In the 1920s, the Gates family of Gray hired Portland architect John Calvin Stevens to renovate their home. Stevens gave a facelift to the front of the home by redesigning the entry, created a porch on the side of the house, added on a back room, and rebuilt an old fire place in the parlor.

Stevens was born in Boston in 1855, and moved to Maine as a young child. Despite his work in a small Maine town, Stevens was not an average architect. He is perhaps Maine’s most celebrated architect, and helped bring to life two styles of architecture in Maine, the Shingle Style and the Colonial Revival Style.

Homes bearing his designs line the Maine coast today. He also did work on many of the elegant homes of Portland’s West End, and throughout the Greater Portland area.

Stevens was also a landscape painter, and he participated in exhibitions with the Boston Art Club and the Portland Society of Art. Books have been published, celebrating Stevens architectural influence in Maine and New England. And the Maine Historical Society houses many photographs and designs that once belonged to Stevens.