Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1 6
2
7
3
Kenduskeag
Stream
Penobscot
River
BY TOM McCORD
GRAPHICS AND DESIGN BY ERIC ZELZ
1 5
Kenduskeag
Stream
3
7
See Pages
4 and 5
for a view
from this
spot.
Penobscot
River
Changing Bangor 1.
2.
1960: CITY HALL 2010: COLUMBIA STREET PARKING DECK
PICKERING SQUARE
Bangor in 1960 was a much different place from what it is today. Wholesale and retail activity was 3. 1960: FLAT IRON BUILDING 2010: NORTH CORNER, PICKERING SQUARE
4. GRAHAM BUILDING
concentrated in the downtown area. An Air Force base employed thousands. There were no malls. 5. 1960: U.S. POST OFFICE 2010: BANGOR CITY HALL
Traffic, buildings and warehouses lining the Kenduskeag Stream bordered a much wider expanse of 6. 1960: BIJOU THEATER 2010: BANK OF AMERICA
7. 1960: PENOBSCOT EXCHANGE HOTEL 2010: MALISEET GARDENS
water running through the city. And historic preservation districts were years away. 8. 1960: UNION STATION 2010: PENOBSCOT PLAZA
AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY OF DOWNTOWN BANGOR BY BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTOGRAPHERS KEVIN BENNETT, SEPT. 4, 2009, AND SPIKE WEBB, JUNE 1960 BANGOR DAILY NEWS GRAPHIC BY ERIC ZELZ
Page 2 1st edition Cyan Magenta Yellow Black
Part 1
Bunyan and Bonfires
In 1959, the city celebrated its 125th birthday, BANGOR DAILY NEWS FILE PHOTO BY CARROLL HALL
but a wrenching transition lay ahead. The demolition of Morse's Mill, Bangor’s sole surviving sawmill from the great 19th century lumbering era, begins in May
1975 despite a last-minute effort to preserve the structure. The building made room for a parking lot.
Part 4
A Remedy
for Renewal
Bangor slowly rediscovers the value of its past, but it
Part 2 takes some plucky people and a new ordinance to help
A Vote to Be Modern
The 1960s Kenduskeag Stream
project aimed for a renaissance BY TOM MCCORD
in the city’s downtown. OF THE NEWS STAFF
Christina Baker remembers bundling her 3-year-old daughter into the car on the morning of
May 23, 1975, and rushing down to Valley Avenue in Bangor, ready to stop a bulldozer.
Two years earlier, she and her husband, Bill, had stood by, watching the demolition of Bangor’s Bijou
Theater as part of the city’s nearly 10-year-old urban renewal program. They collected a few bricks that day
and went home.
Baker couldn’t forget it.
In 1975, when she read of plans to demolish the city’s last remaining sawmill, a ramshackle red-brick
building along Kenduskeag Stream, Baker decided to launch a petition drive to keep Morse’s Mill from
becoming another wrecking ball Bijou.
She walked around her Bangor neighborhood and outside stores, collecting signatures. Then she started
hearing from people, including some socially prominent women in Bangor.
“These people began to call and say, basically, ‘We’ve been waiting for someone to speak out,’” Baker
recalled. While Morse’s Mill was not, properly speaking, part of the federally supported urban renewal
program, it was a highly visible connection to the city’s lumbering past — a connection that urban renewal
seemed to be eliminating.
“The day came that the bulldozer was down at the site,” said Baker, who is retired and lives in
Bass Harbor. “And $500 was needed to stop the
ball-and-crane. And I put out a call and people
were at my door with hundred-dollar bills.”
Baker parked across the street from the mill, then
Part 3 ran over, “waving my bills.” But a corner of the
Out With The Old building was already gone.
Downtown demolition in the
1960s and ’70s left plenty of Morse’s Mill was demolished and a parking lot
potential, and trauma. put in its place. It’s still there.
But Baker’s petition drive and a series of steps
shortly afterward became a serendipitous moment
in Bangor’s long effort to cross the threshold into
something new, something modern. By 1977, the
city had taken its first big steps toward including
preservation, not just demolition, as an option for
urban renewal.
“Bangor actually passed what I consider to be the
first comprehensive municipal historic ordinance
in the state,” said Earle G. Shettleworth Jr., state his-
Part 4
A Remedy for Renewal torian since 2004. “That’s not to say that some other
By the 1970s, tax breaks and a shift toward communities had not adopted local historic preser-
preservation rekindle interest in downtown.
vation ordinances. But the Bangor ordinance was
and still is one of the finest, most well-crafted, most
This Bangor Daily News Special Section is sponsored in part by well-structured ordinances to protect historic areas
and individual buildings in a municipality in
Maine.”
