The Gorham Campus Historic District encompasses seven buildings that make up the historic heart of the campus of the

University of Southern Maine The University of Southern Maine (USM) is a public university with campuses in Portland, Gorham and Lewiston in the U.S. state of Maine. It is the southernmost of the University of Maine System. It was founded as two separate state universitie ...

Gorham, Maine Gorham is a town in Cumberland County, Maine, United States. The population was 18,336 at the 2020 United States Census. In addition to its urban village center known as Gorham Village or simply "the Village," the town encompasses a number of s ...

. Built between 1806 and 1931, they reflect the varied academic history of the campus, and were listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1978.

Description and history

Gorham Academy was chartered in 1803, and opened its doors in 1806 in the Academy Building as a boys school. Female students were admitted the following year. In 1838 the male and female schools were formally separated, creating the Gorham Female Seminary. In 1847 the school was renamed the Gorham Academy and Teachers Institute, and in 1850 the boys school was closed. It was restarted in 1861, the two schools combining as the Gorham Seminary. It closed in 1877 due to an increase in the number of public high schools. In 1878 the state opened a

normal school A normal school or normal college is an institution created to Teacher education, train teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy and curriculum. In the 19th century in the United States, instruction in normal schools was at the high s ...

on the former academy campus, which has, through a variety of name changes, become the University of Southern Maine. The historic portion of the campus consists of seven buildings, two of them now conjoined, along the southern portion of University Way, one of the main access roads through the campus. Near its southern end at College Avenue stands the

Art Gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lon ...

, an 1822 building that was originally a non-denominational church, and also served for a time as Gorham's town hall. To its right stands the President's Residence, a 1906 Queen Anne Victorian. North of these buildings University Way bends right, with Russell Hall, a 1931 Tudor Revival building to the left, and the 1878 Gothic Revival Corthell Hall on the right. Beyond Corthell Hall to the east stand the conjoined Robie Hall and Andrews Hall, Gothic Revival buildings dating to 1898 and 1916 respectively. To their northeast, oriented facing toward School Street (

Maine State Route 114 State Route 114 (SR 114) is a route through southern Maine from U.S. Route 1 (US 1) and SR 9 and SR 207 in Scarborough to US 302 and SR 11 in Naples. The entire route is in Cumberland County. Route description S ...

) is the original Federal style wood frame Academy Building.

References

{{Maine-geo-stub Buildings at the University of Southern Maine Historic districts in Cumberland County, Maine Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine National Register of Historic Places in Cumberland County, Maine Gothic Revival architecture in Maine Victorian architecture in Maine

Description and history

See also

References