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East Bayside

Neighborhoods in Portland, Maine
Bayside Variety, Portland ME
Bayside Variety, Portland ME

East Bayside is a neighborhood in Portland, Maine. It is bordered by Franklin Street on the west, Washington Avenue on the east, to the north by Marginal Way, and the south by Congress Street. It is bordered by the neighborhoods of Bayside, the Old Port and Munjoy Hill. It is often confused with the Bayside neighborhood, which is on the opposite side of Franklin Street. East Bayside was first developed a street network in the early 19th century. By the 1820s the area was Portland's second seaport via the Back Cove’s ship channel. Much of the debris from the great Portland fire of 1866 was deposited into Back Cove, significantly increasing the size of Bayside and East Bayside. Maps produced around 1900 show an extension of the shoreline out to Marginal Way and beyond. The shoreline would not change again until the construction of the Interstate in 1974. In the 19th century the Bayside and East Bayside neighborhoods were a mix of residential, commercial, and industrial uses. Manufacturing, including a foundry and a rope factory, was served, first by ship traffic on Back Cove and later, when the Cove channel was abandoned, by rail. The original rail line roughly forms the demarcation between the industrial zone, now located to the north of Fox Street, and the residential uses to the south. In the early 1950s the newly created Slum Clearance and Redevelopment Authority highlighted East Bayside as a target neighborhood. In 1958 the Authority demolished the Little Italy neighborhood, a portion of which was in what we now call East Bayside, razing 92 dwellings and 27 small businesses. Another 54 dwelling units were razed for the Bayside Park urban renewal project, an area that now includes Fox Field and Kennedy Park public housing. The first phase of the Kennedy Park was built in 1965. Several streets were truncated in an attempt to limit access to outside traffic. The razing of Franklin Street began in 1967; 100 structures were demolished and an unknown number of families relocated or were displaced. The neighborhood was cut off from Bayside and the Old Port when the four-lane, limited access Franklin Arterial was built to allow people who lived outside of Portland to enter and exit the city rapidly. Many existing streets, such as Oxford Street, were truncated by the creation of the road, creating a confusing street grid where roads have the same name but don't connect. The neighborhood has historically provided a home for recent immigrants with large population of Irish, Scandinavians, and Italians in the late 19th century. During the early 20th century over 250 Armenian families settled in the neighborhood. More recently East Bayside has become home to new immigrants including Cambodians, Vietnamese, and, most recently, Sudanese, Somalis, and Iraqis.The neighborhood is also prone to severe flooding events during King Tides, rainstorms, and during the spring snow melt. This is likely due to the fact that some of the area sits on artificial land. Climate change has proven to be a problem for Bayside, with some sources showing that Back Cove may expand back to its original pre-19-century levels by 2100, making most of Bayside uninhabitable once again.According to the 2010 census, Census Tract 5 is the most diverse section of Portland, Maine. It is 60% White, 21% Black, 6% Hispanic, 8% Asian, 1% Native American, and 4% Multiracial.In 2011, Mayo Street Arts, a community arts venue, opened on Mayo Street, adjacent to Kennedy Park in the previously unoccupied St. Angsar Church.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article East Bayside (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

East Bayside
Mayo Street, Portland

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Wikipedia: East BaysideContinue reading on Wikipedia

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N 43.662611111111 ° E -70.253833333333 °
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Mayo Street 2
04101 Portland
Maine, United States
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Bayside Variety, Portland ME
Bayside Variety, Portland ME
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Mayo Street Arts
Mayo Street Arts

Mayo Street Arts is a community arts and performance venue in the East Bayside neighborhood of Portland, Maine. It was founded in 2010 by Blainor McGough after leasing the building which was formerly St. Ansgar Church. Mayo Street Arts' second executive director, Ian Bannon, succeeded McGough in May 2020 following McGough's resignation. Located next to Kennedy Park, a public housing development and close to many other public housing areas, Mayo Street Arts serves as a theater, concert venue, art gallery, and meeting space and offers affordable artist studios, rehearsal space, and a teaching platform for visual and performing artists of multicultural backgrounds. Programming is varied, but with a particular focus on puppetry, folk music, and dance. One of Mayo Street Arts' first programs was the Children's Puppet Workshop, which incorporated Portland's professional artist community and many children of immigrant families which focuses on puppetry and story-telling.Mayo Street Arts partners with a number of local organizations, including the East Bayside Neighborhood Association, Learning Works and the Maine College of Art. The venue, which has seating for 110 people, also hosts performances by local musicians who appreciate the building's natural acoustics.Mayo Street Arts first leased the building on Mayo Street from Roxanne Quimby's charitable foundation, which had owned the building since 2007. It subsequently purchased the building in 2013, after receiving a donation from the Brooks Family Foundation.Mayo Street Arts was supported the Virginia Somers Hodgkins Foundation in 2011, and in 2018 received a Stand for the Arts award for accessibility improvements.In 2021, Mayo Street Arts was awarded its first grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in the amount of $10,000 to support the creation of a Traditional Arts Network in collaboration with Cultural Resources. The Traditional Arts Network will be a resource for traditional artists who wish to preserve and share artistic and cultural practices of important newcomer groups in New England. The pilot year of the project will focus on the Rwandan, Congolese, Burundi, Somali, and Somali Bantu communities of Portland and Lewiston. This network will pool resources to offer support in marketing, grant-writing, documentation, video production, and access to rehearsal space.As of June 2022, Mayo Street Arts is wheelchair accessible.