The preservation ordinance was a reaction to
about 20 years of steps taken to eradicate poor
housing and commercial deterioration in Bangor, a
city of 30,000 whose existence had been closely
linked to its location at head of tide on the Penob-
scot River at Kenduskeag Stream. Complicating
matters was the explosive growth of Dow Air Force
Base in the early 1950s — and its closure by 1968. BANGOR DAILY NEWS FILE PHOTOS BY SPIKE WEBB AND JACK LOFTUS
For the first time in more than 70 years, daylight streamed
In effect, the city’s leaders attempted a triple play: through a cavernous opening in the roof of the Bijou Theater. After
upgrade housing, revive the downtown commer- decades of tap dancing, vaudeville and drama, giving way to
cial district, and reshape a 2,000-acre air base for Chaplin and Pickford on a screen, the Bijou fell to demolition crews
to make way for what is now the Bank of America Building on
civilian uses. It wasn’t easy. Exchange Street.
Continued on Page 6
Located in the historic Graham Building in downtown Bangor
Page 3 1st edition Cyan Magenta Yellow Black
BANGOR, 1960
16 17
14
MORE DOWNTOWN PARKING
1 KENDUSKEAG STREAM By the early 1960s, the Kenduskeag
URBAN RENEWAL PROJECT
Designed to eliminate deteriorated properties Stream had been narrowed consider-
and mixtures of retail and wholesale uses as ably with construction of the
well as provide space for anticipated commer- Kenduskeag Stream Plaza.
cial growth it also led to the demolition of 150
downtown buildings and the creation of acres 13 A MISSING NEIGHBORHOOD
of empy space in the city’s center. Before 1969, an entire neighborhood
2 STILLWATER PARK existed where Hayford Park and Pancoe
In 1962 the Bangor Urban Renewal Authority Pool are now. The 37 buildings of
9 Fairmount Terrace were homes to Air
launched its first big project, the “renewal” of the
132-acre Stillwater Park neighborhood between Force personnel stationed at Dow.
Mount Hope and Stillwater avenues. It bought or 4
condemned 218 properties and relocated 69 12 BANGOR INTERNATIONAL
families. Old streets disappeared while new ones
5
2 AIRPORT
were laid, and a new house lot on Howard Street, 11 When Dow Air Force Base closed in
along Stillwater Park cost $2,000. 1968, ownership of the 2,000-acre
site was transferred to the city for $1.
2 Bangor International Airport opened
in July 1968.
8
12 11 AIRPORT MALL
BANGOR, 2010 An early shopping center on Union Street.
3 6 7
PENOBSCOT EXCHANGE HOTEL UNION STATION CITY HALL
Located where Maliseet Gardens is today, this hotel Built in 1907, the beloved train station came down in 1961 Until 1969, it stood on the corner of
was demolished in the early 1960s. after passenger rail service was discontinued. It stood on Hammond and Columbia streets and
the site of today’s Penobscot Plaza, Washington Street. housed the Urban Renewal Authority.
BANGOR MALL,
STILLWATER AVENUE 4 4
AND HOGAN ROAD
DEVELOPMENT
The opening of Bangor’s
largest mall on a former
60-acre dairy farm in 8
1978 immediately attracted
thousands of shoppers and HANCOCK-YORK NEIGHBORHOOD
further eroded a struggling A plan covering 194 structures, with 85
downtown. percent not meeting minimum code
requirements, the Hancock-York area
(now home, in part, to The Terraces
apartments) was the first in a series of
neighborhhood rehabilitation projects.
15 17
Right, Left,
EXCHANGE BROAD
STREET STREET
1957 and 1964 anf
2009 2010
16
Center,
LOOKING
TOWARD
PICKERING
SQUARE
1960 and
2010
15 16 17
SOURCES: Bangor Daily News file photos; photo illustration by Bangor Daily News graphics editor Eric Zelz; aerial photography by Bangor Daily News photographer Kevin Bennett; Mark Woodward, consultant; BANGOR DAILY NEWS GRAPHIC BY ERIC ZELZ
Peter Witham, City of Bangor Planning Division; MEGIS; Bangor Public Library; “Woodsmen and Whigs, Historic Images of Bangor, Maine” by Abigail Ewing Zelz, Marilyn Zoidis; “Bangor, Maine, An Illustrated History”;
Cole Land Transportation Museum; “Downtown Bangor Tomorrow, A Preliminary Plan for the Kenduskeag Stream Urban Renewal Project”; “Beautiful Homesites In Stillwater Park, Bangor’s First Urban Renewal Development”
4 Bangor Daily News, Friday, January 15, 2010 5
Kenduskeag Buildings in these panoramic composites may appear different from how they actually were or are today due to the photographers’ relative position and camera angle.
