Lewiston, ME (Portland, Lowell: houses, moving, suburban)

[Tiger Beer]

I was just viewing Lewiston, ME - the beginning of a long journey - SkyscraperPage Forum

Your city looks very beautiful and interesting. I'd never heard of Lewiston before. Just found out the 2nd largest city in Maine?!

It looks dense and walkable, pedestrian-friendly. Some nice brightly colored houses splattered about as well. Nice!

[lrfox]

It's an old industrial town built in much the same fashion as others throughout New England-- a dense core surrounded by factories (typically on a swift moving river). the downtown area is relatively dense, but it's a very small pocket of land... most of the city is much more suburban and even rural. Most of the industries have left meaning the jobs are gone. You're talking about a city of under 40,000 people here (35,000 I believe). Picture a city like Lowell, Lawrence, or Haverhill MA but much smaller. Lewiston has some interesting traits (one of the highest populations of Somali and Bantu people in the U.S.) but it's on hard times. It's by no means horrible, but it's a struggling little city right now... also, look at those photos and notice how few people you see walking around it... it's just not a pedestrian oriented place aside from the tiny pocket of downtown. Maine isn't a heavily populated state, so being the second largest city isn't saying too much about size. Most cities in Maine (even Portland, the largest) have a small town look and feel.

[juststoppinby]

Lewiston is very much an old mill town. The pictures on Skyscraper page are wonderful pictures as far as showing the old architecture of the city. However, anyone looking at those pictures and thinks that is all that Lewiston is makes me a bit defensive. True that is part of the down town area and true that parts of the downtown area can be seedy. I wish more pictures had been taken and perhaps at a time of day or a day of the week when people were out and about. In one of the pictures in the background you can see the Basillica of Sts. Peter and Paul, this is an absolutely incredible structure and would have added to the pictures.
I guess I just feel bad that only the older parts of the city were included and I do understand it was supposed to be about the buildings, but reading the feedback on that forum confirmed my thoughts that people would think it was desolute and sparse.