Older alumni might recall Mount Gile in Auburn as a recreation spot featuring a ski slope, a destination on the Stanton Ride, and where a stone monument marks a 19th-century tragedy.

The Mountain 

Soaring 545 feet above sea level, Mount Gile sits in East Auburn across the Androscoggin River from Lewiston, about 3.5 miles from campus. Mount David, by comparison, is 381 feet high. 

The Person 

The mountain is named for Edwin Tuttle Gile, an Auburn businessman who in 1884 bought 12 acres of land atop what was then called White Oak Hill.

Having already invested in the city’s first trolley (pulled by horses), Gile wisely leveraged that business interest by creating a trolley destination on the outskirts of town: his hill, which he turned into a destination for citizens seeking a relatively new offering of the Gilded Age of America, leisure and outdoor recreation.

A Lewiston Evening Journal ad in 1886 promised “Mountain Air! Mountain Scenery! Mountain Recreation!” The site included a croquet court, picnic tables, and, in the words of an 1890 edition of The �ֲ���ý Student, “a little observatory with the stars and stripes fluttering above it in the breeze.”

The Ski Slope

In the early 1960s, the East Auburn community created a ski slope at Mount Gile with a 550-foot rope tow. Small-town ski slopes were hardly unusual in the mid-1900s — Maine had 80 or more.

The �ֲ���ý Connection

Into the early 1900s, legendary �ֲ���ý professor Johnny Stanton brought each incoming class on a trolley ride from campus to Lake Grove Park, a bygone picnic and recreational area along the shore of Lake Auburn. From there, he led students on a hike up Mount Gile, followed by a meal. 

After his death, the tradition of an outdoor outing during orientation became known as the Stanton Ride.

The Tragedy

In 1866, a 22-year-old woman named Louise Greene was asked to leave her school, the Maine Wesleyan Seminary and Female College (now Kents Hill School), after being accused of theft.

Rather than return to her home in Peru, Maine, she traveled by stage to Auburn and committed suicide by poison, her body was found on Mount Gile.

Her father, who mounted a vigorous public crusade claiming her innocence, erected a monument where her body was found. Atop a stone base, it is about 5 feet tall and surrounded by an iron fence. He also published many “pamphlets” in her defense. The inscription on the memorial says, in part, that she was the victim of unkind people and a “martyr to the prejudice and caprice of man.”

On the south side are these words, presented in Greene’s voice: “Heart breaking, dearly beloved, adieu.” On the north side, again in her voice: “I could have died for one friendly hand-grasp and thought it happiness to die.”

From the early 1900s to the 1960s, the monument was a stopping point on the annual “Stanton Ride,” the outdoor orientation trip for first-year students led by legendary professor “Uncle Johnny” Stanton and later by Dean of the Faculty Harry Rowe.

Gathered around the memorial, the new �ֲ���ý students heard all about the girl and her fate.  Stanton and Rowe ended the story with this moral: “So you see, it always pays to be kind.”

Today

In the news lately is the possibility of some land on and around Mount Gile being rezoned for potential housing.

Across the Androscoggin River in Auburn, atop Goff Hill, the public high school is named for Edward Little, a 19th-century lawyer and philanthropist.

The Person

Born in 1773, Edward Little was a lawyer in Newburyport, Mass., before moving to what is now Auburn in 1826.

After inheriting a large amount of land, he worked to realize the area’s civic and economic potential. This was long before Benjamin �ֲ���ý and his fellow industrialists arrived from Boston. Praised by Lewiston’s Evening Journal for his “energy, zeal, and liberality,” Little died in 1849.

The School

Edward Little donated seven acres of rye field and $3,000 to establish Lewiston Falls Academy in 1834 on a small hill overlooking the Androscoggin.

It was renamed Edward Little Institute in 1866 and became Auburn’s public high school in 1873, with the condition that the school always be named for Little, that a portrait hang in the school, and a statue should stand outside.

