St. John Street (Portland, Maine)

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St. John Street is a street in Portland, Maine. It runs about 1.34 miles from Brighton Avenue in the north to Valley Street in the south, crossing Park Avenue and Congress Street and passing under Interstate 295. The street sits on land that used to be Portland’s poor farm. It is named after St. John Smith, a landowner who was a friend of industrialist John Bundy Brown.

In the past, Union Station stood on St. John Street in Railroad Square from 1888 to 1961, when it was torn down and replaced with the Union Station Plaza shopping area. The Maine Central Railroad General Office Building, finished in 1916 nearby, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A spur of the Portland and Ogdensburg Railway from Union Station crosses the Maine Central Railroad’s trestle bridge at St. John Street and Park Avenue and continues behind Hadlock Field and Fitzpatrick Stadium to Forest Avenue near Deering Oaks Park.

The Inn at St. John (formerly the Hotel Victoria) sits at the intersection of St. John Street and Congress Street and has operated since 1897, in part due to its closeness to Union Station. St. John Street was home to Portland’s first McDonald’s, which is still in operation today. The Greyhound bus station used to be at St. John Street and Congress Street opposite The Inn at St. John; it opened in 1961 and closed in 2019, with buses now leaving from a park-and-ride lot on Marginal Way.

Greater Portland Metro route number 1 serves St. John Street as part of its trip between the Portland Transportation Center and the Portland Public Library. The bus depot is located between St. John Street and Valley Street.