Built 1861 Opened 1861 Architectural style Italianate architecture | NRHP Reference # 80000227 Area 1,200 m² Added to NRHP 23 June 1980 | |
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Similar Allagash Brewing Company, Evergreen Cemetery, Abyssinian Meeting House, Western Promenade, Merrill Auditorium | ||
The Harrison Bird Brown House is an historic house at 400 Danforth Street in West End of Portland, Maine, United States. It was built in 1861 for Harrison Bird Brown (1831-1915), one of Maine's best-known painters of the late 19th century, and was his home and studio until 1892. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
Description and history
The Brown House stands on the south side of Danforth Street, near the southernmost tip of Falmouth Neck, the peninsula on which downtown Portland and its harbor facilities are located. It is a two story wood frame structure, with a hip roof, bracketed deep cornice, clapboard siding, and a brick foundation. Its main facade faces north, and is three bays wide, with a projecting two-story ell in the left bay, and the entrance at the center bay, set in a projecting enclosed vestibule topped by a simple balustrade. A two story ell projects to the rear of the house, overlooking the Fore River, which housed Harrison Bird Brown's studio space.
Harrison Bird Brown (1831-1915) was one of Portland's best known painters during the late nineteenth century. He had this house built in 1861, and lived and worked here until 1892, when he moved to England, where he died. He met with immediate success in the painting of landscapes, and was the first Maine painter to exhibit at the National Academy of Design in New York City. His painting of White Head on Monhegan Island was exhibited in the Maine pavilion at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.