A new Edward Little High School building was opened in 1961 at the top of Goff Hill. And earlier this month, that building was replaced with a modern facility, adjacent to the old high school.

The Sculpture

Near the high school is a bronze statue of Edward Little. Unveiled in 1877, it was the work of Franklin Simmons, a prominent 19th-century sculptor who attended the Maine State Seminary before it became �ֲ���ý College.

In 1961 the statue and a portrait were moved from the old downtown building to the new high school.

Among Simmons’ most famous works is a marble sculpture on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Promised Land, an Old Testament phrase inscribed around the sculpture’s base.

According to the Met’s description, the sculpture “depicts a young Hebrew woman in a long sleeveless gown resting against the stump of a palm tree. She wears a laurel wreath indicative of her impending victory, which is her arrival in the land of her forebears.”

The Mascot

Lore has it that Little’s ghost roams the school hallways, which is why the teams were originally called the Red Ghosts (red being the school color).

The nickname evolved to the Red Eddies by the 1940s (it’s not clear why), but the ghost of Edward Little is still part of the school logo.

The House

Edward Little lived in a home on Main Street in Auburn that today is the city’s only remaining example of Federal architecture, according to its nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.

A residential area just north of campus, Montello is the name of a street, a rise of land (familiar to generations of �ֲ���ý joggers), an elementary school, a former reservoir, and an assisted living center.

Street wise

One of Lewiston’s oldest streets, Montello Street connects Main Street on the west side of town with Sabattus Street to the east.

Naming rights

Other Montello-named places in the U.S. include a neighborhood in Brockton, Mass.; a canyon and creek in Nevada; and a town in Wisconsin.

Some sources suggest “Montello” is based on the French, “mont et l’eau,” meaning “hill and water,” which seems fanciful. More likely, the name is borrowed from the hill of the same name in northern Italy.

New heights

Since the 1800s, the area around Montello Street has been known as Montello Heights. The street rises and falls about 150 feet through the heights, crossing College Street. North of the street, the land is still mostly undeveloped woodland, including Thorncrag, rising another 150 feet.

Spring has sprung

As bottled water became popular in the 1800s, commercial bottlers like Poland Spring sprang up throughout Maine, including two in Montello Heights whose water was once sold nationally: Windsor Spring was on the west side, and Highland Spring was on the east side, on land that became the Thorncrag Nature Sanctuary.

The New York Daily Tribune in 1900 praised Highland Spring water as “a delicious, pure, natural spring water, which wells forth from a never-failing mountain spring in Androscoggin County, Maine.” The paper said “several carloads of this water were shipped South for the use of Red Cross nurses in Cuba and in the infected camps of the South during the [Spanish-American] war.”

It was endorsed by none other than leading Lewiston citizen Alonzo Garcelon, a physician who said that he “never knew of a case of malarial fever to originate in that state — a very important consideration in the selection of a drinking water.”

Water Works

Built in 1951, Montello Heights Reservoir was closed as a public water source in the 1980s after the city improved its pumping stations. All public water now comes from Lake Auburn.

Happy Trampers

In the early 1900s, north of campus was mostly farmland. In 1918, The �ֲ���ý Student reported that seniors in a zoology course trekked to a Montello Heights farmhouse for a snowshoe party. “The trampers enjoyed an oyster stew, apple pie with whipped cream, coffee, apples, and pop-corn.”

Montello Street is now part of a traditional three-mile jogging loop: out College Street; right on Montello; right on East Avenue, and back to campus.

Benjamin Thorne was a Lewiston farmer and Freewill Baptist preacher in the early 1800s whose surname provides half the name of the popular and well-known Thorncrag Nature Sanctuary, about 1.3 miles from campus managed by the Stanton Bird Club.

‘Saintly Mother’

Thorne was born in March 1779 (exact date unknown) and died Dec. 4, 1864, at age 85.

