BREWER — A raging fire tore through a 110-year-old barn on North Main Street on Thursday, destroying several antique cars and some macabre set pieces used in the movie “Stephen King’s Graveyard Shift.”

The three-story gray, 50-by-100-foot building and its adjacent Colonial-style farmhouse is something of a landmark in the community. Once home to the Drillen Farm and Oak Grove Spring Water, it now is owned by Brewer Public Works director Gerald Bowie, whose son and daughter-in-law reside on the property.

No one was injured in the blaze, which was reported at 1:19 p.m. and drew firefighters from as far away as Veazie and Orono to contain it. The fire demolished several other buildings and caused substantial damage to the main portion of the house.

The cause of the fire remained unknown Thursday night. Investigators from the state Fire Marshal’s Office were expected to return to the scene today.

Throughout the afternoon, dozens of horrified onlookers, kept at a distance by the intense heat, stared as the crackling flames ate away at the walls of the barn, ebbing and swelling like waves on a beach. Embers flew through the air, landing on a tree here, a patch of grass there.

Tongues of light were reflected in the windows of the house and for a terrible moment it seemed fire was everywhere. Black smoke billowed madly, obscuring the view of a field across the street and turning the sky an eerie yellow.

Bowie watched the fire as it raged close to the house.

“It’s just getting worse,” he said. “Now it’s got us real worried. But I’m hoping, I’m hoping …”

Once the fire was under control, an exhausted Capt. David Sturgeon of the Brewer Fire Department wiped his forehead and assessed the situation.

“We did well to contain the fire to the barn,” he said, recalling that when the barn collapsed, “the wind shifted 45 degrees, impinging on the house.”

According to Sturgeon, firefighters’ main concern was preventing the fire from spreading to surrounding houses 300 to 400 feet away on Hillcrest Street. Shingles and siding on three of the houses melted.

“Our manpower was taxed to the max,” the captain said, as firefighters were forced to turn their attention to grass fires caused by flying embers and to a house across the street where smoke had been reported.

The fire was under control in about an hour and a half, although cleanup lasted about five hours, said Sturgeon.

He called the fire “one of the worst” in his 25 years with the department. Firefighters “had been watching the barn for a long time,” speculating on the inferno that could result if it ever caught fire, he said.

“Today it did.”

Bowie, who has served as the city’s public works director since 1991, bought the property in 1992 and split it up into three apartments.

The barn is part of the old Drillen Farm, which dates to the late 1800s when Oak Grove Spring Water used it to bottle fresh well water. Eugene Gough, who recently rented an apartment there, said the basement still has Gilded Age-era brick kilns once used for baking bread.

The barn was a miniature museum to everything with a motor, where Bowie and sons spent long hours fixing up old tractors and antique cars. There were Mustangs from the late ’60s, helicopter parts, two ambulances and a vintage 1944 Meeley-Harris tractor.

Also lost were set pieces from the 1990 filming of “Graveyard Shift,” based on a collection of King short stories called “Night Shift.” Watching the blaze, Bowie managed a laugh when he recalled a hair-raising scene filmed there involving a swimming pool full of rats.

But there was little levity as firefighters hacked at the windows of the home to keep the fire from spreading, and huge clumps of charcoal-colored debris filled the landscape like so much volcanic ash. The only visible remains of the barn were the burned-out skeleton of an ambulance, and a rusted wagon wheel, looking like a leftover from an Old West ghost town.

“It gives you one of those sorrowful feelings,” Bowie said. “We put an awful lot of effort into fixing this place up.”

Bowie estimated that more than $100,000 in property was lost to the fire.

According to the family, the two ambulances were owned by the Downeast Emergency Medicine Institute and were to be sent to the Bangor Fire Department. The barn also contained rescue gear to be used for a yet-to-be created helicopter medevac service at Brewer Airport.

“This will set us back hard,” said Richard Bowie, director of the medicine institute.

Looking stricken, his mother, Lois Bowie, said she was not sure if the barn’s contents were insured.

The fire started with a whisper of smoke and spread at a feverish pace, as flames leaped above an ashen cloud in staccato bursts clearly visible from across the Penobscot River.

Some came to lend a helping hand, offering cups of Hawaiian Punch to dehydrated firefighters recuperating on the front lawn.

Onlookers lined more than a mile of North Main Street — young kids with backward baseball caps, couples walking their dogs and a group of retired firefighters capturing the moment with Camcorders and Polaroids.

“It was an explosion — just BOOM!” said one man with a camera, who said he worked for the Brewer Fire Department from 1947 to 1967.

Many others said they heard several loud popping sounds emanating from the barn.

“Sounded just like a mortar shell,” said Lester Annis, a former Marine and ex-Bangor firefighter who lives in a house behind the barn.

Annis caught a glimpse of smoke as he left the nearby Paradis Foodliner. He rushed back, believing it was his home on fire, and arrived shortly before the firetrucks. He got out his old Polaroid camera and shot eight pictures before the heat became intense.

“It was just smoke,” he said, describing his initial recollections of the fire. “Then there was some blaze under the eaves. Then she just took right off … Half an hour later, the whole thing was engulfed.”

At the same time, teen-age friends Nick Leakos and Brandon Shaw were riding their mountain bikes in the area when a mail carrier pointed to the smoke. They pedaled to the house only to be pushed back by firefighters trying to contain the blaze.

“It was like a fireball,” said 14-year-old Leakos. “You could feel the heat wave.”

The two watched as large pieces of debris blew across Main Street, causing sporadic grass fires on the other side. Several observers helped douse the fires with shovels.

“It was unreal,” said Shaw, 13.

Kate Sellar, her baby girl Dena in her arms, said when she first noticed the smoke, she ran to alert Patsy Bowie, who also lives at the building that caught fire. Bowie called the Brewer Fire Department.

Bowie, who had lived in the house for three years with her husband, David, and their three young sons, stared at the scene, her hand covering her mouth.

“It’s a shame, it’s a shame,” she murmured, remembering the pictures, furniture, china and crystal which the family stored in the barn since they moved from Virginia three years ago. Suddenly she straightened her shoulders, and strode toward her children.

“I have three boys who are upset,” she said. “I can’t be [upset]. Maybe later.”

Before long, she was counting her blessings.

“Thank goodness the fire happened during the day, that the Fire Department is down the road, that we got out,” she said. “I told the children, `You can get new bikes, we can get new stuff. Lives can’t be replaced.”‘