National Register of Historic Places

Colonial Apartments

Bangor, Penobscot County, Maine
Listed
December 19, 2012
Type
Building
Period
Colonial
Ref No.
12001067

About this property

The Colonial Apartments are a historic apartment building at 51-53 High Street in Bangor, Maine. Built in 1919, it is one of the oldest and best-preserved apartment houses in the city that was marketed to a middle and upper-class population. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. The Colonial Apartments stand near the western edge of Bangor's central business district, on the west side of High Street opposite Middle Street. It is a three-story "double triple-decker", built out of brick in the Colonial Revival style. It has a flat roof and an unadorned cornice, with pilasters at the corner, and symmetrically placed wooden porches at the center of the main facade. The interior is divided into six apartments, two per floor, separated by a party wall and accessed via separate stairwells in each half. The apartment interiors have retained much of their original finish, including fireplace mantels and woodwork. The apartment house was built in 1919 to a design by local architect Victor Hodgins, on a parcel that previously held a much larger housing complex destroyed by fire. It was one of the first purpose-built apartment buildings in the city, as differentiated from tenement-style worker housing, which had existed in the city in limited amounts since the 1890s. This apartment house was set in a neighborhood of more elegant middle-class houses, and was typically occupied by white collar workers. A significant number of its units were also occupied by either single women, or pairs of women (including widowed mothers with adult daughters), marking the start of a trend away from single women either boarding in private homes, or living in more communal boarding house arrangements. National Register of Historic Places listings in Penobscot County, Maine

Location

51-53 High St.
Bangor, Penobscot County, Maine
44.80035, -68.77428

Categories

ARCHITECTURESOCIAL HISTORY
National Register nomination ›
Sources

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Nearby Battles

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Questions about this property

When was Colonial Apartments listed on the National Register?

Colonial Apartments was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 19, 2012.

What type of historic resource is Colonial Apartments?

Colonial Apartments is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.

What is the period of significance for Colonial Apartments?

The period of significance for Colonial Apartments is recorded as the colonial era.

Can I research the history near Colonial Apartments?

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