Explore the real places in Portland, Maine that appear in It by Stephen King. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Barrens (Kenduskeag Stream Drainage Area), Neibolt Street House, Derry Public Library, Derry Canal District / Standpipe, Derry Town House / Aladdin Theater and 9 more.
Near Union Street — The Losers' Club's gathering place
The Barrens is the overgrown drainage area where the seven members of the Losers' Club — Bill Denbrough, Ben Hanscom, Beverly Marsh, Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak, Stan Uris, and Mike Hanlon — gather throughout the summer of 1958. It is here that they build their dam in the Kenduskeag Stream, bond over shared fears, and plan their first assault on It. The Barrens represents both sanctuary and danger, a liminal space between childhood and the horror lurking beneath Derry.
The Kenduskeag Stream runs through Bangor, Maine, which served as King's model for Derry. The stream's drainage area has historically been a scrubby, semi-wild corridor through the city, prone to flooding and largely undeveloped.
Kenduskeag Stream Park in Bangor follows much of the stream's course through the city, offering walking paths and green space. It is a public park frequently cited by King fans as the real-world Barrens.
Visit: Kenduskeag Stream Park (park)
29 Neibolt Street — Lair of It on the surface world
The derelict house at 29 Neibolt Street is one of It's primary manifestations above ground. Eddie Kaspbrak first encounters It here in the form of a leper, and later the Losers' Club storms the house together in an attempt to confront It directly. Bill leads the charge after his brother Georgie's death, and It — as Pennywise — nearly kills several of the children in the terrifying basement encounter, dragging them toward the entrance to the sewers below.
Bangor has several old Victorian-era neighborhoods with decaying homes near rail lines and industrial zones. King drew on these real streets — particularly the area near the railroad tracks — when imagining Neibolt Street's atmosphere of industrial decay and abandonment.
No exact address corresponds to 29 Neibolt Street, but the rail corridor neighborhoods of Bangor retain much of the atmosphere King described. The area near the former rail yards has older homes and vacant lots consistent with the novel's geography.
Harlow Street — Mike Hanlon's research headquarters
Mike Hanlon, who stays in Derry as an adult to serve as the group's historian and memory-keeper, works as the head librarian at Derry Public Library. It is here that he maintains meticulous records of Derry's cyclical violence and disasters, tracing the 27-year intervals of It's awakening. When he calls the other Losers back to Derry in 1985, he does so from this building, and it is the repository of all the evidence that It is real.
The Bangor Public Library, founded in 1883, is a Carnegie-funded institution that served as King's inspiration for the Derry Public Library. It has been a central civic institution in Bangor for over a century.
The Bangor Public Library remains fully operational on Harlow Street in downtown Bangor. It is a beloved community resource and a popular stop for Stephen King fans visiting the city.
Visit: Bangor Public Library (library)
Kansas Street hill — Stanley Uris's nightmare
The Derry Standpipe on Kansas Street is the site of one of the novel's most terrifying sequences. Stan Uris, the most skeptical of the Losers, is lured to the standpipe and encounters rotting, drowned children who chase him up through the dark interior of the structure. Stan's bird book saves him by naming the dead things back into unreality. The standpipe later figures in the adult chapters as a reminder of what the Losers survived.
Bangor's Thomas Hill Standpipe, built in 1897, is a 50-foot-tall wooden water standpipe that served as the city's water storage facility for decades. It is one of the few surviving wooden standpipes in the United States.
The Thomas Hill Standpipe is preserved as a historic landmark by the Bangor Water District and is open for occasional public tours. It is widely recognized as the direct inspiration for King's fictional version and is a celebrated stop on Stephen King tours of Bangor.
Visit: Thomas Hill Standpipe (historic site)
Main Street — The town's cultural heart
The Aladdin Theater on Main Street appears in the novel's 1958 sections when the Losers are children navigating Derry's downtown. Richie Tozier and the others attend movies here, and it stands as part of the fabric of mid-century Derry life that King renders in nostalgic, loving detail before showing how It corrupts everything. The theater district represents the normalcy that It constantly threatens to devour.
