place. In order to answer the question of how
to build here we need not get too complicated. We just need to acknowledge the
deep structure formed by history here that has worked all along.
A
map of Portland in 1690 shows just three roads: one along the shore (Fore St.),
one going from this one up hill (India St. now), to one along ridge (Congress
St. now). When Captain Moet burned the city down in 1775 piers had begun to
sprout along the waterfront, a few of them aligned with the streets coming down
from the spine of Congress Street. By 1823 many more piers had sprung up, most
of which were extensions of the cities street fabric coming down from Congress
Street, across Middle and Fore and out into the harbor. Starting at the west
end and moving east we can see streets becoming piers at the streets State,
Anne, High, Center, Cotton, Cross, Union (the largest wharf, Union Wharf),
Plum, Exchange, Market, Silver, Willow, Deer, Moose, Tyng, King (India),
Hancock and Monitor. Tyng Street actually went out into the water as a pier and
came to an end at an ‘L’ intersection over the water with Thames Street’s pier
extension!
As
these piers grew longer they began to differ little from the same streets on
land with rows of buildings along both sides of a street at the center of the
wharfs except the back of the buildings were at the waters edge with ships tied
up. The street fabric of Portland was one of the city running right out into
the sea.
The
Portland experience was of walking down a street seeing the water at the end,
and as you approached that end, glimpsing the water on both sides between
buildings and realizing you were over the water. If you walked along the
waterfront down and between wharfs you could experience a myriad of building
forms, views, wharf edge depths, site lines, people, ships, etc. However, as
with many human scaled environments, the Industrial Revolution inadvertently
removed a large portion of this experience.
In
1852 the railroad tracks to Montreal were laid across the wharfs out in the
water close to land. This line of tracks became Commercial Street when the water
between the tracks and Fore Street was filled in. The crenellated outline of
the waterfront edge was replaced by a monotonous straight one. Piers still
multiplied (I count 36 total from 1866 map) and grew further into the harbor
while railroad track spurs ran out down the piers to expedite the movement of
goods. The new tracks divided the waterfront into a city side and a wharf side.
You knew if you were out in the water and if you were not because you had to
cross the monotonous tracks first. Mystery and intrigue, essential components
to the heightened urban visual and spatial human experience began to evaporate.
Now,
with trains long gone, we see the gradual restoration of the street fabric of
Portland especially down at the east end of the waterfront. Commercial Street
has become a sort of Main Street of the waterfront area. 100 Commercial St.,
the Thomas Block, exemplifies the kind of building form we generally enjoy
along the water side of this street. At four stories it is not too tall, curves
along the sidewalk forming a wall to enclose the street so that we experience
the street as an outdoor public room, and has storefronts at ground level to
engage the pedestrian and provide a sense of safety and activity. We can use
this building as a model for development along the water side of Commercial
Street to the depth of the Thomas Block. It is the building overall form that
we wish to guide to meet our collective needs, not strictly the use.
Next post will have rest of article and diagram explaining concept.