The first brick building was erected in 1853, by Mr. William S. Ladd. Two years later the city boasted four churches, one academy, one public school, four printing-offices, about forty retail-stores of various kinds, one steam flouring, and four steam lumber-mills. The taxable property of that year was valued at $1,195,034, or about half the actual value of the real and personal property of the town.
From this time on the growth of Portland has been healthy and uniform. During the mining excitement of the upper country in 1864–5–6, there was a more hurried growth, and more inflated condition of trade, which subsided, however, with the excitement which occasioned it. Notwithstanding, there has been more costly and substantial improvement, both public and private, within the five years last past than ever before. Some of the business buildings and stores erected within that time are of truly metropolitan elegance and dimensions. The Court-house, the new Methodist Church, and the Custom House and Post-office, are large and costly edifices.
The city has fine public schools, and more than an equal number of seminaries, academies, and private schools. The Portland Academy, a Methodist institution, is a flourishing school for pupils of both sexes. St. Helen's Hall, a seminary for young ladies, is under control of the Bishop of the Episcopal Church; who also has recently established a grammar-school for boys. Both these seminaries are in a very flourishing condition. The Roman Catholic Church, also, has two schools, and the Jewish population one.
Of churches, Portland boasts a goodly number: two Roman Catholic, one Methodist, two Episcopalian, two Jewish, one Baptist, one Presbyterian, one Congrega-