Thorne’s mother, Eliza, is credited with helping to organize a branch of Freewill Baptists in Lewiston. “Several times [Eliza] walked from Lewiston to Westport, a distance of 30 miles, to attend Quarterly and Yearly Meetings,” according to The Centennial Record of Freewill Baptists: 1780–1880.

Benjamin was inspired by his “saintly mother,” according to Memoirs of Eminent Preachers in the Free Will Baptist Denomination. As a teenager, he began making similar journeys “through an almost unbroken wilderness” to attend Freewill Baptist meetings.

Deep Thinker

Despite only a few months of formal schooling, Thorne on his own acquired “a commendable knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages, knew something of Hebrew, and mastered the French after he had passed his 80th birthday,” according to Memoirs of Eminent Preachers.

“While others were asleep or too stupid for thought, his mind labored with an unwearied and most patient devotion.”

Thorny Question

While various Freewill Baptist histories spell his last name as “Thorn,” the gravestones for Benjamin and his wife, Alice, in Herrick Cemetery spell the name “Thorne.”

‘Retired and Unknown’

Thorne was one of the “best and most talented ministers of his time,” according to Memoirs of Eminent Preachers. Still, he was humble about it, “his position…somewhat retired and unknown. ”

Indeed, Thorne’s preaching power was well hidden, only displayed on “special occasion[s].” One such occasion was a five-day religious debate with a Universalist minister that ended when his opponent “begged leave to withdraw.”

When Thorne died at age 85, he was Lewiston’s oldest citizen. In his 80s, “he appeared more like a man of 65,” so great was “his vigor of mind and body.”

From �ֲ���ý’ Beginning

Thorne “hailed the birth and location of the Maine State Seminary as a harbinger of good.” On June 26, 1856, he delivered the prayer of invocation at the laying of the cornerstone of Hathorn Hall. (Another “Thorn”?)

Thirty-three years earlier, says Professor Emeritus Doug Hodgkin, whose family history dates to Lewiston’s earliest years, Thorne spoke at the 1823 dedication of the first bridge between Lewiston and what is now Auburn, the latter not incorporated until 1842.

Patriot

Born during the Revolutionary War, Thorne “imbibed its patriotism” — his five grandsons all fought in the Civil War “sustained by the deepest sympathies and prayers of their aged veteran sire.”

One and Only (Almost)

As far as we can tell, the only other instance of “Thorncrag” used as a place name is Thorncrag Lane in Midlothian, Va.

Thorn + Crag

In the 1900s, some of the Thorne farmland was bought by Alfred Anthony, a �ֲ���ý professor and trustee who wrote the college history �ֲ���ý College and Its Background.

Anthony dubbed his new spread “Thorncrag,” with “crag” describing the granite ledges and outcroppings near the property’s 500-foot hill. He gave his land to the Stanton Bird Club when he retired to New York City around 1918.

Today, Thorncrag Nature Sanctuary offers both recreation and research opportunities for the �ֲ���ý community.

An occasional �ֲ���ýNews feature, “What’s in a Lewiston Name” explores the stories, facts, and figments behind common place names in the Lewiston-Auburn area.

Sabattus: It’s the name of a street in Lewiston, a neighboring town, and other places.

Sounds Like…

Not related to the word “Sabbath,” the name “Sabattus” is an alternative ,” a common Christian name given to Native Americans by French missionaries. Other spelling variations are “Sabattis,” “Sebattis,” and “Sabatis.”

Crossing Sabattus

If you’ve been to the Blue Goose or Luiggi’s, two famed student haunts a short walk from campus, then you’ve crossed Sabattus Street, which begins at Main Street and extends eastward to the town of Sabattus.

More Sabatti?

According to the U.S. Geologic Survey, there’s a Sabattus Pond, Sabattus River, Sabattus River Reservoir, Little Sabattus Mountain, and two Sabattus mountains, one locally, and one in the western Maine town of North Waterford.

