enlarge

Rick Wortly of Portland and Jessica Zipper, right, also of Portland, look over a 1672 map of America by Dutch cartographer Frederick de Wit at the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education during the grand reopening Sunday.

enlarge

Matthew Bresler, 8, folds a Dymaxion Map on Sunday.

enlarge Photos by Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Visitors closely examine maps in the digital reference room at the Osher Map Library at the University of Southern Maine in Portland during the facility’s grand reopening Sunday. The new space allows display space and storage for the 300,000-item collection under one roof.

enlarge

Sitting in the front row before the grand reopening are, from left, Meredith Smith, Dr. Harold Osher and Peggy Osher.

For more information about the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, go to www.usm.maine.edu/maps/

PORTLAND — Fifteen years after their founding, the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education reopened in their expanded, prominent space on the University of Southern Maine campus.

The map library welcomed the public Sunday to its new home after being closed for nearly two years.

The $12.3 million project provided the map library with four times the space it previously occupied. The 19,000-square-foot space allows storage for the collection – which now stands at some 300,000 items – on-site and under one roof. It also created instructional space, exhibition areas and a digital reproduction room.

The map library's resources also allow it to digitize its entire collection and make it available online.

A crowd packed the arcade where dignitaries lauded the map library's educational mission of serving not just scholars but also K-12 students and the general public. They also gave thanks for the efforts that made the educational resource possible.

"It required hundreds of people who bought into the vision," said Dr. Harold Osher, who with his wife, Peggy, provided one of the map library's founding collections.

Meredith Smith, daughter of the donor of the other founding collection, was tearful during her remarks. She said she was just like her mother, Eleanor Houston Smith, who burst into tears when she was happiest.

Eleanor Houston Smith died in 1987. Some of the globes from her collection are now on display in the reading room.

"It's like they're reborn again, because they've been in storage since 1987," Meredith Smith said.

After the ribbon to the entrance was cut with a pair of giant scissors, guests filtered into the library and the gallery.

In the digital reference room, USM reference librarian Tim Lynch explained how an 1872 map could be superimposed on a satellite image of the area and bent to conform to the curvature of the earth.

In another room, 8-year-old Matthew Bresler of Lexington, Mass., and other children folded the Dymaxion Map into three-dimensional globe-like shapes. The Dymaxion Map is the world map projection that adorns the front of the map library building.

Matthew, the grandson of the Oshers, shares some of their love of maps. He first became interested after reading Greek history.

"I think it's cool to learn about different places without being there," he explained.

In the gallery, Betsy Elliman admired a storybook-like 1928 color lithograph of the Portland area. The map was part of "American Treasures," the exhibit that opened Sunday.

"I just think they're so charming," said Elliman, a retired kindergarten teacher from Portland. "I want to learn more about these wonderful, historic maps."

Sunday's event wrapped up several days of festivities that coincided with the map library and center's 15th anniversary. A lecture on Henry David Thoreau's maps by John W. Hessler, senior cartographic librarian with the Library of Congress was given Friday. The map library and center hosted "New Directions in the Study of American Cartographies," a one-day conference, on Saturday.

Designed by Koetter Kim & Associates of Boston, the three-story building at the intersection of Bedford Street and Forest Avenue now marks the gateway to the campus. The highly visible structure is distinctive, in part, because of the aluminum panels that clad the upper levels. More than 100 of them are part of the 156-foot etching of the Dymaxion Map.

Private fundraising provided about $7 million of the map library project, state higher education funds provided about $5 million and a National Endowment for the Humanities grant contributed about $450,000.

Staff Writer Ann S. Kim can be contacted at 791-6383 or at: akim@pressherald.com