The Strathglass Building is a historic commercial building at 25 Hartford Street in the central business district of

Rumford, Maine Rumford is a New England town, town in Oxford County, Maine, Oxford County, Maine, United States. The population was 5,858 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. Rumford is home to both ND Paper Inc's Rumford Mill and the Black Mountain ...

. Built c.1906, it is an imposing four-story architect-designed Beaux-Arts building, constructed by

Hugh J. Chisholm Hugh Joseph Chisholm I (; May 2, 1847 – July 1, 1912) was a Canadian industrialist who later became a citizen of the United States. He was born in Chippawa, Ontario, to parents of Scottish ancestry. His early years as an entrepreneur in the ne ...

, Rumford's leading industrialist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Later known as the Hotel Harris, it 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 1980.

Description and history

The building was designed by the architectural firm of

Stone, Carpenter & Willson Stone, Carpenter & Willson was a Providence, Rhode Island based architectural firm in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. It was named for the partners Alfred Stone (1834–1908), Charles E. Carpenter (1845–1923). and Edmund R. Willson (18 ...

, based in

Providence, Rhode Island Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...

, and was completed in 1906. It was built for

, the industrialist responsible for Rumford's development in the late 19th century as a major paper processing center, by

Frank Bunker Gilbreth Frank Bunker Gilbreth (July 7, 1868 – June 14, 1924) was an American engineer, consultant, and author known as an early advocate of scientific management and a pioneer of time and motion study, and is perhaps best known as the father and ce ...

. (Gilbreth built a second building in the small mill town as part of the same contract for the Rumford Falls Power Company.) Chisholm named the building after the river in Scotland which flows near his family's traditional seat. Chisholm also gave the Strathglass name to the

Strathglass Park District The Strathglass Park District, located in Rumford, Maine, encompasses what was once one of the nation's finest early 20th-century mill worker housing complexes. Funded by Hugh J. Chisholm, owner of Rumford's paper mill, and designed by Cass G ...

, an area of high-quality mill worker housing in Rumford. The Strathglass Building stands on a slightly non-rectangular lot bounded on three sides by Congress, Lowell, and Hartford Streets. It is now a four-story brick structure, with the bays of the first three floors separated by engaged limestone fluted columns. The main entrance is set under a three-story arch supported by square stone piers, and topped by a triangular pediment at the third floor. When originally built, the building only had three stories, and had a concrete balustrade with urns at the visible roofline. this was removed in 1931, when the building was rebuilt after a devastating fire. The interior was gutted, and all that survived intact was the heavy masonry structure. The rebuilding (as the Hotel Harris) was supervised by Lewiston architects Coombs & Harriman.''Hotel Monthly'' 1931: 92. These additions, including the new fourth floor and flamboyant lobby, were

Italian Renaissance Revival Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th century Revivalism (architecture), architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival architecture, Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival ...

in style, though later alterations have removed most external detail. The lobby remains.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine Beaux-Arts architecture in Maine Buildings and structures completed in 1910 Buildings and structures in Oxford County, Maine Rumford, Maine National Register of Historic Places in Oxford County, Maine

Description and history

See also

References