Former Adams School, Named For Marada F. Adams, a Popular Principal on the Hill
By Carol McCracken (Post # 672)
Avesta Housing is holding an informational meeting on the conversion of the former Adams School into modertly priced condominiums on Tuesday, April 26 at the Shailer School Community Room, 56 North Street. The meeting begins at 6 pm.
Marada F. Adams for whom the former Adams School is named, was a teacher for seventy-two years. Fifty of those years were spent in Munjoy Hill schools, first as principal of the Shailer School, then going on to the Emerson Grammer School as its first principal in 1898, where she taught until her retirement in 1935. She died three years later at the age of 92. Miss Adams long teaching career began in the front room of a frame house in Linneus, Aroostook County, when she was sixteen years old. The house had replaced the log cabin where she was born November 1, 1845. Between teaching terms she attended Ricker Academy in Houlton. But she also found time to pursue her love of fishing, exploring and riding horseback in the beautiful Aroostook countryside. The foregoing excerpt comes from – “MunjoyHill Portland’s Scenic Peninsula,” by former and deceased Hill resident Donald L. Ferguson. The book was self-published and may be seen at the Portland Room of the Portland Public Library.
By way of a partial chronology, at its city council meeting on September 6, 2006, the council voted to transfer control of the school and to establish the Adams School Property Reuse Committee. Two months later, in November, the Adams Re-use Committee began meeting. In July of 2007, the Adams Re-use Committee finalized its report and later submitted it to the city. The contents of the report became the genesis of the RFP to which Avesta Housing responded and won the contract.
For more information, please contact Ethan Boxer-Macomber, Senior Development Officer for Avesta Housing at www.avestahousing.org. or call him at 207 – 553-7780 X 284
For more information, pls see Post # 584, September 17th herein.