Teddy's Teeth

According to Greater Portland Landmarks, this 1906 development spanning 342-358 Danforth Street was "derisively referred to as Teddy's Teeth, presumably a reference to the widely spaced grin of the president of the time, Theodore Roosevelt." The center unit, 350 Danforth, is for sale for $199,000, restored.

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UCIEN SNOW, co-owner of Bolster, Snow & Co. Dry Goods; may have considered himself wealthy before he married Nellie Spring, but he would soon learn he didn't know the meaning of the word. After all, Nellie was the daughter of Samuel E. Spring, the shipping magnate who lived beside his brother Andrew Spring in twin brick mansions on 300 and 302 Danforth Street, admired by everyone in town.

The elder Spring had made his fortune shipping lumber to South America in sailing ships in return for hides; why couldn't his son-in-law do as well?

True, Lucien was a director of Casco Bank and a trustee of Portland Savings Bank, but things were starting to fall

Story By Colin Sargent

One of Teddy's Teeth in the 1920s. Note the distinctive wooden balustrade crowning the roofline. This elegant feature, originally shared by all five of the homes, has completely disappeared today.

apart at his firm, and it wasgetting harder and harder for him to make ends meet at his home on 13 Neal Street.

So it was that The Danforth Co. was born. Just down the road from his father-in-law's home, Lucien somehow acquired a lovely slice of land on the Fore River side of 342-358 Danforth Street that had once belonged to the Hershey Mansion, the imposing structure at the top of the hill that now looks down on the Waynflete School athletic field.

And there, in 1906, he built one of Portland's first speculative developments, a row of five square buildings in modern concrete blocks so identically "crude" to passersby that they were soon ridiculed as "Teddy's Teeth," after thenpresident Theodore Roosevelt's famous gnn.

People wailed about the project; even today, in documents at Greater Port-

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