Located in Portland, Maine’s Old Port district, the Press Hotel opened its doors to guests just last month. An addition to Marriott’s Autograph Collection, the 110-room property offers a unique experience for guests who have an interest in history—the building housed the Portland Press Herald from 1923 to 2010—but also turns a spotlight on Portland’s art scene.
Art is featured prominently in the hotel, with original pieces in the lobby, a gallery on the lower level, and works in guestrooms and meeting spaces. “The goal was to fill the hotel with real art—not hotel art,” says Jim Brady, the hotel’s developer. It was also important to Brady and the rest of the Press Hotel team, which included prominent New York City architecture and interior design firm Stonehill & Taylor, that the look and feel of the display pieces reflected the Portland locale. As such, a Maine artist was behind every piece featured on the property.
The moment guests walk into the lobby, they encounter a permanent installation by Portland artist and associate professor at the Maine College of Art (MECA), Matt Hutton. The piece, titled RESURGAM (Latin for “I will rise again” and Portland’s city motto), echoes a letterpress and draws guests’ attention to the front desk. The piece is made from six different species of wood, positioned at varying depths to paint a complex picture of space and texture. Each letter was hand cut and stained with ink in homage to the building’s original use.
In regard to its construction, RESURGAM is assembled from a number of smaller panels, which allowed it to be installed in pieces, rather than all at once, and made it better suited for weather fluctuations. “I had to think a lot about how it was going to be built and not explode with expansion and contraction, because wood moves so much over time,” Hutton explains. He designed the hotel’s signage in a similar manner, bringing design continuity to each floor of the property.
The Press Hotel lobby is also home to a two-story permanent installation by Erin Hutton, Portland artist, associate director of artists at work and special programs at MECA, and wife of Matt. Titled SWARM, the installation features 62 typewriters, with models ranging from the late 1800s to approximately the late 1960s. “We omitted some of the more modern electrical typewriters from the piece, not to erase history, but because it didn’t really fit with the work,” she explains. “It made more sense to create something with a greater level of dynamism.”
SWARM was first laid out on the floor of Erin’s studio before transferring all of the typewriters to the wall in the Press Hotel’s lobby. “I put together a team that included a woodworker and metalworker, and we installed the piece in the hotel over the course of only two days,” Erin says.
Down the lobby stairs, past SWARM, is the Press Hotel’s in-house gallery, which features a number of works from Maine artists, including sculptures, paintings, and murals. The hotel owns the majority of the pieces and is in talks to formally acquire the others.
The Press Hotel’s meeting spaces also prominently feature artwork. A different artist is highlighted in each meeting room, giving individual spaces their own unique identity.
Common spaces are not the only areas of the hotel with original artwork. Every guestroom features original art, including a vast collection of work by Rockport, Maine-based textile designer Angela Adams.
By taking such care in cultivating the Press Hotel’s art collection, Brady hopes the hotel will soon become a stop on Portland’s famous First Friday Art Walk, a free public event during which the city’s local arts agency leads art admirers through city galleries, museums, and other venues to take in the artistic community.
