Maine

Collected in this intriguing visual history are more than 200 photographs that bring to life the history of Colby College from 1813 to 1963.

Since the development of photography in the mid-nineteenth century, the camera has been used as a tool of both discovery and preservation. Photographs bring alive our image of the past, and can open a floodgate of memories and nostalgia or inspire curiosity and a sense of history. Collected in this intriguing visual history are more than 200 photographs that bring to life the history of Colby College from 1813 to the sesquicentennial in 1963. From President Chaplin's voyage up the Kennebec River to the relocation of Colby to Mayflower Hill, it focuses on the events, and more importantly on the people that have defined Colby's history. Using material from the Colby College Archives, Anestes Fotiades leads us on a unique journey into the past, where the faculty, staff, and students of Colby are remembered with reverence and pride; people like President J. Seelye Bixler, Webster ""Bugsy"" Chester, Julian Taylor, and many others. The photographs have been chosen to provide an accurate history as well as a delightful voyage of nostalgia into the heritage of one of Maine's most progressive institutions of higher education.

Bowdoin is the quintessential New England college, and Brunswick is the quintessential New England town. Bowdoin has its stately buildings and trees, while Brunswick is blessed with a charming downtown featuring a pedestrian-friendly Main Street of dramatic proportions. Chartered in the late 1700s, Bowdoin has been inextricably linked to the town of Brunswick for more than 200 years. Brunswick and Bowdoin College features vintage postcard views dating from the early 1900s through the late 1940s, providing an extraordinary visual reference for a time of enormous technological and social change, when Main Street was transformed from a rutted dirt road to a paved thoroughfare, stables were supplanted by garages, buildings were constructed and razed, and merchants came and went.

Although the University of Southern Maine has existed under that name for less than a quarter century, its roots lie much deeper-in a normal school begun at Gorham in 1878; a junior college opened in Portland in 1933; and a business school, which lasted only from 1921 to 1925, but whose charter was revived two decades later to become Maine's only law school. Each of these roots underwent changes, and the alumni magazine now includes nine different seals across its news pages. The mergers of the founding institutions, plus the later development of new programs and the addition of new colleges, have made it a true university with the largest student enrollment of any educational institution in the state.

Hundreds of striking photographs document the interesting history of the Univeristy of Maine.

Established by the Morrill Act of 1862, Maine State College officially opened its doors in September of 1868 as a primarily agricultural school. By 1897, the Maine state legislature voted to change the name of the school to University of Maine, and expand the focus toward liberal arts. The flagship school of the University of Maine system, the Orono campus has had a significant impact on Maine life from its scientific inventions to its cultural contributions. Located on the banks of the Stillwater River, the university has always attracted motivated undergraduates and graduate students. From its earliest days, it has worked to be the state's center of learning, discovery, and service to the public. Here the history of the state's land grant university from 1865 to 1940 is presented in hundreds of striking photographs. They tell the story of the the school, including its academic, social, athletic, and administrative history as it grew over its first 75 years.

Established in 1831, Westbrook Seminary, as the school was originally known, may be the earliest coeducational boarding school in the country. Once noted as having been in three cities without moving, the institution began in a section of Westbrook that became Deering and was later annexed to Portland. Westbrook Seminary was founded by Universalists but open to all youth, whatever their creed or gender. Permitted to give college work in 1863, it provided laureate degrees to women for more than 50 years. In the 20th century, the institution moved from coeducational seminary to girls' school, to junior college for women, to college, and finally it became part of the University of New England, all under the school's original charter. Westbrook College Campus tells the story of this institution through vintage images, some never published before, selected from the campus archives.