The Hiawatha

Project Square footage: 150,000 sf

Construction Completed in June 2017

Construction Budget $24,000,000

The Hiawatha is Portland’s newest apartment building located in the heart of Longfellow Square, introducing 139 residential units into the housing market. The mix of studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments sit on the top seven stories of the nine-level building with two stories of garage parking and Joe’s Super Variety operating along the Congress Street frontage. Joe’s former building, family owned since 1945, and the adjacent surface parking lot were given new life with the space efficient building designed in concert with the Congress Street Historic District standards.

Hiawatha’s exterior is clad with durable, high quality materials that relate to the local built environment as well as introduce contemporary aesthetic.  Brick volume’s bookend and provide a base for the linear building and contain the contemporary metal clad and glass spine of the structure.  The facades juxtapose regular punched openings in the brick against the visually grouped fenestration within the metal cladding.  The main body of the building is capped with a contemporary steel cornice which the vertical black siding window groupings appear to hang like lace from at differing lengths.

The residential units are designed with large glazed openings which provide sun-filled interiors which visually expand the apartment sizes outward.  The highly energy efficient fenestration within the units afford a variety of local city views and distant views of Casco Bay to the East and Mount Washington to the West.

Each of the 139 apartments includes an Energy Recovery Ventilator, Ductless Heat Pumps for heating and cooling, low-flow plumbing fixtures, and high efficiency lighting and appliances for localized energy efficiency within each unit. The building envelope utilizes a thermally broken wall panel system that provides a continuous insulation plane creating a highly insulated and air sealed barrier to maximize energy. The building is entirely lit by LED lighting and capitalizes on natural daylight maximizing solar energy.

The project includes a privately shared electric car for tenant use only. Both the shared car and introduction of monthly parking fees for resident use act to disincentivize private car ownership and thus contribute to increased public transportation and other more sustainable forms of transportation.

The Hiawatha is the first eight-story residential building completed in Portland in recent history, which transformed a surface parking lot on Longfellow Square into a high density mixed-use structure that helps define the Portland neighborhood’s future.