The Captain S. C. Blanchard House is an historic house at 317 Main Street in
Yarmouth, Maine. Built in 1855, it is one of Yarmouth's finest examples of
Italianate architecture
The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...
. It was built for
Sylvanus Blanchard
Captain Sylvanus Blanchard (April 9, 1778 – January 6, 1858) was an American merchant sea captain. A native of North Yarmouth, Maine, after retiring from the seas he became a noted shipwright, owner of one of the four main shipyards at the harbor ...
, a ship's captain and shipyard owner. The house was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The building is now home to the 317 Main Community Music Center.
Description and history
The Blanchard House is located on the north side of Main Street (
Maine State Route 115
State Route 115 (SR 115) is a state highway in southern Maine, United States. It runs west to east for just over , from U.S. Route 302 (US 302) and SR 35 in North Windham to SR 88 in Yarmouth.
Route description
SR&nbs ...
), at its northwest corner with Mill Street. It is a two-story wood-frame structure, its main block capped by a hip roof with cupola, and a series of ells that extended to a carriage house at the rear of the property, which was torn down around 2018. The roof has deep eaves studded with pairs of ornately carved brackets, and the eight-sided cupola has round-arch windows, and single brackets under its eight-sided roof. The main facade faces east, with an ornately decorated single-story hip-roofed porch across its width. The street-facing southern facade is two bays wide, with projecting bay windows on the first floor, topped by bracketed cornices. The second-floor sash windows are topped by half-round transom windows.
The house was designed by
Portland
Portland most commonly refers to:
* Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States
* Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...
architect Charles A. Alexander, and was built in 1855 for Captain Sylvanus Blanchard (1778–1858), a ship's captain and boatbuilder who was one of Yarmouth's leading citizens of the day. Blanchard lived in the house just three years, dying in 1858, and the house passed to his son, Sylvanus Cushing Blanchard (1811–1888).
[ Since 2004 it has housed the community music education facility known as 317 Main.]
See also
* National Register of Historic Places listings in Cumberland County, Maine
*Historical buildings and structures of Yarmouth, Maine The historical buildings and structures of Yarmouth, Maine, represent a variety of building styles and usages, largely based on its past as home to almost sixty mills over a period of roughly 250 years. These mills include that of grain, lumber, pul ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blanchard, Capt. S. C., House
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine
Italianate architecture in Maine
Houses completed in 1855
Houses in Cumberland County, Maine
Capt. S. C. Blanchard House
National Register of Historic Places in Cumberland County, Maine