Old Port

The Old Port is the heart of Portland: ten blocks of red-brick Victorian warehouses, cobbled side streets, and ground-floor bars, oyster bars, and shops between Commercial and Middle Streets. The waterfront end is still a working harbour with lobster boats tied up at the wharves; the upper end melts into the office and theatre district.

Exchange Street and Fore Street are the central arteries for browsing. Most of the city's best restaurants and bars are in or just off these streets, and the whole area is at its best on a long summer evening when the brick still holds the day's heat.

things to do neighbourhood
A story
After the great fire of 1866 reduced most of the wooden city to ash, Portland rebuilt the wharf district almost entirely in brick and granite within a decade. By the 1960s the area had decayed into vacant warehouses and was nearly cleared for an interstate spur. A grassroots preservation campaign in the 1970s saved it — and what was salvaged is the densest concentration of intact post-Civil-War commercial architecture in the United States.