John Neal Part 5: Portland
When I set out to write about John Neal, I called him a foundation stone of American culture. I organized my evidence into explanations of his influence on literature, on art, and on progressive causes. I also said I’d explain his role in bringing public gyms to the US, and “sneak in evidence that Neal’s fingerprints are all over Portland, from Munjoy Hill to State Street and beyond.” I haven’t told you about the gyms, and I didn’t sneak in much evidence about Portland, so I’m going to tell you about the gyms now, and dump in a little bit about Portland.
When Neal returned from England he had no intention of settling in Portland. Some old rivals tried to run him out of the area, so of course he decided to stay. He’d cultivated himself into a man of the world:
At one time London and Paris were not large enough for me, and New-York and New-Orleans and Baltimore and Philadelphia, were but mere out-posts and make-shifts.
Neal advanced the health of Portland, and all of America, when he opened the first public gym in the US. “As soon as my mind was made up about staying here, I determined to establish a gymnasium, take charge of it myself, and refusing all compensation, see what could be done for the people in that way.” He opened that first gym in 1827, opening gyms in Saco and at Bowdoin College in Brunswick the same year. The gym at Bowdoin continued in use until at least the 1960s. He had previously published articles on German gymnastics in the American Journal of Education and urged Thomas Jefferson to include a gymnastics school at the University of Virginia.
Neal quit the gym he’d established in Portland because the members refused to admit a person of color to the gym.
His law apprentice James Brooks wrote this description of Neal’s daily activities in 1833:
Neal was ... a boxing-master, and fencing-master too, and as a printer's devil came in, crying "copy, more copy," he would race with a huge swan's quill, full gallop, over sheets of paper as with a steam-pen, and off went one page, and off went another, and then a lesson in boxing, the thump of glove to glove, then the mask, and the stamp of the sandal, and the ringing of the foils.
The Portland he’d left, and now returned to had no sidewalks, ‘and if you saw an aged man poking about in the mud with a cane, you were tempted to ask if anybody was missing.’ Lease writes:
“Neal pressed for a drastic reorganization of municipal government to make possible some badly needed improvements. Before long – thanks in part to Neal’s strenuous efforts – there were brick walks, slate crossings, and a five-mile road traversing the peninsula with parks and promenades at either end ‘where the population could get a mouthful of fresh air, and look out upon panoramas of unequaled beauty and vastness.’”
The most cursory look at the history of Portland’s Promenades and the development of Congress St. shows many civic leaders and responsible for the Promenades and our park system. There’s no mention of John Neal. The drastic reorganization may be Portland’s switch from town government to city government. Our first mayor was Andrew Emerson in 1832. Levi Cutter, mayor from 1834 to 1840 gets some credit for initiating the promenades. The improvements noted must have happened in his term. Our Civic Engineer, William Goodwin gets a lot of credit for the park system, especially Deering Oaks (the play area there is named for him). Mayor James Phinney Baxter gets the lion’s share of credit for the Promenades and the system as a whole, working with the Olmsted landscape architectural firm. Baxter Boulevard, an important addition to Portland’s green space, is named for him.
Neal’s role would have been in the form of proposing, encouraging, exhorting, and hectoring– massing public opinion in favor of the reforms, upgrades and developments.
Within a decade of Neal’s return Portland became the place he describes below, a place that for all its changes in nearly two centuries since, many would regard the same way:
I came to regard Portland – brave, generous, beautiful Portland – as unmatched and unmatchable; and so it is. Washed on every side by the open sea, draining itself, and looking abroad over sky and earth, as if anticipating the time when she will be taking toll, both ways, of the merchant princes, and the merchandise of the Orient and the West, and the riches of China, of India and Japan, shall be emptied into her magnificent harbor, and the population of whole empires flow through her broad thoroughfares.
John Neal’s Portland is the direct ancestor of the city named most livable by Forbes, best town in the east by Outside, A top greenest city by Organic Gardening, among the top five affordable & desirable places to retire by AARP and Top 20 small cities for college students, one of the coolest small cities by GQ, best for mid level professionals by Kiplinger and young professionals by Forbes, a Foodie destination by NYT and Sperling’s Best Places, a top craft beer city by every ranking ever, #8 gayest city by Advocate, and among the best health places to retire by US News.
It’s a shame that with all the parks, squares, and streets, and all the beautiful public art we have, there’s no monument, statue, marker, or square named for John Neal. Because of the long-term neglect of Western Cemetery, even his family gravestone there is lying on the ground. There’s good news on that front as the Stewards of Western Cemetery are active, with numerous volunteers undergoing training from the Eastern Cemetery’s counterpart organization, Spirits Alive. Peter Munro of the Stewards sent me photos of Neal’s stone and a shared its location with a map of the cemetery.
Another shame is the way Franklin Arterial cuts the Old Port area, especially for pedestrians, and the way walking to Deering Oaks from the east or north is like voyaging on stormy seas. We could really use an elevated footbridge, maybe two. It would be nice to have a John Neal pedestrian bridge reconnecting Federal St. Or a John Neal High Line connecting the Bayside Trail to Deering Oaks Park. I think something like that, artistic, cultural, physical, and social, would be an appropriate tribute to the man.