Radio Script #1034

Little Talks on Common Things
January 12, 1975

The Redington Museum recently received for its manuscript collection an interesting volume compiled by the Horace Purinton Company in 1919. It is an appraisal of buildings in the business section of Waterville. The book reveals not only who owned the buildings on Main Street between Lockwood Circle and the Post Office, as well as on Common, Silver, and Temple Streets, but also shows estimated values that seem surprisingly low compared with today’s valuations.

The Purinton Company based their valuation on the cost of reconstructing the buildings 56 years ago in 1919. Then, from each estimate was deducted depreciation in accordance with the age of the building – deducting nothing for one built within ten years, then one per cent for each five-year interval up to fifty years, so that a structure fifty or more than fifty years old was entitled to a tax deduction of 8% from its 1919 reconstruction cost.

The three-story brick block at the north corner of Main and Silver Streets, later destroyed by fire, belonged then, as it does now, in the Rancourt family. It was valued at $44,500. Next door, going north on Main Street, was a large brick block of three stories adjoining a one-story brick building, all owned by Mrs. A. A. Plaisted, valued at $52,000. Then came the building housing the department store of L. H. Soper, set at $40,500. The H. R. Dunham store, then a three-story building with a one-story addition was set by the Purintons at $21,000, and the DeOrsay Drug Store with the Preble Studio over it, was marked $26,000. Farther up the street, where later two buildings were put together into the Emery-Brown department store, was a three-story brick building owned by Herbert Emery, while the adjoining building was then the property of N. Krusky. Both had a total value of only $47,000.

Do any of my listeners remember the Green Brothers store, rival of Woolworths? It is now occupied by the McLellan store. In 1919 it was considered worth only $20,000.

In 1919 there were two banks side by side on Main Street between Green Brothers and Temple Street. Both were three-story brick buildings with the Ticonic Bank on the ground floor of one and the Peoples Bank in the other. The Ticonic property was valued at $24,000, and the Peoples at $12,000.

L. H. Soper owned other Main Street property besides his department store. In fact he owned all three buildings between the Ticonic Bank and the corner of Temple Street. One was the old Phoenix Block, built in the 1840’s by Timothy Boutelle, with the ground floor then occupied in 1919 by Jim Allen’s drug store and Spear Brothers Confectioners. Also Soper property was the oddly shaped wooden building on the corner, for many years a grocery store.

Down the west side of Main Street, between Temple and the Post Office, where a few years ago all the buildings were torn down to make room for part of the Concourse parking lot, there were in 1919 eleven buildings, and one of these also belonged to Mr. Soper. On the corner of Main and Temple was the Burleigh Block, where was located the Kelleher book and stationery store, later operated by Carl Cook. The whole block was valued at $22,000. Mid-way up was the Flood Block, built about 1885 by George Flood, founder of the Flood Fuel Co.

Where Parks Diner was later placed was a three-story building in which were the offices of Boothby & Bartlett.

Howard Morse owned several Main Street buildings, which were held by his heirs Meroe and Marston Morse, until Meroe’s decision to go to the Congo as a missionary in the 1950’s. Their property included a frame building and a brick one just below the Boothby & Bartlett property. They also owned the Hanford Hotel in Post Office Square and the building now partly occupied by the Day Travel Agency.

The highest valued building in the business section was the four-story Savings Bank Block at the corner of Main and Appleton Streets, set at $95,000. Next highest was the Haines Theatre at $68,000.

I have already mentioned the names of several well known Waterville families, some of them familiar since pioneer days, who owned business property here in 1919. Other such family names that appear in this Purinton valuation are Gilman, Boutelle, Redington, Ware, Arnold, Pulsifer, Alden, Peavy, Lincoln, Haviland and Pray.

One of the few business properties still in the same family is the Levine store on Lower Main Street, now much enlarged from its size in 1919, when it was owned by the father of Ludy and Pacy, William Levine.

The Arnolds then owned five buildings on Main Street and the area behind it on the east side. The Purinton record describes that property as a three-story brick and a three-story frame owned by Mrs. W. B. Arnold and adjoining were a three-story brick, a three-story frame, and a one-story frame, the property of Fred Arnold. The five buildings were valued at $40,000.

