Art and Architecture in Portland

By Linda Tancs

The McLellan-Sweat Mansion is a historic house museum on High Street in Portland, Maine. It forms the rear component of the Portland Museum of Art complex, the state’s oldest and largest public art institution. The Federal-style, three-story mansion was completed in 1801 for Major Hugh McLellan, a wealthy merchant who owned Maine’s largest shipping fleet. The house was thereafter owned by Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat, a writer and philanthropist who bequeathed the home to a society now known as the Portland Museum of Art. Admission to the museum is free to the public every Friday from 4 to 8 p.m.