The Maine Charitable Mechanic Association is a private non-profit organization located in Portland, Maine, United States. Founded in 1815, it has since 1859 been headquartered at Mechanics' Hall, 519 Congress Street, in the center of Portland. The library's hours are Tuesday through Thursday from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., Friday from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., and Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. [1]
The MCMA was founded in 1815 as a way for local tradesmen to pool their resources, better their educations, and improve the quality of their work. Like many similar organizations that emerged in this period, the association aimed to help workers make the transition from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy. The association sponsored education for apprentices who worked as carpenters, masons, shipbuilders, jewelers, ironworkers, watchmakers, riggers, instrument makers, glass workers and more. The association's charter also declared that money would be set aside for "relieving the distress of unfortunate mechanics and their families." [2]
The MCMA opened its library in 1820. The library was housed in several locations around Portland until the erection in 1859 of Mechanics' Hall, built by members of the organization for their own use. The hall was designed by Thomas J. Sparrow, [3] the first professional architect in Portland. [4] In the late 1800s, famed local architect John Calvin Stevens designed the Mechanics' Hall ballroom. Mechanics' Hall was in 1973 added [5] to the National Register of Historic Places.
The association flourished in the 19th century. It hosted many events, including musical performances and dances. Lectures were an especially popular draw for the organization; speakers like John Neal [6] expounded on such topics as anatomy, physiology, natural philosophy, and modes of heating.
The MCMA also held several fairs and exhibitions to showcase the work of its members. Perhaps the grandest of these took place in 1854, when the association was not only allowed to use all the unused space in Portland City Hall, but raised a two-story building across the street and filled it with exhibits.
Mechanics' Hall was on occasion used for governmental purposes. In 1861, the MCMA offered the use of Mechanics' Hall as a mustering station for soldiers on their way to fight in the Civil War. After a terrible fire destroyed much of Portland in 1866, Mechanics' Hall served for a time as City Hall.
In 1875, the MCMA began to offer free classes in mechanical drawing, a practice it would continue until 1983. John Calvin Stevens was among the instructors.
Membership in the Maine Charitable Mechanic Association dwindled through the 20th and early 21st century as did the scope of its activities. However, the association is now enjoying a renaissance with many new members and enlivened creative programming. Today, MCMA has about four hundred members. [7] It continues to operate its library at Mechanics' Hall, which offers a slate of lectures, book groups, and other events of artistic and historical interest. Its collection contains over 30,000 volumes that include both general interests and specialized collections. [8] It is one of the few membership libraries still active in the United States, and one of the few Mechanics' Institutes remaining in the western hemisphere.
Mechanics' institutes, also known as mechanics' institutions, sometimes simply known as institutes, and also called schools of arts, were educational establishments originally formed to provide adult education, particularly in technical subjects, to working men in Victorian-era Britain and its colonies. They were often funded by local industrialists on the grounds that they would ultimately benefit from having more knowledgeable and skilled employees. The mechanics' institutes often included libraries for the adult working class, and were said to provide them with an alternative pastime to gambling and drinking in pubs.
John Neal was an American writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist. Considered both eccentric and influential, he delivered speeches and published essays, novels, poems, and short stories between the 1810s and 1870s in the United States and Great Britain, championing American literary nationalism and regionalism in their earliest stages. Neal advanced the development of American art, fought for women's rights, advocated the end of slavery and racial prejudice, and helped establish the American gymnastics movement.
Mechanics Hall may refer to different current or former meeting halls:
North Yarmouth Academy is an independent, co-ed, college preparatory day school serving students from early childhood education to postgraduate. NYA was founded in 1814, in what was then North Yarmouth, Maine, prior to the 1849 secession that established Yarmouth, the town in which the school now stands. NYA has 394 enrolled students with an average class size of 14 students. NYA offers 16 interscholastic sports for boys and girls at the Varsity and Junior Varsity level.
John Calvin Stevens was an American architect who worked in the Shingle Style, in which he was a major innovator, and the Colonial Revival style. He designed more than 1,000 buildings in the state of Maine.
A subscription library is a library that is financed by private funds either from membership fees or endowments. Unlike a public library, access is often restricted to members, but access rights can also be given to non-members, such as students.
Portland Public Library is the main library of the public library system in Portland, Maine, USA. It is located at 5 Monument Square on Congress Street in the Old Port of Portland, Maine. The library has three neighborhood branches, Burbank branch, Peaks Island branch, and Riverton branch.