Stream,
east side
BIJOU THEATER
164 Exchange Street UNION STATION
Washington Street
Kenduskeag
Stream,
east side BANK OF AMERICA
BUILDING
80 Exchange Street
Kenduskeag
Stream,
west side
CITY HALL
Corner of Hammond
and Columbia streets
Kenduskeag
Stream,
west side UBS FINANCIAL
SERVICES BUILDING
1 Merchants Plaza
SOURCES: Bangor Daily News file photos; photo illustration by Bangor Daily News graphics editor Eric Zelz; aerial photography by Bangor Daily News photographer Kevin Bennett; Mark Woodward, consultant; BANGOR DAILY NEWS GRAPHIC BY ERIC ZELZ
Peter Witham, City of Bangor Planning Division; MEGIS; Bangor Public Library; “Woodsmen and Whigs, Historic Images of Bangor, Maine” by Abigail Ewing Zelz, Marilyn Zoidis; “Bangor, Maine, An Illustrated History”;
Cole Land Transportation Museum; “Downtown Bangor Tomorrow, A Preliminary Plan for the Kenduskeag Stream Urban Renewal Project”; “Beautiful Homesites In Stillwater Park, Bangor’s First Urban Renewal Development”
Page 6 1st edition Cyan Magenta Yellow Black
From Page 2
he city’s first compre-
T
Broad Street (above), some dating from the 1830s.
From 1965 on, a city staff ing project was, in a urban renewal led to 230,000
member coordinated Bangor’s sense, the kickoff to square feet of new bank and
response to the Air Force’s Bangor’s third major Continued on next page
“Someone somewhere decided that, well, these people can get moved. I don’t know as they ever bought any
better place to live in. ... It was just, ‘Let’s clear-cut. Resell it. And now it will be a better tax base.’”
JANE O’LOUGHLIN FRENCH
Page 7 1st edition Cyan Magenta Yellow Black
office space, 20,500 square feet of “It did have, I think, a very Master Plan as a prime candi- “When we started, there was- town — has enlivened the place.
restaurants, and 65,000 square important effect on both private date for revival. About eight n’t much going on,” Bob Kelly “Downtown Bangor has bene-
feet of retail and service space, citizens and elected officials in blocks long and two blocks wide, said. “But the groundwork had fited from a remarkable resur-
totaling $16 million in value. the community in convincing the Hancock-York redevelop- been laid because there was a gence and renaissance — even
On the other hand, 1.8 million people that, yes, Bangor had had ment plan covered 194 struc- historic preservation ordinance in the past five years,” said an
square feet of shopping centers a 1911 fire which had destroyed tures — with 85 percent not in place and a lot of the build- admittedly biased Rep. Steven
were built in the area between significant buildings in the meeting “minimum housing, ings we renovated downtown Butterfield, D-Bangor, who lives
1962 and 1978. downtown and, yes, Bangor had building, electrical and plumb- were in existing historic dis- “in a beautifully and carefully
engaged in urban renewal and ing code standards,” according tricts. And that made it a lot eas- restored apartment in a restored
here had been this another large body of historic to a city report. ier for us to use the tax credits to building” downtown, as he
T groundswell of inarticu-
late misery every time
something came down,”
recalled architectural historian
Deborah Thompson, who has
buildings were lost,” Shettle-
worth said. “But … there was
still so much left. And there
needed to be a local strategy to
preserve those remaining
The city took years to arrange
the project with a developer, but
Hancock-York was just the first
of a series: the Curve Street
neighborhood (1979); the east
attract investors.”
Kelly, 62, said many of his
investors are people who live in
the Bangor area. “A lot of them
are motivated by a desire to save
described it. “It’s the perfect
combination of small-town feel
and big-city lifestyle.”
Another factor was the cre-
ation in 1987 of what at first was
documented Bangor’s historical resources.” side neighborhood (1980); the the old buildings as much as called Bangor Center Manage-
buildings. The city historic preservation Center Street neighborhood anything,” he said. ment Corp., now known simply
After Thompson’s neighbor ordinance set up a panel, the (1983); the Garland-State streets as Bangor Center Corp. An
Christina Baker had tried to Bangor Historic Preservation neighborhood (1984); the west eyond preservation of assessment on property owners
stop the demolition of Morse’s
Mill in 1975, Thompson told
Baker, “You can’t stop now,”
Baker recalled.
So Baker, Thompson and a
Commission, which identifies
historic districts, landmarks
and sites.
Shettleworth said Bangor’s
ordinance has teeth and is care-
side neighborhood (1982), and
more. A 2007 summary of the
Community Development Block
Grant program in Bangor count-
ed $40 million filtered to the city
B buildings, downtown
Bangor suffered in the
1980s and into the 1990s
from on-again, off-again ques-
tions about its purpose, focus
in the downtown district pro-
vides some funding, and the city
kicks in staff help.
