Radio Script #1189

Little Talks on Common Things
February 4, 1979

Today, when Colby College has more than $25 million of endowment invested in government issues, corporate stocks and bonds, mortgages and other securities, it is not easy to comprehend how the meager endowment funds of the college were invested in the 19th century. Almost all of the money was placed in local real estate mortgages.

When the college opened classes in 1818 it had no funds at all. It did have two pieces of land – the grant from the Massachusetts legislature of a township on the Penobscot River, and a large .ot on the west bank of the Kennebec in Waterville. Believing that the institution would probably never need all its Waterville land, it sold it off bit by bit until all that remained was 29 acres on the river bank and a few small pieces on both sides of College Avenue.

It is interesting to examine the record of the disposal of some of that land, as well as subsequent mortgages on various pieces of real estate in various parts of Waterville. The original college lot in Waterville, purchased in 1815 from Robert Hallowell Gardiner, contained 180 acres. It extended for 1/4 a mile along the river and west to the Messalonskee Stream.

Almost from the beginning the college began to sell pieces from that part of the lot that lay west of the road to Kendalls Mills, now College Avenue, and south of the junction of College Avenue and Front Street. The first disposals of that land were to faculty members, lots to Avery Briggs, George Keely and Calvin Newton. Where Briggs and Newton built their houses was near where Chaplin Street was soon put through, and Keely got the first lot south of those containing the campus buildings. His home, later much enlarged, became in this century the home of George K. Boutelle, and in the 1940’s was leased by the college for a dormitory called Boutelle House. Just north of it, next to the railroad track that then crossed College Avenue, was a smaller house, the home of Prof. Julian Taylor.

In 1829 the college acquired property much further south, on Elm Street below the First Baptist Church. It was a lot given to the college for the purpose of erecting on it a fitting school, an academy, to prepare students for college admission. Something of the change in land values in the 150 years since 1829 is revealed by the value the donor, Timothy Boutelle, placed on the property – $250.

What Monument Park on Elm Street then was is clearly shown in the Boutelle deed to the college. “Part of Lot 105 beginning at the SE corner of the Burying Ground.” Yes, Monument Park was then the town cemetery, and the lot, of course, was the land on which Coburn Classical Institute, successor to the College academy, long stood.

When that deed was conveyed, there was no Winter Street. When it was built, the College received some compensation for land taken in eminent domain, because Winter Street took away part of the south side of the lot. A piece was later sold to the West family for their brick house on the corner of Elm and Winter Streets. Then in 1821 another piece of it was sold to Llewellyn Morrill, whose four daughters were all later graduates of the College and its generous benefactors. There Mr. Morrill erected the large house that is now known as the Morrill Apartments.

At about the turn of the century the College conveyed all the remaining property on Elm Street to the Trustees of Coburn Classical Institute. That explains why they, only a few years ago, owned not only the land on which the Elm Manor apartments for the elderly now stands, but also the home on Winter Street, long occupied by Mrs. Harriet Parmenter.

As I have said, sale of pieces from the College lot on both sides of the Avenue began very early, opposite the college buildings. In 1827 a little piece of 2 acres on the road was conveyed to Peter Getchell for $100. In 1832 Jonah Merrill got another larger piece on the road for $353. The next year, 1833, saw the passing of an even larger lot to Daniel Cook for $613. The description reads: “On the cross road leading from the main road nearly opposite Prof. Chaplin’s house to the back County road.” That identifies the location. Prof. Chaplin’s house stood on the old campus almost where Memorial Hall was later erected. The main road was College Avenue, the back County road was Upper Main Street, and the cross road connecting the two was Chaplin Street.

In 1839 Peter Talbot paid $470 for a piece of the college lot farther up the Avenue. Then in 1849 came the first sale to the railroad. That was the year when the Androscoggin and Kennebec, later known as the back road through Lewiston, reached Waterville. The deed read: To the Androscoggin and Kennebec RR, on west side of College Street, a strip four rods wide, for $100. In 1850, for $600, the College sold the railroad another lot on the Avenue above Chaplin Street, and on that land was later built the Maine Central depot. In 1872, after several railroads had merged into the Maine Central System, the College made a much larger sale to the transportation interests. For $3,060 it conveyed a heath piece and all land between College Street and the railroad, subject only to rights of way; and second, a piece 50 feet wide on the east side of College Street north of Prof. George Keely’s property.

