Portland’s Most Popular Houses; Photo Courtesy Maine Historical Society

Portland’s Most Popular Houses: Side-Hall & the I House

This illustrated talk presents Portland’s late 19th and early 20th-century housing by focusing on two of its most popular houses—the Side-Hall and the I-House. By 1900, both house types had achieved densities of 60 to 80% of all dwellings in most neighborhoods. They also provided flexible accommodation for all classes of the city’s population—upper, middle, and working classes—a rare occurrence for single-house types.

Events > Portland’s Most Popular Houses: Side-Hall & the I House
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Maine Historical Society
489 Congress Street
Portland, Maine 04101 United States
About the Event
Presented by
Maine Historical Society
(207) 774-1822
October 24, 2024

Hear Professor Thomas Hubka, author of Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn, describe how Portland builders creatively adapted Maine’s traditional types of rural houses to an increasingly dense and crowded urban environment. Hubka traces the continuous development of these houses as they merged into modern duplexes and Three-Deckers in the early 20th century.

About the presenter: Thomas Hubka is a Professor Emeritus from the Department of Architecture, University of Wisconsin−Milwaukee. Through almost forty years of scholarship and teaching, he has attempted to link the practice and teaching of architecture to historical and cultural context. He has published widely on topics of popular, vernacular architecture including theoretical works and detailed studies of common buildings such as New England farms, bungalows, ranch houses, and workers’ cottages

His latest books explore America’s most common housing such as workers’ cottages, bungalows, and duplexes: How the Working-Class Home Became Modern, 1900-1940. (University of Minnesota Press, 2021, and Houses without Names: Architecture Nomenclature and the Classification of America’s Common Houses (University of Tennessee Press, 2013).

Event Details:
Thursday, October 24 at 1 p.m. ET
Free & open to the public
Registration is requested