Sabattus Cabin

In the mid-1920s, the �ֲ���ý Outing Club built a cabin on the southern slope of Sabattus Mountain in nearby Wales. (“Sabattus” is also the name of a nearby pond and river.) By 1974, the cabin had been damaged by vandals. That October, in the spirit of leaving no trace, an Outing Club work group dismantled the cabin, removing all shingles, bricks, and other material from the site.

According to Webster

The town adjacent to Lewiston, originally named Webster after the orator and statesman, was incorporated in 1788. 

It was renamed Sabattus in 1971 to honor an 18th-century Native American tribal leader who, it is said, guided Benedict Arnold as he ascended the Kennebec River to attack the British in Québec in 1775, during the Revolutionary War.

Ring My Bell

The oldest standing structure in the town of Sabattus is a former tavern, once part of a farm, owned by the Davis family. In 1857, family member Jonathan Davis gave $400 to the Maine State Seminary to purchase a bell for the Hathorn Hall cupola, which was installed shortly after the seminary opened in September 1857.

The bell’s inscription includes “Presented by Jonathan Davis of Webster.” It was manufactured by the famed Henry N. Hooper & Co. of Boston, whose bells can be found in churches as far away as Hawaii’s Wananalua Congregational Church.

Bottled Up

As bottled water became popular in the 1800s, commercial bottlers like Poland Spring sprang up throughout Maine, including Sabattus Mineral Springs, in the town of Wales, adjacent to Sabattus.

Uncertain Seal 

The current Sabattus town seal depicts a Native American leader wearing a feathered war bonnet. However, such bonnets were worn by tribes of the Great Plains, not the Northeast. The seal typifies the broad brush with which American culture has painted Indigenous history.

Name That Band

“Sabattis” was the name of a circa 1970 hard rock band that never quite made it big. Their demo album, .

A �ֲ���ý haunt since the 1950s, Luiggi’s Pizzeria, next door to the Blue Goose on the corner of Sabattus and Horton streets, is named for its founder, Luiggi Carmino Talarico.

From Albi to Lewiston

Luiggi “Louis” Talarico was born in 1922 in Albi, Italy. After immigrating to America and settling in Lewiston, he and his wife, Annis, founded the pizzeria at the corner of Horton and Sabattus streets in 1953. A former deputy chief of the Lewiston Fire Department, he died in 1992.

His brother Frank, born in Lewiston 14 years later, was the well-known public face of the family business for years.

Luiggi’s is now owned by several partners, including the St. Hilaire family, who also owns the Blue Goose pub next door. “�ֲ���ý alumni know us pretty well,” says co-owner Angie St. Hilaire.

‘Two with Onions’

The 1955 Mirror published photos and comments about five popular hangouts:

• Luiggi’s: “two with onions!”
• Blue Goose: “pre-exam paradise”
• Steckino’s: “rolls and real butter”
• Kenmore Hotel: “Saturday p.m. jazz sessions”
• Ye Olde Hobby Shoppe: “Mike and the gang,” a nod to Mike Buccigross ’41, who owned the popular, 1950s-style malt shop.

The latter three are long gone, and the Hobby Shoppe building is now headquarters for �ֲ���ý Campus Safety.

The Fergy

Created in the 1960s, Luiggi’s signature sandwich, the Fergy, is named for Lewiston police officer Arthur Ferguson, a friend of the Talarico family, who “should receive a pension for conceiving it,” noted The �ֲ���ý Student in 1974.

Ferguson “was like 6-4 and took no crap,” says a reviewer on Yelp!, where the restaurant garners four stars out of five. “He worked with another officer named Murphy, and when Murphy and Ferguson were on the beat down on Lisbon Street all was quiet. Those guys were tough as nails.”

Ingredients for a Fergy: ham, American cheese, tomato, onion, lettuce, and mayo on Italian bread.

Rule of Three

The distance from the steps of Hathorn Hall to the front door of Luiggi’s is exactly 3,000 feet.

Dogging It

By virtue of its meals being available for takeout, Luiggi’s is included in Dog-Friendly New England: A Traveler’s Companion.