The History of Portland, Maine begins when Native Americans originally called the Portland peninsula Məkíhkanək meaning “At the fish hook” in Penobscot and Machigonne in Algonquian. The peninsula and surrounding areas was home to members of the Algonquian-speaking Aucocisco branch of the Eastern Abenaki tribe who were forcibly relocated to current day Canada during European settlement.
The Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association (est.1795) of Boston, Massachusetts, was "formed for the sole purposes of promoting the mechanic arts and extending the practice of benevolence." Founders included Paul Revere, Jonathan Hunnewell, and Benjamin Russell. Through much of the 19th century, the association organized conferences and exhibitions devoted to innovation in the mechanical arts.
John Payson Soule (1828–1904) was a photographer and publisher in Boston, Massachusetts, and Seattle, Washington.
The Arts District is a section of downtown Portland, Maine’s designated in 1995 as to promote the cultural community and creative economy of the city. It covers a large part of upper Congress Street towards the West End and spans Congress Street toward the East ending at Portland City Hall and its Merrill Auditorium concert hall.
The Bradford Mechanics' Institute Library was established in Bradford, England, in 1832 as part of a national initiative to provide adult education especially in technical subjects for working men. The institute in Bradford was supported by numerous local worthies, including James Hanson after whom is named one of Bradford's largest high schools.
The New England Manufacturers' and Mechanics' Institute flourished in the 1880s in Boston, Massachusetts. It existed as a rival to the long-established Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association. Individuals affiliated with the NEM and M Institute included businessman John F. Wood, James L. Little, John M. Little, Samuel R. Payson, William B. Merrill, and Frederick W. Griffin.
Halton Hills Public Library (HHPL) is the public library system for the Town of Halton Hills, Ontario, Canada. Through its two branches and its website, www.hhpl.on.ca, the Halton Hills Public Library provides a range of services for Halton Hills residents. There are approximately 17,000 active cardholders, most residing in the communities of Georgetown, Acton, Limehouse, Glen Williams, Speyside, Norval, and surrounding areas.
The Mechanic Apprentices Library Association (1820-1892) of Boston, Massachusetts, functioned as "a club of young apprentices to mechanics and manufacturers ... whose object is moral, social, and literary improvement." Some historians describe it as "the first of the kind known to have been established in any country." Founded by William Wood in 1820, it also had an intermittent formal relationship with the larger, more established Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association. In its heyday, roughly 1820s-1850s, the Apprentices Library "[met] quarterly ; ... [had] nearly 200 members, and a library of about 2000 volumes; connected with which [was] a reading room, gratuitously supplied with the best newspapers and magazines of the city, and a cabinet of natural history. In addition to these advantages, the association [had] lectures and debates in the winter, and a social class for the study of elocution in the summer."
Mechanics' Hall is a historic building and meeting space at 519 Congress Street in downtown Portland, Maine. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1973 and additional NRHP documentation asserting national significance of the building was approved in 2022. Built in 1857-59 by and for the members of the Maine Charitable Mechanic Association, it is a well-preserved example of Italianate architecture executed in brick and stone, and a landmark of Portland's downtown business and arts district. The building, still owned by MCMA, houses the association's library. The Maine Charitable Mechanic Association was founded in 1815 as a social organization that promoted and supported the skilled trades and their practitioners. Its original members were master craftspeople and entrepreneurs and their apprentices.
Yarmouth is a town in Cumberland County, Maine, United States, twelve miles north of the state's largest city, Portland. When originally settled in 1636, as North Yarmouth, it was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and remained part of its subsequent incarnations for 213 years. In 1849, twenty-nine years after Maine's admittance to the Union as the twenty-third state, it was incorporated as the Town of Yarmouth.
The Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution (HLSI) is an unincorporated society with trustees having charitable status under the Friendly Societies Act. Founded in 1839 in Highgate, north London, with the aim of helping local people to better understand new developments in industry and discoveries in science, it is now one the few surviving membership supported organisations which predate the widespread establishment of public libraries in the United Kingdom. Today its charitable purpose, from its historic building, is to offer opportunities for life-long learning through its courses, library, archives, art gallery, lectures, debates, cultural and social events.
William Hutchinson Rowe was an American author and historian who lived in Yarmouth, Maine. The town's elementary school, built the year he died, is now named for him. In 1937, he published Ancient North Yarmouth and Yarmouth, Maine 1636–1936: A History, covering three centuries of the town's past. As of the early 21st century, it was still in print.
Thomas J. Sparrow was a prominent American architect active in the first half of the 19th century. Only three of his designs are known to be extant, with two of them now being listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