Bangor's downtown Main Street was anchored for decades by the Bijou Theater and other entertainment venues. The city's commercial center flourished in the mid-20th century before suburban shopping malls drew business away in the 1970s and 1980s.
Downtown Bangor has undergone significant revitalization. The historic Bangor Opera House on Main Street, restored and reopened, serves as a performing arts venue and is a prominent landmark for visitors exploring the city's King-related geography.
Visit: Bangor Opera House (theater)
Witcham Street — Where Georgie was killed
The Denbrough house on Witcham Street is where the novel truly begins. Young George 'Georgie' Denbrough runs down the rain-soaked street on October 19, 1957, chasing the paper boat his older brother Bill made for him. It is here that Georgie meets Pennywise in a storm drain and is killed, losing his arm to It's jaws. Bill Denbrough's guilt over sending his brother out alone on that rainy day becomes the engine of the entire novel, driving him to confront It years later.
Witcham Street is a real street in Bangor, Maine, and King's family lived in the city during much of his career. The residential streets of Bangor's older neighborhoods — lined with Victorian homes and deep drainage ditches — map closely onto the geography King describes.
Witcham Street exists in Bangor and retains its residential character. Stephen King's own home at 47 West Broadway is nearby and is a celebrated landmark, though private. The neighborhood is a regular stop on informal King fan tours.
Old Cape area — Site of Derry's racist massacre
Mike Hanlon's research uncovers the 1930 fire at the Black Spot, a nightclub for Black soldiers at the Derry Army base, where a white supremacist group called the Maine Legion of White Decency set fire to the building, killing many Black servicemen. Mike's father Dick Hanlon survived this atrocity. King uses this historical horror — amplified by It's influence — to show how the town of Derry has always been a site of evil far beyond the supernatural, and how racism and prejudice are themselves a kind of monster.
The fictional Black Spot massacre is modeled partly on real racially motivated violence in the American North during the early 20th century, including the Ku Klux Klan's documented activity in Maine in the 1920s and 1930s. Bangor did have military installations nearby during this period.
No specific monument marks this fictional site in Bangor, but the history of racial violence in northern New England that King references is real and documented. The area of Bangor near former industrial and military lands has largely been redeveloped.
Beneath Derry — It's true domain
The vast network of sewers and tunnels beneath Derry is It's true home, the place it retreats to between feeding cycles. The Losers penetrate these tunnels twice — once as children in 1958 and once as adults in 1985. It is in these subterranean passages that they find It's lair, the vast cavern it calls home, where the Ritual of Chüd is performed and where the Losers must face their deepest fears. Beverly uses the silver slugs the boys have smelted into a slingshot to wound It.
Bangor has an extensive 19th-century sewer and drainage infrastructure, much of it built following the city's rapid logging-boom growth. Storm drains along the Kenduskeag Stream corridor were a significant engineering project. King has cited these real tunnels as a direct inspiration.
Bangor's sewer system remains active and is not publicly accessible. However, the storm drain openings along the Kenduskeag — some of them quite large — are visible from the stream park paths and are a popular, eerie attraction for King fans.
Costello Avenue — Beverly's childhood home of abuse
Beverly Marsh's apartment on Costello Avenue is the site of her deeply troubled home life with her violent, controlling father Al Marsh, whose abuse is coded throughout the novel as a manifestation of It's influence on Derry's adults. It is in the apartment's bathroom that blood explodes from the sink drain — a vision only Beverly and the Losers can see, invisible to her father — marking her as one of It's intended victims and binding her to the group.
Costello Avenue is a real street in Bangor, Maine, located in one of the city's working-class residential neighborhoods. King drew on the economic geography of Bangor's poorer districts to give Beverly's circumstances authenticity.
Costello Avenue remains a residential street in Bangor. The homes are typical of mid-20th-century New England working-class housing stock. It is recognizable to King fans familiar with the novel's geography.
47 West Broadway — Real-world headquarters of Derry's creator
Although not a location within the novel itself, King's Victorian mansion at 47 West Broadway in Bangor is the real-world origin point of Derry. King wrote much of It while living here, drawing on the streets, drainage ditches, and neighborhoods immediately surrounding his home. The famous wrought-iron fence decorated with bats and spiders signals to visitors that this is where the geography of Derry was imagined into being.