Meat Me There

Iconic eateries have their quirks, and this is Luiggi’s’: All their pizzas, even a “plain” cheese pizza, have meat on them, a kind of luncheon meat.

Dedicated on Oct. 1, 1909, Libbey Forum was donated to �ֲ���ý by Lewiston textile mill owner W. Scott Libbey.

Once home to the student literary societies, the building then was used for faculty offices and classrooms. It’s now home to Student Financial Services and the Registrar.

Hit the Bricks

The 1917 �ֲ���ý Catalog said the new �ֲ���ý building was “probably the most solid and substantial structure in Lewiston.”

When It’s Libbee, Libbey, Libbe

English originally, the name in America has been spelled Libby, Libbey, Libbee, Libbe, Lebby, Lebbey, Lebbee, and Lebbe.

Good to Know

“As a family in America, the Libbeys have been largely respected by their neighbors as men of sterling worth and uprightness and honesty of character,” said a 1920 issue of Americana.

Big Break

A distinctive �ֲ���ý building, Libbey Forum features a Romanesque entrance and hipped roof. (H. Jay Burns/�ֲ���ý College)

Born in 1851, W. Scott Libbey started his career as a self-taught telegraph operator. It made the newspapers when he took 6,000 words of Morse code — tens of thousands of electric dots and dashes — without requesting a “break,” or a request for the sender to repeat a word.

Ambitious and inventive, he eventually owned Lewiston’s Lincoln and Cumberland mill buildings and the Lewiston & Auburn Electric Light Co.

He built a hydropower dam above Lewiston’s Great Falls and founded which ran between Monument Square in Portland and Union Square in Lewiston.

Libbey “practically hews the fortune out of the very town in which he began,” said Americana.

Libbey Legacy

Libbey, who died in 1914, sent three of his four children to �ֲ���ý. Son Harold graduated in 1905 and daughters Gertrude and Alla, both Phi Beta Kappa, graduated in 1901 and 1906, respectively. Many descendants have attended �ֲ���ý.

W. Scott Libbey poses with his son W. Scott Jr. in 1911.

The fourth Libbey child, son W. Scott Jr., served as a �ֲ���ý trustee, as did his son, Paul Libbey, who lives in Lewiston and has remained active in the family textile business into his 90s.

The family’s mausoleum is at Riverside Cemetery near campus.

Society’s Sake

Dedicated in 1909, Libbey Forum created important new space for the college’s three thriving literary societies (Eurosophian, Polymnian, and Piaerian), as well as the YMCA and YWCA.

In �ֲ���ý’ early years, the societies dominated extracurricular life and helped to nurture the tradition of debate. By the mid-1900, Libbey was home to the economics, sociology, and anthropology departments, offering classroom space as well.

Today, Libbey Forum houses the offices of Student Financial Services and the Registrar.

Train of Thought

After announcing his intention to give �ֲ���ý a building, Libbey traveled widely, studying possible designs.

While it’s been said that Libbey Forum was intentionally designed to resemble a train station, that’s probably apocryphal.

The design features a low, hipped roof and a Romanesque entrance. It was modern for its time — very different from other �ֲ���ý buildings — yet in keeping with early-1900s buildings having large interior spaces, such as schools and, yes, train stations.

Frye Street is home to cozy student houses, a hopping social scene, and the campus coffeehouse, the Ronj.

Part of the National Register of Historic Places’ , the street is named for an illustrious Lewiston family whose local roots date to the early 1800s.

Not a Small Frye

Born in 1808, William Robinson Frye was a founding trustee of Maine State Seminary and �ֲ���ý.

Along with his brother John P. Frye, William R. Frye was a corporator of the Lewiston Falls Manufacturing Co., founded in 1834 and said to be “the first charter for manufacturing purposes” in Lewiston. It focused on wool goods, mostly “cassimires, tweeds, and flannels.”

