John Calvin Stevens
View of Bowdoin Street in 1887 showing several John Calvin Stevens designed homes (his own house is second from left). Photo: City of Portland Planning & Development.
John Calvin Stevens is one of Maine’s hometown heroes – he designed more than 1,000 buildings in the state, many of them in greater Portland. Stevens was born in Boston in 1855 and moved to Portland, Maine with his family at the age of 2. He wanted to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but couldn’t afford it, so instead of attending school he apprenticed in the Portland office of architect Francis Fassett. Stevens was a fast learner and a skilled draftsman, and in seven years rose from office boy to partner in the firm, which was renamed Fassett and Stevens. In 1884, he established his own office in Portland, with Fassett’s blessing.
Shingle Style was coming to prominence around 1880, when Stevens was working in Fassett’s short-lived Boston office. The firm worked in the same office building as William Randolph Emerson and his work in the Queen Anne style was very influential to Stevens. In 1884, upon establishing his own office in Portland, Stevens built his own home at 52 Bowdoin Street in the Shingle Style. One of Portland’s earliest examples of the style, Stevens often used it for promotion. The house received international notice after its construction.
Stevens’ Shingle style coastal homes were recognized not just for their style but for their relationship with the landscape. Large piazzas and picture windows, with interior space planned to take advantage of the scenery, made these buildings feel harmonious with their surroundings.
It’s perhaps not surprising that Stevens was so good at designing buildings that felt connected to their landscape – he was also an accomplished landscape painter and a member of the Portland-based art group that called themselves the “Brushuns”, who went on weekend sketching expeditions along the Maine coast (Winslow Homer and Charles F. Kimball were also members). Of his design work, his grandson John Calvin Stevens II wrote “The ‘seeing of the site’ is to him ceremonial. Every contour, tree, rock, stream, spring is recorded on the drawing board in his brain. Orientation, vistas and outlooks, prevalent windows and neighborhood developments are studied.”
John Calvin Stevens buildings can be found across Maine, primarily along the coast as well as in greater Portland. These buildings include public libraries, municipal buildings, churches, hotels (including alterations to the Poland Spring House), Portland's post office, and private homes. Stevens designed nine buildings for Hebron Academy and the Psi Upsilon fraternity house at Bowdoin College. Outside of Maine his work is rare, but he did create a masterplan and designed a chapel and six barracks for the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Hampton, Virginia.
Stevens passed away on January 25, 1940 at the age of 84 and was buried in Portland’s Evergreen Cemetery. His legacy lives on through his descendants and in his profound shaping of architectural style in Maine.
