How did we get here? The history of USM

A convoluted evolution over the course of 207 years led to what we know today as USM.

USM evolved haphazardly through the years, morphing according to the needs of the day, and only took the name the University of Southern Maine in 1978.

The school began when the Gorham Academy was founded as a preparatory school for boys in 1803 – when Maine was still part of Massachusetts – on what is now the modern Gorham campus. The Academy Hall was built for $3,000 on the orders of the General Court of Massachusetts and a seminary for girls was added in 1836. The first classes began in 1806 with just 33 male students. The academy continued until widespread free public education brought out a nationwide decline in private academies by the late 1800s.

The Gorham Academy was eventually abandoned in the 1870s and become part of the Gorham Normal School, a higher education institution for training teachers that opened during a ferocious blizzard on December 26, 1878. GNS is considered by most as the first true incarnation of USM because it provided teacher’s training and higher education. The first GNS building was Corthell Hall, built in the Gothic style in 1878 for the then princely sum of $23,170. Corthell Hall now houses the music school on the Gorham campus.

One of USM’s oldest buildings, the art gallery at Gorham, was built in 1821 as a free religious meeting house shared by two rival singing groups the Haydns and the Handels. In 1840 the meeting house became the Gorham town hall and a monument to Gorham’s civil war veterans was gifted to the town hall by the Robie family in 1866. The building remained Gorham’s town hall until 1960 when it was given to the Gorham State Teacher’s College and now serves as the art gallery. The Gorham civil war monument still stands outside the USM art gallery because it could not be easily moved when the town hall changed locations.

In 1910, the original Gorham Academy building was leased to GNS for the period of 999 years. The lease stipulates that the building can’t be changed or modified, and the state must pay for all upkeep, and that the building must be exactly reconstructed in the event of fire. Only 899 years are left on the lease today for what is one of the oldest educational buildings in Maine.

Teacher’s training at GNS was different in the old days. “People became certified to teach after taking a very basic and short teaching course,” said Judie O’Malley, assistant director of public affairs. GNS evolved into the GTSC in 1945. The first graduating class in 1946 consisted of two women and nine male veterans of WWII attending on the GI Bill.

Enrollment increased steadily at GSTC, later meriting the construction of a second men’s dorm called Woodward built in 1955 to complement Robie-Andrews, its first dorm. The first programs offered besides teachers’ training were law in 1945 and business administration in 1953.

In Portland several independent education institutions were born in the early 1900s that eventually merged into USM. Portland University opened in 1921 and was joined by Portland Junior College in 1933. After closing for World War II, PJC re-opened in 1947 and bought the Deering Estate, which is now the USM Portland campus.

The 1960s and 1970s saw the schools undergo a flurry of mergers and name-changes.

PJC was acquired by the UMaine system in 1957, becoming the University of Maine Portland, which then merged with PU in 1961.

Modern graduate programs were first offered in Gorham in 1964 when GSTC became Gorham State College. After steady post-war expansion, GSC joined the University of Maine system in 1968, becoming the Gorham State College at the University of Maine. GSC-UM merged with the University of Maine Portland in 1970 to become the University of Maine Portland-Gorham. UMPG was nicknamed POGO from the first two letters of Portland and Gorham. POGO was also the name of a then popular comic strip. Finally, in 1978 UMPG was renamed and consolidated into the University of Southern Maine.

USM added the Lewiston-Auburn campus in 1988. The school also acquired an old hotel on Congress Street that year and named it Portland Hall – offering students private bathrooms and individual thermostats in each room. Portland Hall served USM students, students from the Law School, Southern Maine Community College and many international students attending USM. USM sold Portland Hall in 2008 due to rising maintenance costs amid multi-million dollar budget gaps. “Sporadic” was the only word USM Vice President Craig Hutchinson needed to describe the long-term planning process during his 22 years as an administrator.

The 1990s and 2000s saw USM expand and improve significantly under Richard Pattenaude’s presidency from 1991 to 2007. But recurring fiscal problems and lower levels of state funding also left the University in a series of deep budgetary crises. Combined undergraduate and graduate enrollment in 1994 was 9,628 and increased to 10,820 by the year 2000. However, enrollment began a slow decline after 2000 to today where it stands at 9,655.