Along with , Frye was among the Lewiston movers and shakers who implored �ֲ���ý founder Oren Cheney to choose Lewiston for his new Maine State Seminary. (Other locations in the running included Unity, Pittsfield, Hallowell, Vienna, and Litchfield.)

“The name William Robinson Frye deserves equal honor with that of Doctor Garcelon” in terms of credit for �ֲ���ý being in Lewiston, according to the college history �ֲ���ý and Its Background.

‘Wonder Boy’

Sen. William P. Frye was known as “Lewiston’s political wonder boy.” (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

Born in 1830, Frye’s nephew William Pierce Frye was dubbed “Lewiston’s political wonder boy” by Professor Emeritus of Political Science Douglas Hodgkin.

Beginning in 1866, he served successively as Lewiston mayor, Maine attorney general, Maine legislator, U.S. congressman, and U.S. senator.

He received an honorary �ֲ���ý degree in 1881 and died Aug. 8, 1911.

Fish to Frye

Sen. Frye vigorously opposed a proposed fisheries treaty with Canada and Britain in 1888 because he felt it failed to protect New England fishermen.

Speechifying in the Senate, he said:

“Shall citizens of the United States…be protected against injustice, wrong and outrage, inflicted by a neighboring nation emboldened to it only because it rests under the aegis of a mighty power beyond the seas?”

Students wore ribbons like this to support Republicans William Frye and Nelson Dingley in 1892.

Sen. Frye was a member of the U.S. delegation that negotiated the 1898 Treaty of Paris. The treaty ended the Spanish-American War, ended the Spanish Empire in America, and began the rise of the U.S. as a colonial power.

We’re for Frye!

In 1892, as Lewiston’s Frye and Nelson Dingley campaigned successfully for re-election to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, respectively, �ֲ���ý students in an eponymous college club wore ribbons to support the two Republicans.

Frye’s Freighters

Two ships were named for Sen. Frye, and both were sunk during the World Wars.

The first, the four-masted, steel-hulled William P. Frye, was built in Bath, Maine, and was the first U.S. vessel sunk during World War I, by Germany’s SS Prinz Eitel Friedrich in 1915.

Built in South Portland, Maine, the steam merchant ship William Pierce Frye was sunk by a German submarine on March 29, 1943, midway between Greenland and the British Isles.

The merchant ship William P. Frye was sunk during World War II.

Frye House

Frye Street was created and named in the mid-1800s when the Frye family subdivided their land on the south and west sides of Mount David.

Some of the Frye land was first owned by David Davis, of Mount David fame, before it was owned by John Frye,  William R.’s brother.

The architectural styles of houses in the Main Street–Frye Street Historic District include Italianate (Chase House and Ross House, home of the Ronj) and Colonial Revival (Pierce House and Moulton House).

The district also comprises houses on College Street, including the Colonial Revival President’s House as well as the Second Empire–style Cheney House.

Acquired by �ֲ���ý in 1918, Frye House, located at 36 Frye St., was the first of many houses along the street that �ֲ���ý purchased as student residences, initially for female students.

With Mount David rising in the background, this circa 1875 view of Frye Street is from the corner of College and Elm streets. Starting from the right, the first four houses are Frye House, Ross House, Wilson House, and Pierce House. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

Meanwhile, at the other end of the street, the William P. Frye House, the senator’s former home, is a private residence.

Elsewhere in Lewiston, at the corner of Horton and Ash streets, a building known as the Frye School Apartments was for many years an elementary school named for Sen. Frye in 1889. It was closed in 1987 and converted to apartments.

The name of the college’s social-science building is spelled “Pettengill” — with two E’s and an I. The Lewiston street and former elementary school, however, are each spelled “Pettingill.”

Meanwhile, the city park in Auburn is “Pettengill.” Here’s your P’gill guide:

The Hall

Pettengill Hall at �ֲ���ý is named for Frederick B. “Pat” Pettengill ’31 and his wife, Ursula.