Its president, Brian Ames, of
Ames A/E, an architecture-engi-
handful of others mapped a fully crafted to follow “one of for such projects since 1975. and viability. Despite a series of neering firm, said Bangor Cen-
strategy to take stock of what the best national standards,” consultants’ reports, the core, as ter is working these days on
Bangor still had — and how to known as the secretary of the hettleworth said the feder- planners like to call it, was buf- marketing and promoting of
preserve it.
“We sat around my round oak
table in the dining room and
plotted out a three-day work-
shop, where we would bring in
interior’s standards for rehabili-
tation. He also cited effective
local leadership as another fac-
tor in the city’s success with the
ordinance.
S al government started giv-
ing more favorable treat-
ment to rehabilitation of
older properties — instead of
demolition — around the period
feted by conflicting ideas.
Should downtown try to be like
Freeport, Portland or none of
the above?
“There was a sense that eco-
long-term programs rather than
one-time events to draw people
downtown.
“It’s much more directed, tar-
geted than it has been,” Ames
experts from the region to speak In the 30 years since its cre- of the nation’s bicentennial, nomic development was going to said. In addition to efforts
to three different groups, the cit- ation, the commission has been 1976. And a federal tax credit come up from the south,” said focused on signage and aesthet-
izens, the businesspeople and instrumental in designating gave extra incentive to rehabili- Kathryn A. Hunt, of Starboard ics, the center wants programs
the City Council,” Baker said. nine historic districts in the city. tation. Maine began offering its Leadership Consulting LLC, a that keep people coming back to
“The meetings were filled to own tax break in 1991. Bangor-based firm that provides downtown Bangor — for con-
overflowing.” eanwhile, federal “It’s a federal urban strategy strategic planning and leader- certs, an outdoor market, even
The Maine Historic Preserva-
tion Commission had just been
established, and Shettleworth,
then a 27-year-old architectural
historian, was a staff member
M rules were changing.
Urban renewal by the
1970s had become
dirty words, and the top-down
style of controlling projects
that is the direct opposite of
urban renewal,” Shettleworth
said. “Number one, urban
renewal gives you money from
above and tells you to destroy
ship development. “But we’re
not very proximate to Boston.”
Hunt said it’s possible for a
community the size of Bangor
to define its purpose by showing
holiday Santa workshops.
It’s a shift that Christina
Baker has noted, 35 years after
her petition drive to save
Morse’s Mill.
when the Baker-Thompson paid for primarily with federal and rebuild. The tax credit says, some imagination and courage. “We still lament the buildings
group got in touch. dollars was under fire. In 1974, ‘I’m offering the private sector, She recalled the naysaying she that are gone,” Baker said. But
First order of business was a Congress passed the Housing the private investor, the private heard before Bangor began host- she pointed out “that amazing
survey of the city. and Community Development entrepreneur, a benefit if he or ing the National (now Ameri- photograph in the Bangor Daily
“And so for the entire summer Act, which focused on use of she will properly rehabilitate a can) Folk Festival in 2002. News last week of 2,000 people
of 1975, I spent a good deal of block grants that have since historic building.’” Still, she said, “There’s a pre- downtown, celebrating New
my time up in Bangor, creating a become the standard form of Enter Bob Kelly. cariousness to Bangor. It’s hold- Year’s Eve.” Her husband told
series of inventories of historic federal aid for housing and In the early 1980s, Kelly shift- ing on, but not necessarily gain- her it looked like a Norman
neighborhoods, house by house, renewal projects. ed from work with hydropower ing.” Rockwell painting.
street by street, to document That led Bangor to a new era (and serving as a Penobscot In recent years, a series of “The fabric of the downtown
these buildings, to identify of projects, still relying heavily County commissioner) to reha- changes — including renovation is there,” Baker said. “And it’s a
where the most significant on federal dollars but allowing bilitation of old buildings. He of the Penobscot Theatre on thrill to know that we have this
groupings of buildings were,” more local control. and his wife, Suzanne, are own- Main Street, the opening of a now.”
Shettleworth said. It became Bangor took aim at its Han- ers of House Revivers and have range of eateries and watering tmccord@bangordailynews.net
known as the Bangor Historic cock-York streets neighborhood, been recognized for their work holes, and an increase in the 990-0124
Resources Inventory. identified as far back as the 1951 by preservationist groups. number of people living down-
“Urban renewal gives you money from above and tells you to destroy and rebuild. The tax credit
says, ‘I’m offering the private sector, the private investor, the private entrepreneur, a benefit if he or
she will properly rehabilitate a historic building.’”
EARLE G. SHETTLEWORTH, STATE HISTORIAN