S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7 6 7 Landmarks Meaghan Maurice The Dream By Herb Adams P ortland’s long love affair with the movies began promptly at six p.m. on the warm summer eve- ning of July 3, 1907, at 551 Congress Street. Movies are amusements today, but when the 20th century was young, they were mir- acles. The idea that an image could burst its frame and come to life seemed like sorcery– impossible to explain and amazing to be- hold. Moving pictures also present- ed a tantalizing opportunity for newcomer James W. Greely, a promoter and eager entrepre- neur then strolling the streets of Maine’s largest city. Born in Bangor and educated in It was Maine’s first theater built exclusively for the movies, a palace of pictured promises lit by electricity, the doorway to a new century–it was Dreamland. Silver Screen Who knew Maine’s first movie theater would later become NOSH, home of the infamous Apocalypse Now Burger? Lewiston, Greely (1876-1950) was a young Spanish-American War veteran with a sav- vy eye and a sure sense of what sells. Portland had seen motion pictures be- fore–flickering French imports of scenery and fire engines shown as wraparounds for lantern slides and sing-a-longs, usually in borrowed halls and club rooms. Why not, pondered Greely, display this new mira- cle in a palace of luxury worthy of its mystery? And why not on that very street of dreams, Congress Street? The man, the moment, and the magic had met, and the name Greely gave it said it all: Dreamland. From the first, like its very name, Dreamland Theater was a fantasy. Erect- ed over a rebuilt fruit store on a bustling arc of Congress Street opposite the then- new Beaux-Arts Miller Building (1904, now the Maine College of Art), its soaring, stepped façade–part Mexican, part Moor- ish, with dazzling light effects–was the work of 28-year-old John Howard Stevens, son of the famed architect John Calvin Ste- vens himself. the opening night Scaffolding and canvas covered frantic con- struction crews until the very last minute. It was “one of the most strenuous days known