This scene depicts a mother and her son gazing upon the bustling waterfront and business district of Hallowell, Maine from Butternut Park on the Chelsea side of the Kennebec River. The topography forms an amphitheatre allowing the protagonists in the foreground to fully embrace the magnitude of the burgeoning port city. Hallowell’s locale along the Kennebec River, a key trade corridor to interior Maine from the Atlantic coast, contributed to its stature as a major hub of maritime commerce, shipbuilding, and manufacturing.

While even a contemporary view from this vantage reveals that the majority of the now-historic district of Hallowell has retained its original architectural integrity, maps from the 1860s reveal the precise accuracy with which the artist rendered the town.

The presence of the Hallowell-Chelsea crib bridge indicates that the painting was created between 1860 and 1869. The toll bridge was constructed in 1860 to facilitate easy access to the Togus Springs Hotel in Chelsea, which granite magnate Horace Beals opened the prior year as a resort modeled after Saratoga Springs that likewise capitalized on the curative properties of the natural spring to attract city goers in need of a respite. Floods in 1869 and 1870 destroyed the bridge and it was never rebuilt.

The most easily discernible landmarks are the churches identified from the skyline littered with steeples. The painting depicts the Old South Congregational Church, St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, First Baptist Church, and Cox Memorial United Methodist Church. Identifiable buildings along Water Street include the Hallowell Cotton Mills, the Town House, Hallowell House, and Row House. The diversity of boats, including schooners, a steamboat, and wooden raft, reinforce the importance of the waterway to the cultural and economic fiber of this vibrant mid-nineteenth century town.