Your route opens onto Monument Square, once called Market Square or Haymarket Square, a town square in downtown Portland, Maine, halfway between the East Bayside and Old Port neighborhoods. Feel the history underfoot: the original stretch of Middle Street used to meet Federal Street right here; that old route is now paved with bricks and is no longer Middle Street. Middle Street once ran east through where The Maine Lobsterman statue is today before continuing from its intersection with Temple, Spring and Union Streets.
Look to the buildings that frame this place. One Monument Square, a ten-story office building on the eastern edge, was built on the site of the United States Hotel. At its November 1970 opening tenants included the law firms Bernstein, Shur, Sawyer & Nelson and Pierce, Atwood, Scribner, Allen, Smith & Lancaster, and Amica Mutual Insurance; the building was renovated in 2015.
Nearby, 28 Monument Square dates to 1871, and One City Center shares the square itself. Across Congress Street you can see the Time and Temperature Building, the Fidelity Trust Building and the main branch of the Portland Public Library. Those old street lines still shape the buildings that frame this square.