City’s history home now complete

With renovation finished on its museum, the South Portland Historical Society looks forward to a busy summer

South Portland Historical Society Executive Director
Kathryn DiPhilippo, left, and intern Libby Chenevert stand before a hand-dyed, hooked rug depicting George
 Washington Cash and his peddler’s cart at the famous
 corner that now bears his name. Made by Cash’s daughter-
in-law in the late 19^th century, the folk-art rug is one
 of many items on display at the newly refurbished society
museum at Bug Light Park.

SOUTH PORTLAND — Three years after it was relocated to its home at the entrance to Bug Light Park, the South Portland Historical Society museum is finally finished.

The fact that the museum has been a work in progress has not discouraged visitors. Executive Director Kathryn DiPhilippo says attendance was up 70 percent last year, to about 4,000 for the season. But thanks to $25,500 in grants and gifts, the building opened May 7 with widened doorways and new carpeting for improved handicapped access, a fresh coat of paint, a rebuilt entryway with a new visitor registry, and a refurbished cupola.

“I feel like this year is the year we’ve finally finished,” said DiPhilippo, during a recent tour.

Donations included $12,000 from the Davis Family Foundation, $5,000 from Marshall and Ruth-Anne Gibson and $5,000 grant from the Maine State Archives, in addition to two Maine Community Foundation grants – $2,500 from the Rines/Thompson Fund and $1,000 from the Edward H. Daveis Benevolent Fund. 

About half of the money was used to plug leaks in the cupola, where water was leaking in through rotten wood around a dozen window panes. Society volunteers noticed the problem soon after the move, upon finding it odd to discover water stains in the ceiling despite a new roof. Rebuilding the cupola was a priority because the society’s archives, including more than 5,000 old photographs, are housed on the building’s second floor. DiPhilippo is quick to point out that water, humidity and mold are the enemies of all ephemera.

Interestingly, much like most of the interior of what was once mistakenly known as the Captain Nichols House, the cupola is not original.

“Although this is a historic building, there’s nothing historic left,” said DiPhilippo. “It couldn’t be on the historic register because of all the architectural changes that have happened to this building, including being gutted by fire several times.”

The brick house was donated to the society in 2009 by the Portland Pipeline Corporation on the condition that it be moved from its location on Madison Street, which happened on Valentine’s Day that year.

The building was renamed the Cushing’s Point House at that time, when it was discovered that it was not near old enough to have belonged to its purported owner. DiPhilippo chalks up the mistake, which included placement of an historic plaque, to poor research, poor memories and popular misconceptions.

The building was the last remaining vestige of the old Cushing Point community, kept by the U.S. Navy when it took everything else between its shipyards by eminent domain because, DiPhilippo theorizes, it was made of brick and practically on the waterfront, which was true even at its old location, prior to landfilling by the Navy along the breakwater to Bug Light that buried the primeval geography of Cushing Point.

It was during World War II that the building came to be known as the Captain’s House. However, that was not due to prior ownership by Nichols or anyone else. Instead, the building was where Liberty Ship captains would decamp until assignment.

Museum photos from the shipyard era show the Captain’s House sporting no cupola at all. Although it’s believed the building, thought to date to about 1900, has a cupola when first built, it was removed at some point before World War II, after which a new, larger version was added.

While the newly pristine Cushing Point House is a story in itself, the museum is the showpiece, featuring newly updated exhibits thanks in part to something else that’s new, an intern from the University of Southern Maine, Libby Chenevert, brought on in January to help catalog the society’s archives.

“It’s was interesting to see the real history side of things, as opposed to just reading about it in school,” said Chenevert.

DiPhilippo says the historical society is always on the hunt for items of real history to add to its collection. Items can be new or old, so long as they relate specifically to South Portland, either before or after the 1895 split with Cape Elizabeth.

“It’s a misunderstanding that Cape Elizabeth has a long history and that South Portland is the newer town when, actually, it’s the reverse,” DiPhilippo said.

Although the historic name was Cape Elizabeth from the split with Falmouth in 1765, it was the farmers of the town that now holds that name who effected the separation, after refusing to be taxed for water, road and infrastructure improvements in the urban area of town, along the mouth of the Fore River. At that time, the Cape Elizabeth town hall was at the corner of Sawyer and Ocean streets, where the planning and development office (the former Hamlin School) is today.

However, because what is now South Portland intended to annex itself to Portland, from which it would get its water, it let Cape walk away from the divorce with the family name. The surprise came when Portland voters, who also had an aversion to sharing South Portland’s debt, voted down the annexation.

Once that door was closed, South Portland incorporated as a city in 1898, but saddled with a name signifying it as a suburb of its big sister across the river.

“I hear it all the time, ‘Why didn’t they come up with a new name, why are we stuck being South Portland?’” DiPhilippo said. “I think that’s why ‘SoPo’ is making such huge gains. Everyone seems to be embracing that, except for older residents, of course, because it promotes an identity that doesn’t make people from away think we’re just the southern part of Portland.”