Victoria Mansion, also called the Morse-Libby House, greets you here in downtown Portland as a stately brownstone Italianate villa. Completed in 1860 as a summer home for hotelier Ruggles Sylvester Morse, it offers a remarkably intact portrait of lavish living in nineteenth-century America. Morse, who left Maine to make his fortune in hotels in New York, Boston and New Orleans, commissioned New Haven architect Henry Austin to design this asymmetric house with a four-story tower, overhanging eaves, verandas, and ornate windows.
Inside, the frescoes and trompe-l'œil wall decorations by artist and decorator Giuseppe Guidicini and interiors by Gustave Herter show a range of styles; this house is Herter's earliest. The brownstone exterior, elaborate interior design, opulent furnishings and even early technological conveniences combine to create a detailed, lived-in record of taste and wealth. In 1971 the mansion was declared a National Historic Landmark for its architectural significance as a particularly well-preserved Italianate house.
Stone, paint and decoration still speak of summer retreat and urban ambition here, and Henry Austin's overhanging eaves, verandas and four-story tower carry that story skyward.