“Maine Architectural Drawings From 1875-1925,” at the Portland Museum of Art is the second part of a series presenting a colorful variety of works in pencil, ink, watercolor and pastel that highlight the best-known era of Maine architecture, the half-century from 1875 to 1925. This period of widespread growth saw the rise of two distinctly American forms in both resort and urban areas across the state – the shingle style and the colonial revival.

The shingle style was common in domestic buildings in the suburbs and along the seashore. It is marked by large, rambling houses of irregular form covered in tight wood shingle walls. The colonial revival style was applied to buildings of all kinds and used classical forms adapted from the works of Eighteenth Century New England. Regardless of the style in which an architect worked, the process resulted in many beautifully wrought drawings. Many architects, like Portland’s famed John Calvin Stevens (1855-1940), worked in both styles.

Part I of this exhibition series, presented in the spring of 2004, saw the builder become a professional architect. In Part II, visitors see the architect become an artist. The increase in corporate firms gave rise to individuals specializing in various aspects of the profession, including that of “delineator” or, in the case of Harry C. Wilkinson (1872-1937), “perspective draftsman.” After the Civil War, the education of the architect increasingly approached that of the artist. Aspiring architects traveled to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, as did John Howard Stevens (1879-1958); to Cambridge and its Massachusetts Institute of Technology; or, like Arthur McFarland (1890-1953), to Columbia University in New York or other newly established university schools.

Gaining proficiency with artists’ tools was as fundamental to these programs as the study of the historical styles that formed the basis of eclectically designed buildings. Some of these institutions included studio practice in life drawing as part of the curriculum, or students formed their own sketching clubs or spent their free hours painting portraits and landscapes.

Although John Calvin Stevens did not attend a school of architecture, he participated in the sketch club at MIT in the early 1880s. Standard plans and elevations continued to be fundamental for the practice of architecture, but large, eye-catching views, such as the Stevenses’ firm’s perspective of the L.D.M. Sweat Galleries at the Portland Museum of Art also became commonplace. New artistic techniques, such as William Austin’s free-hand pen-and-ink sketches for the Jackson Cottage, impressionistic watercolor washes, soft pencil graphics, charcoal drawing and the use of pastels, were all employed to create images that grew ever larger. These were custom-framed like works of art, as in the monumental drawing for Carrere and Hastings’s Portland City Hall. Professional reputations came to depend as much on the publication of drawings in the new professional magazines, such as Boston’s American Architect and Building News, as on actual buildings. The ability to “sell” a design through artistic presentation became the central aim of the profession, and it remains so today.

“The Maine Perspective: Architectural Drawings” is a comprehensive three-part exhibition series that focuses on the rich graphic heritage of Maine’s architecture and examines the evolving building tradition as well as the development of the architectural profession in the state. Part I of the series, “The Rise of the Architectural Profession, 1800-1860,” (February 7-May 23, 2004) focused on architecture becoming a profession, while Part III, on view in the spring of 2006, will focus on modern architecture during the period of 1925 to 1980. An illustrated catalog featuring all three exhibitions will be published at the end of the series in 2006.

This exhibition series is guest curated by two of the state’s leading architectural historians: Earle G. Shettleworth, director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, and James F. O’Gorman, Grace Slack McNeil professor emeritus of the history of American art, Wellesley College. The McNeil Program has also generously provided partial funding for the exhibition.

The Portland Museum of Art is at Seven Congress Square. For information, 207-775-6148.