The Press Hotel - Portland, Maine
The Press Hotel on Exchange Street in Portland began life in 1923 as the Gannett Building, headquarters of the Portland Press Herald. Built in the Georgian Revival style, it was commissioned by publisher Guy P. Gannett to centralize his growing media operations. The structure’s clean brick façade and limestone trim reflected the paper’s ambitions—modern, efficient, and rooted in the city’s civic core.
In 1947, a large addition was built to accommodate the newspaper’s expansion. For decades, the building housed editors, reporters, and press operators who produced Maine’s daily news. Trucks once idled out front waiting to load fresh papers from the basement printing room, and for much of the twentieth century, nearly every issue of the Press Herald passed through that building.
By the early 2000s, the paper’s operations had consolidated, and in 2010 the staff moved to a smaller space nearby. The old headquarters sat empty for two years before developer Jim Brady purchased it in 2012. His plan was to convert the former newsroom and press floors into a boutique hotel while preserving the original architectural details.
The Press Hotel opened in 2015 after an extensive restoration by Stonehill & Taylor Architects. The marble floors, staircases, and windows were repaired, and the interiors reinterpreted with references to the building’s printing history. The former city room became the Inkwell Bar, and the old press floor was converted into an art gallery. The building remains one of Portland’s most successful examples of adaptive reuse—its layout and proportions nearly unchanged, but its purpose entirely rewritten.
Matt Lambros ME Portland Oct 06, 2025 Architecture History Places to Stay
Oct 06, 2025
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