The Romanzo Kingman House was a historic house on Main Street (
Maine State Route 170
State Route 170 (SR 170) is a state highway in Penobscot and Aroostook counties, located in central Maine. It runs from Springfield to Macwahoc.
Route description
The southern terminus of SR 170 is at SR 6 in the town center ...
) in
Kingman, Maine
Kingman is an unorganized territory (township) in Penobscot County, Maine, United States. The population was 137 at the 2020 census.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the unorganized territory has a total area of 25.4 ...
. Built in 1871, it was the unincorporated community's most sophisticated example of 19th-century architecture. It was built for Romanzo Kingman, the area's namesake and owner of a locally important tannery. The house was 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 1982.
It was destroyed by fire about 2005,
and was delisted in 2020.
Description and history
The Kingman House was located on Main Street in the rural town center of Kingman, an unincorporated community in southeastern
Penobscot County
Penobscot County is a county in the U.S. state of Maine, named for the Penobscot Nation on Wabanakik. As of the 2020 census, the population was 152,199. Its county seat is Bangor. The county was established on February 15, 1816, from part of ...
. It was two stories in height, with a hip roof, central chimney, and clapboard siding. Its main facade, facing southwest, was three bays wide, with the entrance in the left bay, sheltered by a portico support by square posts and pilasters. It had a denticulated cornice and a low balustrade on the sides. First floor windows were crowned by gabled pediments with consoles, while the second floor windows had flat pediments with consoles. A two-story ell extended northeast from the main block, joining the house to a carriage barn.
Romanzo Kingman and Francis Shaw established a tannery in Kingman in the 1860s, which was billed for a time as one of the largest in the nation. The tannery was a major local industry until it was destroyed in a massive explosion in the 1920s. Kingman and Shaw, both bachelors at the time, built this house, the only house of architectural distinction in the small community, in 1871–72. Kingman left the area a few years later to open a second tannery in
Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
; when the community incorporated as a
plantation
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...
, it was named in his honor.
[ His home was destroyed by fire about 2005.
]
See also
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kingman, Romanzo, House
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine
Italianate architecture in Maine
Houses completed in 1871
Buildings and structures in Penobscot County, Maine
National Register of Historic Places in Penobscot County, Maine
Former National Register of Historic Places in Maine