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Letter
From the Director
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A Letter from the Executive Director
I think we really knew we had a new home the day the sign arrived. We were already settled in our renovated office building at 674 Brighton Avenue, the ordeal of moving behind us, but the place still didn't seem quite "ours." Then the cheerful blue and white MAINE HUMANITIES COUNCIL logo appeared, announcing to the world – and Portland's Rosemont neighborhood in particular – that we were here, delivering "the power and pleasure of ideas" to the people of Maine.
After almost 25 years in downtown Portland, we left our 19th-century Cape on Cumberland Avenue with a certain reluctance. We knew we'd miss the excitement of the Arts District – not to mention the Public Market at lunchtime! But we had long outgrown our space. It had housed us in our days as a chiefly grant-making agency but had filled to the bursting point as we expanded in recent years in so many important new directions. Downtown commercial real estate proving too expensive for a small non-profit, we looked farther afield and discovered the red brick building you see below. Thanks to a 3-1 matching Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the
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Humanities to support the Council's offices and its Maine Center for the Book, we bought it and redesigned its interior.
Come for a visit. We have parking aplenty (no more running out with quarters to feed the meter) and can offer you a place to sit down (no more having to lean on the copy machine while waiting to see a staffer). We have a handsome new conference room, ample storage for the thousands of books which we ship each year to programs around the state, and 3,000 square feet of office space. Out-of-town visitors will find us conveniently close to Exit 8 on the Interstate, yet near that longtime Portland landmark, Deering High School. Our award-winning architect Constance Bloomfield and our very able general contractor Stephen Sewall did a remarkable job of transforming an ordinary building into a space it is a joy to enter. Warmest thanks to them both!
Thanks, too, to staff – especially office manager Trudy Hickey and administrative assistant Tricia Hunt – who not only planned and organized, but conducted a major move while keeping all our programs on track. The paint had scarcely dried this fall when, for example, we found ourselves running a statewide conference on the humanities and healthcare and inaugurating what we hope will be an annual public humanities weekend devoted to a major composer or genre of music. (We started, quite ambitiously, with Bach.) Meanwhile, our Board continues its thoughtful and well researched long-range planning initiative – and let me add a special welcome to new Board member Jean Wilkinson, a retired Fleet Boston Financial vice president and a well known civic activist in Maine.
When you do visit 674 Brighton, you can look in one direction and see a busy Portland street lined with professional offices. Then you can look out back and see the well preserved wetlands where the Stroudwater River begins. It's a nice visual metaphor for 21st-century Maine, and we're proud to be part of it.
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