As the years went by the College sold other pieces to the Maine Central, the largest single piece being the northern end of the College lot, on which the Maine Central placed its yards and shops. That left barely room for an athletic field between the northernmost college buildings and the railroad yards.

The most complicated of all the College real estate transactions concerned the Elmwood Hotel. The original Elmwood at the junction of College Avenue and Main Street had been built in 1850. It burned in 1863 and the lot remained vacant for 16 years until 1879. At that time George Seavey arranged with the Trustees of Colby for a loan to erect a new hotel. That loan of $15,000 gave the College virtual control. In fact, as erection progressed, Seavey was unable to meet payments, and the College took over the property, agreeing to lease the finished hotel to Seavey. In case of Seavey’s rental default, the entire property would belong to the College, to sell or lease it, as the College trustees should decide. Seavey was not long getting deep into debt, and in 1881 the College took full possession. Five years elapsed with Colby having a white elephant on its hands. They could find neither a buyer nor anyone willing to lease the hotel. At last in 1886, they did lease it for five years to Henry Judkins for a rental of $1,400 a year, less than what many families were paying in 1979 for a four-room apartment. Henry Judkins was a better business man than Seavey. He did such a prosperous business that he not only paid his rent promptly, but when the five years were up in 1891, he bought the hotel from the College, and at last that encumbrance was off the College shoulders.

Meanwhile all sorts of devices had been seized upon by the Finance Committee of the College to handle that troublesome property. What they chiefly did was to sell fractional shares in the hotel. In 1883 Franklin Smith, a leading citizen, bought for $2,200 a one-seventh interest. In 1888 Ann Fuller invested $100 in one-fiftieth interest. In 1886 the Walker and Pratt Manufacturing Co. got one twenty-fifth. Meanwhile Franklin Smith had acquired a second seventh, the Kennebec Framing Co. one-fiftieth and Seth Fuller another fiftieth. So, when the building was finally sold, Colby by no means got all the money. A large part of it went to people to whom the College had already sold fractions.

The many transactions concerning the Elmwood had not all gone smoothly. Some of them had reached the courts. In 1884 George Phillips sued the College trustees regarding a disputed one-fourteenth interest in the Elmwood, and Phillips won that suit by a judgment of the Maine Supreme Court. One thing is clear. The College lost money on its Elmwood deals. When the property was finally taken by Judkins for $20,000, it was even at that time of relatively low prices actually worth much more.

After the Civil War, when the College began to accumulate a modest endowment, including part of Gardner Colby’s gift, they began to take mortgages on real estate in various parts of town. In 1874 the College loaned Reuben W. Dunn $5,000 on his property, actually built on what was once College land on the west side of the avenue opposite the Keely house. In 1877, $3,200 was loaned to Nathaniel Meader, with one of his buildings as security. In 1878, Albert Richards borrowed from the college $3,275 to build his home on the corner of Pleasant Street and Sheldon Place.
In 1879 came a memorable mortgage, that of $864 to the colored janitor Samuel Osborne, on his home on Ash Street. In 1882 came the sale to George West of the lot just south of the academy on Elm Street, and the College took a mortgage of $1,150. In 1885 the College let Cyrus Davis have $3,500 to build what he called his mansion on Silver Street. It is now a funeral home. In 1897 Mary Palmer placed with the College a mortgage of $6,000 on the property on the northwest corner of College Avenue and Getchell Street.

Later, when the College took over that property and used it for a women’s dormitory, it was first called Palmer House, then the name was later changed to Mary Low Hall, honoring Colby’s first woman graduate.

Early in the century Warren Philbrick, who was later to become a justice of the Maine Supreme Court, borrowed $1,000 from Colby to acquire his home on Getchell Street.

Over the years there were many other similar mortgages held by the College treasurer. Decidedly in the 19th century, Colby College was in the real estate business.

Year: 1979