Hank would have been proud.

On what would have been Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 201st birthday, the Maine Historical Society and its supporters gathered Wednesday night to salute the great poet with a champagne toast, an impressive birthday cake, and to celebrate the launch of its $9 million capital campaign to renovate the historical society’s research library.

The campaign has just entered its public phase, but is well on the way to being completed. Already and very quietly, the historical society has raised $7.5 million. Included in that total is an anonymous donation of $1 million to name the library after John Marshall Brown and his wife, Alida Carroll.

The Brown family played a significant role in the history of Portland, Maine and the United States, and John Marshall Brown was active in the Maine Historical Society. He was on the board when the current library opened in 1907.

The renovation is underway, and the new building will open in spring 2009. After that, the historical society will begin the second phase of its campaign, as it attempts to raise money for a new museum building to replace its current home at 489 Congress St.

The activity is all part of what Maine College of Art president Jim Baker described in my column in Audience last week as a renaissance along Congress Street and the Arts District.

Wednesday’s event was festive. After the champagne toast and a rousing version of “Happy Birthday” in honor of Longfellow, Ted Noyes turned to me and quipped, “I bet you didn’t think we were such a jovial group.”

While the highlight of the event was the announcement of the campaign and the anonymous donation to name the library after the Browns, another highlight was the birthday cake. Shaped like open pages of a book, the cake included many of Longfellow’s most famous lines. It looked too good to eat, but we managed.

Historical society executive director Richard D’Abate cautioned supporters from becoming complacent, given the money already raised. “This is not the end of the campaign. It’s the beginning of the end,” he said.

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