Historic Highlight

Francis Fassett House

Historic Highlight

Renowned architect Francis Fassett designed this High Victorian Gothic duplex in Portland’s West End for himself and his son Edward in 1876. Born in Bath, Fassett moved to the city in 1864 after practicing architecture in Boston. When the Great Fire of 1866 destroyed several downtown Portland buildings, Fassett found his services in high demand. In the 1870s, he established his own firm here and took on a young John Calvin Stevens as an apprentice. Fassett favored the fashionable Victorian styles of his time, including the elaborate brick ornamentation, steeply pitched roofs and gables, and strong linear elements of the High Victorian Gothic genre, executed so elegantly here.

Portland-based writer Julie Senk holds degrees in history and historic preservation and provides property surveys and architectural analyses to homeowners and businesses. To learn more about her work, visit northernvernacular.com.