The Time & Temperature Building (official name 477 Congress Street) is a fourteen story office building located on Congress Street in downtown Portland, Maine. The building is named after the large display screen on the roof that flashes the local time and temperature.
Originally known as the Chapman Building, it was erected in 1924 as a twelve-story building. Together with the ten story Fidelity Trust Tower next door, these buildings were for many years two of Portland's tallest.
When it first opened, the Chapman Building once had the state's first indoor shopping center on its ground floor. A few shops still operate inside. In 1964, two additional floors were built, with the flashing time and temperature sign installed on the roof. At the time, Casco Bank & Trust was the main tenant of the building, so in addition to the time and temperature, the words "CASCO" and "BANK" also flashed. An updated sign was installed in 1999.
When the addition was added in 1964, its more modern design did not go well with the older section, and in the 1980s, a major renovation of the building took place, and this problem was corrected.
The building, being one of Portland's tallest, can be seen for many miles around, including from Peaks Island across the harbor. Many Portlanders depend on the Time and Temperature sign, as it has become a popular landmark on the skyline. On one occasion, the malfunction of the sign resulted in 60 phone calls to the owners of the building in the hours after the sign stopped displaying information.
Over the years, different sponsors have had messages flashing from the sign, including Portland Savings Bank, WMTW-TV, and most recently, The Law Offices of Joe Bornstein (with the message "CALL" "JOE"). Also, when there is a snowstorm, the words "PARK" and "BAN" flash to remind people not to park on the street during snow removal. Maine law normally prohibits flashing messages on signs visible from state highways, but the Maine Legislature passed an exemption in the law for the Time and Temperature sign, to allow it to use advertising to cover its operating costs starting in 1991.
Besides general offices, the building is home to television station WMTW, NESN Portland, and radio stations WTHT 99.9, WHXR "The Bone" (now simulcast on 106.3 and 106.7), WFNK Frank FM, on 107.5, and The Maine Sports Network on AM 870/1470 WLAM
Famous quotes containing the words time, temperature and/or building:
“Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary masterplan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people’s own failure as individuals.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)