Item 71699 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow homes in Portland, ca. 1938

Item 71699 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow homes in Portland, ca. 1938
Contributed by Boston Public Library
Item 71699
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow homes in Portland, ca. 1938
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Image Info

This greeting postcard from Portland, Maine features a quote from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “My Lost Youth” accompanied by a portrait of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and images of the two homes in which he lived in Portland.

Longfellow was born in 1807 in the Federal-style house belonging to his aunt and uncle Abigail and Captain Samuel Stephenson. The house, depicted on the righthand side of the postcard, sat at the corner of Fore and Hancock Streets in Portland and was torn down in 1955. After living in the Stephenson home for several months, Longfellow moved to the first brick house In Portland, located on Congress Street and depicted here on the lefthand side. The house was passed by Longfellow’s sister Anne Longfellow Pierce to the Maine Historical Society in 1901 to be preserved as a memorial museum and came to be known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House.

The caption reads, "Greetings from Portland, Maine."

The Tichnor Brothers printing company published this type of postcard circa 1938 as part of their Maine series. These, and other postcards, by the Tichnor Brothers Company are officially known as the Tichnor Gloss Series because the photographs were notoriously retouched on such a level that does not allow the postcards to be classified as photographs or paintings.

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