Victoria Mansion
Library of Congress
At the corner of Park and Danforth Streets in Portland is a dark brown, Italianate villa-style brownstone not commonly seen in Maine. Yet, its construction was ordered by two native Mainers: Ruggles Sylvester Morse and his wife, Olive Ring Merrill.
What today is known as Victoria Mansion was built between 1859 and 1863 as the Morses’ summer residence. The couple and their family made their home in New Orleans, where R. S. Morse was the co-owner of luxury hotels and where the couple enslaved more than two dozen Black or mixed-race people.
Backed by immense wealth, the Morses’ summer home in Portland was designed to look like no other in the city. Eleven artists from Italy were brought in to execute the elaborate designs. Inside were frescoed walls and ceilings, stained-glass skylights, carved woodwork, gas lighting, and even indoor plumbing and central heating.
Ruggles’s widow sold the home in 1894 to J. R. Libby, who owned a department store in Biddeford. The Libby family owned the home until 1940, when it was sold to New York educator William Holmes. He and his sister set out to preserve the property and even located and purchased some of the furnishings that had been sold off.
Today, Victoria Mansion – named after Queen Victoria of Britain when it became a historic house museum – is painstakingly conserved and maintained. More than 90 percent of its original furnishings and furniture have been reacquired so visitors can step back in time into the impeccably designed and decorated home of the ultrawealthy of that time period.
But Victoria Mansion serves not just as a reflection of wealth. The home also tells the stories of the laborers and artists who built it and those who worked “backstairs.” Open to the public May through October, its six-week Christmas at Victoria Mansion when it is decked out for the holidays has become a tradition shared by multiple generations. The home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
