A few days ago, I went through an old brick house on Danforth Street with a client. It had seven fireplaces, arched doorways, and crown molding so elaborate it bordered on absurd.
Near the top of the house, we found a narrow passage hidden behind what felt like a coat closet. It opened onto a spiral staircase leading to a small room with windows on every side, overlooking Portland.
Most people would call it a widow's walk.
You have probably heard the story before. A sea captain leaves Portland on a long voyage. His wife climbs to the roof each day and watches the harbor, waiting for his sails to appear. Days turn into months. Eventually, everyone else understands that the ship is not coming home, but she keeps returning anyway.
It is a fantastic story. Sad, romantic, maritime, and just believable enough that nobody thinks to question it.
It is also mostly not true.
There were surely people who used rooftops to watch ships come and go. Portland was built around the harbor, so it would be strange if they did not. But there is little evidence that these rooms and platforms were generally designed for sailors' wives waiting for husbands who never returned.
Part of the confusion is that we call several different things a widow's walk.
An open platform with a railing is usually a roof walk. A smaller structure on top of a roof is often called a cupola. A room large enough to climb into, with windows arranged around a view, is closer to a belvedere, an Italian word that basically means beautiful view.
There is no need to become the person correcting strangers on the sidewalk. But once you know the difference, you start noticing several different kinds sitting above Portland's older houses.
The room on Danforth Street is better described as a belvedere. It arrived with the Italianate style, which became fashionable in the United States in the middle of the 19th century, during the age of sail. Italianate houses borrowed the feeling of Italian country villas, with low roofs, deep overhangs, decorative brackets, tall windows, and, on grander examples, a room or tower at the top.
These rooms were built for beauty, but they also served a practical purpose.
Before electric light and air conditioning, the center of a large house could be dark and hot. A windowed room above the central staircase brought daylight into the upper hall. When its windows opened, rising warm air could escape through the highest point of the house while cooler air was drawn in below.
It was an early form of air conditioning, if air conditioning also gave you a panoramic view and made the entire neighborhood look at your home.
The Danforth Street houses were built in 1855 for Samuel Spring. He and his nephew Andrew were successful traders in Argentine tallow and beef. The two men built neighboring Italianate houses, both crowned with rooms above the roofline.
The feature was not an odd maritime relic. It was part of an expensive, fashionable house built by someone who had done very well in Portland's trading economy.
It brought in light. It helped move hot air. It offered a view. And it made the house look important from several blocks away.
The widow's story survives because it fits Portland so perfectly. But I think the real answer is better.
