Built ca: 1850-60 for Albert & Louisa Pillsbury

A remuddled Gothic Revival in the Pleasantdale neighborhood of South Portland.

This isn’t a story about a house. Let’s face it, what we see today at 857 Broadway is mundane to say the least. So, you might ask, why are we here?
Have you ever driven past something somewhere for many years and paid it little or no attention then, as a passenger, notice something new?

About that Gothic Revival moniker.

I was travelling along Broadway, as a passenger, and seeing these casings made my head turn so fast that my sister, the driver, said “What did you see?”. I replied “Window casings that don’t seem to belong there”. And they don’t. The sill is bog-standard but for the lack of ‘horns’. The side casings are deeply profiled with 4 steps between the outer face and the window sash. But, it really is about the hood molding.

They’re on the 1st-floor and 2nd-floor front facade windows of the main block only. This makes sense as anything behind that would have been ‘outbuildings’ which rarely received the same, if any, decorative treatment as the main house did. Those moldings are, as noted, completely Gothic Revival and are not later recreations. The existence of these moldings on a house that might otherwise be placed, stylistically, in the later 19th century, when this part of Cape Elizabeth experienced an industrial boom, is something of an anachronism. The Gothic Revival was over, for the most part, by the start of the Civil War.

Louisa Fickett married Albert PIllsbury in November of 1848. Louisa’s family had farmed this area for several decades by the time she was born in 1831. Albert was born into the Pillsbury and Libby families of Scarborough in 1826. They had 7 children between 1850 and 1872.

One other feature of 857 Broadway that places it in the ante-bellum era is the high-post framing. This method of framing where the first-floor posts project into the second floor space, creating what is often called a ‘knee-wall’, was popular in the period of around 1830 to 1860. This is also the period when Gothic Revival was at its peak in the eastern US.

Here are all of the houses in the Portland area that I can think of with period Gothic Revival hood moldings.

The Andrew Sawyer House. Date unclear but prior to 1857. Corner of Sawyer Street and Mitchell Rd, South Portland.

The Warren Sparrow House. Ca: 1850. Arlington Street, Portland.

St Paul’s Rectory. 1867. Congress Street, Portland.

The John J Brown House. 1845. Spring Street, Portland. Moved from its original location in what is now the entry of the Holiday Inn By The Bay to the Vaughan Street end of Spring Street in 1971.

All of this information would suggest that the house at 857 Broadway was built prior to the Civil War. If Albert & Louisa Pillsbury did build our subject in that period, they didn’t seem to live there at first.  In 1850, they were living, and farming, with Albert’s mother in Scarborough. The city directory pf 1856 listed Albert as a baker living on Mayo Street in Bayside. In 1858, Albert was again listed as a baker but this time we learn that his place of work was at 8 Washington Street with the family living nearby on Smith Street. The census of 1860 also found the Pillsburys living in Portland and Albert baking. By 1863, Albert was working as a stage driver and the family was living on Cumberland Avenue.
By 1870, Albert and Louisa Pillsbury had moved into our subject & Albert was working as a railroad conductor. Here they would stay through Albert’s death in November of 1887 and into the new century until 1905 when she sold it to a florist named John Minot. Louisa died in 1907.

857 Broadway was sold to a farmer named William Hatch. He lived here until 1919 when he died. In 1920, his heirs sold to Emma Coolbroth. Emma and her husband Harold lived here with their son Gordon. Harold’s parent’s, Joseph and Annie, lived next door. Joseph was a taxidermist. Harold Coolbroth died in 1978 and the property was sold after Emma’s death in 1979.

857 Broadway is listed as a 3 family home. The condition is fair.

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