Plans and Priorities: Multifamily Housing Types and French Canadian Builders in Northern New England, 1890–1950

Abstract:This article explores varieties of multifamily housing types in the textile production landscape of northern New England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Using the Sand Hill neighborhood of the small industrial city of Augusta, Maine, as a case study, it explores the role of French Canadian immigrants as builders and their choice of building types that deviated from more recognized forms such as the three-decker and company house. Instead, these builders chose comparatively unusual and decidedly informal kitchen-focused plans with exterior circulation in both new construction and conversion of older single-family houses. Building on fieldwork and research based on archival sources, this paper elucidates some of the ways in which these plans responded to distinct cultural preferences and explores the financial motivations and methods for their construction.