Portland
With a reputation for both ability and reliability, Fassett was well prepared for the rebuilding which following the Great Portland Fire of 1866. His designs for the city include the original Maine General Hospital Building, Alms House, Second Parish Church, the parish house for the Cathedral of St. Luke, and the former city hall, which itself would burn in 1908 and be replaced by the present building. He also designed numerous residences, many in the fashionable West End. During the 1870s, Fassett was the leading architect in both the city and state.
He married twice; first to Mima Ann Welch, who bore him four children, and then to Harriet Hudson. His son, Edward F. Fassett, became an architect and joined the firm. But his most famous apprentice was John Calvin Stevens, who was made partner and opened Fassett's Boston office in 1880, before opening his own Portland office in 1884. Fassett and his son designed the Pythian Opera House, built in 1894 at Boothbay Harbor. In 1895, Fassett redesigned the Mount Pleasant House, a hotel at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in the White Mountains. Hired by Joseph Stickney, a coal mine and railroad stock tycoon who later built the more famous Mount Washington Hotel nearby, the architect enlarged the plain building into a Queen Anne style confection of cupolas, gables and porches. It was demolished in 1939.
Francis H. Fassett died at the age of 85 and is buried at Evergreen Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: Francis H. Fassett
Famous quotes containing the word portland:
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)