Victoria Mansion

Victoria Mansion is a historic house in downtown Portland, Maine. The brownstone exterior, elaborate interior design, opulent furnishings and early technological conveniences provide a detailed portrait of lavish living in nineteenth-century America. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1971.

This stately brownstone Italianate villa was completed in 1860 as a summer home for hotelier Ruggles Sylvester Morse. The house was designed by the New Haven architect Henry Austin. Its distinctive asymmetric form includes a four-story tower, overhanging eaves, verandas, and ornate windows. The frescoes and trompe-l'œil wall decorations were created by the artist and decorator Giuseppe Guidicini. Morse lived in the house until his death in 1893.

A year later, the house and its contents were sold by his wife to Joseph Ralph Libby, a Portland merchant and department store owner. The Libby family occupied the house for over 30 more years, until 1928. Due in part to the Great Depression a year later, the home was repossessed in 1939 due to back taxes. William H. Holmes bought the house in order to preserve it as a museum; it opened in 1941 as the Victoria Mansion.