The changing landscape

Motorists tooling through Piscataquis County in the coming months are in for a surprise. Guilford’s Masonic block and the Blethen House in Dover-Foxcroft, venerable county landmarks, are being razed to make way for two more Rite Aid pharmacies.

The brick Masonic building, also known as the I.O.O.F. Hall, dates back to 1903, when Theodore Roosevelt occupied the White House, and the wooden hotel was put up during John Tyler’s administration in 1842. Some townspeople have viewed the properties as firetraps perched on prime real estate. But serious historians know better, arguing it’s a sad day when small communities about to lose a part of themselves lack the resources, and sometimes even the desire, to wage strong preservation battles.

Soon, light and shadow will play across the properties unlike any way in anyone’s memory. Just as they will now in Brewer, now that two less impressive buildings, but with vivid histories of their own — the L.H. Thompson Inc. printing company and Stacey’s Brewer Motel — have vanished with little fanfare.

Few buildings are beautiful, but when they’re gone we often realize too late their significance. That happened last year when a former one-room schoolhouse near the Bangor Mall was leveled. And it may happen again at Union and Hammond streets if Rite Aid gobbles up a video store and old residences nearby. And the Brooks Pharmacy chain will soon destroy the former Grants Dairy (look behind the brick facade — there’s a wooden barn in there), and other properties at Union and Fourteenth streets.

Arlo Farrington once cut hair in the tiny barber shop next to the dairy, also doomed to demolition as a Brooks Pharmacy moves into the neigborhood. The tiny building contains a thousand stories, but one is outstanding. On V-J Day in 1945, Farrington, whose son was fighting in the European theater of operations, kept his promise to celebrate the war’s finish when he hurled a barber chair headrest through a target on his plate-glass window. That kind of traffic-stopping spirit deserves a monument.

As the wrecking ball prepares to swing away at blocks located in the wrong place at the wrong time, let’s consider for a moment that they are more than bricks and mortar, wood and plaster. People’s lives were shaped there.