Dr. Louis J. Martel House

The Martel House is set east of downtown Lewiston, at the northeast corner of Bartlett and Walnut Streets. The neighborhood it is in is now, as it was when built, predominantly multiunit working-class housing. It is a 2+1⁄2-story brick building, with a hip roof broken by gabled projections and a three-story corner turret, which is capped by an octagonal roof and finial. At the center of the front facade is a two-story porch, supported by slender paneled columns, and topped by a gable with a dentillated cornice. To the left of the porch is a projecting polygonal bay, which is matched on the right by the form of the projecting turret section. The third floor of the turret is partly taken up by a small porch.^[2]

The house was built in 1883, and was probably the only brick house built in Lewiston's 19th-century French quarters. Dr. Louis J. Martel, for whom it was built, was a nationally known leader of the Franco-American community, publishing a French-language newspaper, serving in the state legislature and the local board of aldermen, and narrowly losing election as mayor in 1893. He was instrumental in establishing what is now Saint Mary's Regional Medical Center, and in organizing the Roman Catholic parish of Saints Peter and Paul.^[2]

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Androscoggin County, Maine