A native of Pembroke, N.H., Frederick B. “Pat” Pettengill ’31 was called “Mr. �ֲ���ý” for recruiting many students from the Syracuse, N.Y., area.

When he died, in 1986, a small bequest (including proceeds from the sale of his Chrysler car) created a scholarship endowment.

But that was just the beginning. In 1999, his widow, Ursula, gave $5 million to name Pettengill Hall.

The Street

A block north of campus, Pettingill Street is named for David Pettingill, Lewiston’s second settler.

“The Pettingills were a fighting race,” the Lewiston Evening Journal noted long ago, and David fought and died at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777.

A block north of campus is a street named “Pettingill,” not to be confused with “Pettengill” Hall at �ֲ���ý. (Jay Burns/�ֲ���ý College)

The School

Built in 1926 and closed in 2008, the former Pettingill elementary school near �ֲ���ý was named not for the street but for Lee Duren Pettingill, a leading citizen of the early 1900s. (His relation to David Pettingill is unknown.) The two-plus acres is now a park, Pettingill School Park.

Park Deux

In 1947, the city of Auburn used 20 acres bought years before from William Wallace Pettengill to create a recreation area, Pettengill Park. It cost $20,091, or about $342,000 in today’s dollars.

The park includes a community center,  baseball and softball fields, basketball courts, playground areas, and a fishing pond.

After World War II, during the golden age of Maine semi-pro baseball, Pettengill Park was home to the legendary Auburn Asas. Facing teams like the Augusta Millionaires, Farmington Flyers, and Dixfield Dixies, the Asas (pronounced “Aces”) easily drew several thousand fans to games “under the bulbs” at Pettengill Park.

But There’s More

The name is said to mean “someone from Portugal.” A retired Social Security analyst, Robert Pettengill, once found 41 variant spellings — including Patongille, Pattainggal and Petynghale — among the 5,700 Americans with the surname.

Pettengill Hall was dedicated in October 1999. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The downtown Lewiston neighborhood where streets have names like Oak and Maple is dubbed “the tree streets.”

Pin It on Penn

William Penn originated the street-naming practice in 1682 when he gave Philadelphia’s north-south streets names like Locust, Spruce, and Vine. Other cities soon followed Penn’s path.

Franklin Speaking

Lewiston’s street naming occurred mostly in the mid-1800s.

The Franklin Co., a holding company for the Lewiston mills that owned most of the downtown land, laid out the street plan. It’s thought that one of Franklin’s engineers, John Straw, gave tree names to the streets that run nearly east and west.

The Bad Rap

The two U.S. Census tracts overlaying the tree streets are among the poorest in Maine. The neighborhood is also young, vibrant, and diverse. A third of its citizens are nonwhite, including many families who emigrated from Somalia and other African nations.

A historic school building at the corner of Walnut and �ֲ���ý streets is now home to St. Mary’s Nutrition Center. (Jay Burns/�ֲ���ý College)

In a state worried that its aging population thwarts economic development, the tree streets help make Lewiston younger (median age 39) than the rest of Maine (median age 43.5).

Taking Back the Tree Streets

Located on the corner of Birch and Howe streets, the nonprofit Tree Street Youth serves the children of downtown families. The name is an act of co-optation, says its co-founder, Julia Sleeper ’08, “a big opportunity to take back ‘tree street’ from its stereotype” — as a place to avoid — “to meaning a place where the youth are going to college, being successful, and doing great things.”

Branching Out

Bangor, Maine, also has a self-described tree-street neighborhood, as do the California cities of Costa Mesa and Laguna Beach; plus Norwood, Mass.; Princeton, N.J.; Nashua, N.H.; Yonkers, N.Y.; Elko, Nev.; Johnson City, Tenn.; Provo, Utah; Waynesboro, Va.; Bunbury, Wash.; Bluefield, W.Va.; and Casper, Wyo.

This story includes information from Frontier to Industrial City: Lewiston Town Politics 1768–1863, by Professor Emeritus of Political Science Douglas Hodgkin