Homes, Histories, and Women’s Networks
Tuesday, September 16th
6:30pm
Join us on Tuesday, September 16th at 6:30pm for a lecture with Thomas C. Hubka, Architectural & Cultural Historian.
Behind Portland’s grand homes and quiet streets lies a largely undocumented chapter of the city’s Irish story—one told in boarding houses, kitchens, and servant stairwells. Irish Maids and Portland’s Houses invites the community to explore the housing and domestic histories of Irish women who came to Portland as domestic workers in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
This talk aims to shine a light on the often-invisible lives of Irish women who arrived in America alone: where they lived, where they worked, and how they supported one another in a new and often difficult world. As single women, they navigated every phase of life—from immigration to labor to community building—without the legal or social protections often afforded to men or married women. Their histories are uniquely tied to the places they lived: domestic service placements, boarding houses, rented rooms, and homes shared with fellow migrants. These networks of chain migration and mutual assistance among women are difficult to trace in official records or family trees, yet they tell a vital and singular story. That is why we are reaching out to the broader Irish community: to help us uncover and preserve this essential chapter through shared family stories, photographs, oral histories, or even just names and addresses that may help us reconstruct this essential part of our heritage.
Whether you have roots in Portland’s Irish neighborhoods or are simply curious about the domestic work that helped build and sustain the city, we invite you to join us in preserving this overlooked legacy.
Professor Hubka will be available after the lecture to discuss further questions. He’ll also be holding interviews at the Center the next day, Wednesday, September 17th from 9am-3pm, to take more detailed information and collect family history stories from the Portland Irish community. Eventually, professor Hubka hopes to visit and document the houses where Irish maids lived and worked in the Portland area! If you have information, stories, or want to learn more about these interviews, please head HERE to learn more and sign up!
About Thomas C. Hubka
Thomas Hubka is a Professor Emeritus from the Department of Architecture, University of Wisconsin−Milwaukee. Through almost forty years of scholarship and teaching he has attempted to link the practice and teaching of architecture to historical and cultural context. He has published widely on topics of popular, vernacular architecture including theoretical works and detailed studies of common buildings such as New England farms, bungalows, ranch houses, and workers’ cottages
His latest books explore America’s most common housing such as workers’ cottages, bungalows, and duplexes: How the Working-Class Home Became Modern, 1900-1940. (University of Minnesota Press, 2021, and Houses without Names: Architecture Nomenclature and the Classification of America’s Common Houses (University of Tennessee Press, 2013).
His two previous books are: Resplendent Synagogue: Architecture and Worship in an 18th Century Polish Community (University Press of New England and Brandeis University Press) for which he received the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s, Henry Glassie Award, 2006; and Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England (University Press of New England) for which he received the Abbott Lowell Cummings Award in 1985.
He is currently living in Portland, Oregon where he has taught courses at the University of Oregon, Portland State University, and Portland Community College and continues to study the housing and neighborhoods of Portland and Oregon.
Thank you to our sponsor for this event: Hyatt Place Portland Downtown-Old Port Square!
Interested in learning more on this subject? There are some fantastic local researches doing great work right here in Portland!
Check out the Portland Bridgit Project to learn more:
The Portland Bridget Project is an independent research initiative led by Michelle O’Donnell Josephson and Hannah Marcel Field. The goal of our work is to find and tell the stories of 19th and early 20th century Irish domestic servants in Portland, Maine. These women are an important part of our local history, but their stories have not been told. You can learn more about us on The Portland Bridget Project Facebook page and on Instagram as @theportlandbridgetproject