"Main Street, Maine" Exhibit Comes to Penobscot County

February 1, 2011 – A popular traveling exhibit of vintage Maine photographs is on display at the Newport Cultural Center now through May 3. "Main Street, Maine" features dozens of 75- to 100-year-old images from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection.

On Saturday, February 5, at 3:00 p.m., the Newport Cultural Center will host "Greetings from Newport, Maine," a talk by Kevin Johnson, photo archivist at Penobscot Marine Museum. Johnson will discuss the museum's Eastern Illustrating collection, and show images of Newport and other Sebasticook Valley communities. Members of the Newport Historic Preservation Society will provide background information. Both the talk and the exhibit are free to the public.

Many of the photographs in the exhibit show Main Streets in Maine during the period when the "modern" townscape was evolving, with transportation shifting from unpaved roads and horses to paved roads and automobiles, and electrical service expanding. The businesses, the services they offered, the people who came out to pose for the camera – or the quiet streets with no one visible, all evoke those early twentieth century moments in the lives of these communities. The photographs have descriptive captions written by Maine State Historian, Earle Shettleworth.

Eastern Illustrating & Publishing was a postcard publisher founded in Belfast, Maine, in 1909 and active through the early 1950s. According to Johnson, the "Eastern Collection" is the largest single photographic collection in the state, consisting of nearly 50,000 images.

The Newport Cultural Center is at 154 Main Street in Newport, Maine. It is open Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. For more information, call 207-368-5074 or visit http://newportculturalcenter.com