King purchased the 1856 Italianate mansion in 1980, and it became his primary residence and writing base for decades. The distinctive fence, added at his family's request, features hand-wrought iron cobwebs, bats, and gargoyles and has become one of the most photographed landmarks in Maine.
The home is a private residence and is not open for tours or entry. However, it is a celebrated landmark on Stephen King fan tours of Bangor. Visitors routinely photograph the exterior fence from the public sidewalk.
Near downtown Derry — Eddie's hypochondria and It's influence
Derry's hospital figures in Eddie Kaspbrak's storyline throughout the novel. Eddie, controlled by his hypochondriac mother Sonia, is a frequent visitor, conditioned to believe he is sickly and dependent on his aspirator. The pharmacist Mr. Keene reveals to Eddie that his inhaler contains only water — that It has exploited his fear of illness just as it exploits all the Losers' deepest anxieties. This revelation is a turning point in Eddie's growth from victim to fighter.
Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor has been the region's primary hospital for over a century, founded in the late 19th century as a response to the medical needs of the booming lumber industry's workforce.
Eastern Maine Medical Center, now part of Northern Light Health, continues to operate as the major hospital serving the Bangor region. It remains an important civic institution on the scale King imagines for Derry Memorial.
Main Street, Bangor — Richie Tozier's terrifying vision
The giant Paul Bunyan statue on Bangor's Main Street appears in the novel as one of It's most frightening manifestations to Richie Tozier. When Richie returns to Derry as an adult, the enormous fiberglass statue seems to come alive and swing its axe at him — It using Richie's childhood fear of the looming, oversized figure against him. The moment is one of the novel's most vivid adult-return sequences, showing how It still has a grip on the Losers even after 27 years.
The 31-foot fiberglass Paul Bunyan statue was erected in Bangor in 1959 to celebrate the city's centennial and its logging heritage. Bangor was once called the 'Lumber Capital of the World,' and the statue commemorates that identity.
The Paul Bunyan statue still stands at its original location on Main Street in Bangor and is one of the city's most iconic landmarks. It is freely visible from the street and is a major stop on Stephen King tours of Bangor, specifically celebrated for its role in It.
Visit: Paul Bunyan Statue (monument)
Out near the rail yards — Henry Bowers' father's territory
The area around Derry's industrial outskirts is the territory of Henry Bowers and his gang — Victor Criss and Belch Huggins — who serve as the Losers' human antagonists throughout the summer of 1958. Henry's father Butch Bowers farms near this area and passes his hatred and instability onto his son. It feeds on Henry's psychopathic tendencies, eventually driving him to attempt to murder the Losers and, in the adult timeline, manipulating him into escaping Juniper Hill mental institution to kill them again.
Bangor's rail yards and industrial corridor along the waterfront were central to the city's economy during the logging era, handling enormous volumes of timber and goods. By the mid-20th century the area had declined, leaving a landscape of working-class homes and industrial dereliction.
The former rail and industrial district of Bangor near the Penobscot River has seen partial redevelopment, with some areas converted to commercial and residential use. The waterfront has been significantly cleaned up and offers public walking access.
Outer Derry — Site of Adrian Mellon's murder
The adult sections of It open in 1984 with the brutal hate-crime murder of Adrian Mellon, a gay man who is beaten by a group of homophobic teenagers and thrown from a bridge, where Pennywise is waiting below to finish him off. His partner Don Hagarty witnesses Pennywise dragging Adrian's body. This murder is Mike Hanlon's signal that It has awakened again, prompting him to make the calls that reunite the Losers' Club. King uses this scene to explicitly connect It's evil to human bigotry.
The 1984 murder of Charlie Howard, a gay man thrown from the State Street Bridge in Bangor, was a real and devastating hate crime that shocked Maine. King drew directly on this tragedy for the Adrian Mellon sequence, setting it in Derry as a way of bearing witness to the real event.
A memorial plaque for Charlie Howard is mounted on the State Street Bridge in Bangor, near the site of his death. It is a sobering civic memorial and is visited by those paying their respects to Howard's memory and by King fans who recognize the scene.
Visit: Charlie Howard Memorial, State Street Bridge (monument)
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