Except for the Sentinel building, valued at $65,000, no structure on Silver Street had high valuation in 1919. The big Redington store was set at only $30,000, and the adjoining building with several stores and the Heywood Apartments at only $14,000. On the other side of the street, the Silver Theatre was considered worth $12,000, and the Farrar-Brown building, $48,000.

When the Post Office was built in 1914, the fire station that stood on the present site of the Post Office annex was torn down and what is now the Central Fire Station was built. But Waterville had had an earlier fire station on Silver Street. It was situated near the Arnold home and the Barton Print Shop, just before the turn of Silver Street and the present site of Radio Station WTVL. The new Spring Street extension goes right through the area where the old fire station stood.

One other four-story building that had a high value in 1919 was the Masonic Block on Common Street, valued at $71,000, and next to it was another four-story building owned by William T. Haines, set at $62,000. But the two three-story buildings on Common Street, just around the corner from Main Street, were together worth only $15,000.

Do you remember the low buildings with false fronts between the Women’s Association building and the Savings Bank on Main Street? They gave that side of the street much the appearance of a western mining town. By 1919 they had largely disappeared, being replaced by the Harris Block, in which was the Woolworth store, and the three story Pulsifer Block. On that part of Main Street was, in 1919, the Waterville Steam Laundry operated by Pulsifer, Tibbetts, and Palmer.

Interesting is the Purinton listing on the west side of Main Street, between Silver and Water Streets. This was one of the oldest business areas in Waterville, called in the mid-19th century Ticonic Row. There, in 1814, had been erected Waterville’s first bank, and there also were some of the earliest stores. In 1919, next to the junction with Water Street the Purinton surveyors found a three-story brick building 27 x 40 feet with a shed in the rear, and a one-story 12 x 15 frame building adjoining, all the property of Rudman and Shiro. Then came three buildings belonging to Harold Hayden, then a three-story block held by the Lincoln heirs, a four-story building, 23 x 54 feet owned by King and Paganucci, and on the corner, where now is the Atkins store, the Giguere Block valued at $25,000.

In 1919, an inn known as the City Hotel stood on part of the land now occupied by the Federal Trust Co. It was an extremely old tavern site. When Waterville’s first murder was committed in the building next door in 1847, the inn was called the Williams House, and the bachelor doctor who committed the murder, Valorus Coolidge, had a room there. In the 1830’s it was the regular stop for the stage from Augusta that came up the west side of the river through Sidney. On the corner of Main Street below the Levine store, was what had once been Waterville’s largest business building, the Dunn Block.

In 1919 it housed the Crescent Hotel. And on Front Street, opposite the open common, was another tavern, the Exchange Hotel, only recently torn down in the urban renewal project.

It will not be many years when no one will remember that no longer ago than the decade after the first World War Waterville had four hotels, none of which are any longer standing: the Elmwood, the Crescent, the City and the Exchange. The old Hanford, where I waited on table during the first two of my college years, 1909-1911, still stands in Post Office Square.

The Post Office Square area, besides the disappearance of the Elmwood, has seen other changes since 1919. Now gone are the stately homes of the Plaisteds, the Meaders, and Dr. Thayer, replaced by a filling station and the Telephone building. Another filling station north of the Central Fire Station has replaced the elegant home of Lawyer Hussey, with the ornate mosaic sidewalk in front of it.

Ten years before 1919, when I first saw Waterville as a Colby freshman, what we now call Post Office Square looked much different indeed. The big Post Office building had not been built. On the triangle facing north, where is now the P.O., was a brick building with a flight of broad steps leading to a store. Because the building was on sloping land, its Main Street stores and small shops were on the lower level. In one of those little shops I got my first Waterville haircut. And I remember one day, at Ma Jones’ bidding, running from the Hanford down to the old fire station, just below the barber shop, to get a Stillson wrench to close a leaking pipe in the Hanford kitchen.

While some of the old business blocks of 1919 still stand, all of them have been extensively remodeled during the subsequent years. And added have been several new impressive structures so that the modern value of Waterville’s business buildings is at least ten times as great today as it was 56 years ago.

Year: 1975