Time Sharing> Discovering pieces of the past under a Bangor porch has inspired a home restoration worker to carry on the tradition of leaving pieces of the present behind

For years, Bob Kelly has worked to preserve history. Soon, he’s going to make a little history of his own.

Through his company, House Revivers, Kelly has tackled daunting restorations of historic buildings in Bangor throughout the past decade.

One of those projects was the Wadleigh-Richards Double House at 140-142 Hammond St., which has the distinction of being the earliest identified design by talented Bangor architect Charles G. Bryant. The 2 1/2-story brick Federal structure was built in 1830.

The Wadleigh-Richards House, which lies in the High Street Historic District, was in an upscale neighborhood that was home to several doctors, and known as Pill Hill. Dr. Daniel A. Robinson, a founder of Eastern Maine General Hospital, and his family lived in the house from 1886 to 1950.

The building fell on hard times. A suspicious fire damaged it in early 1996, and city officials condemned it. Kelly and his wife, Suzanne, lined up investors and purchased the building. Kelly, who had earlier restored the adjacent Clark House, ended up putting in new heating and plumbing systems and wiring, as well as redoing all the apartments. It was reopened in early 1997.

While replacing the house’s porch, Kelly’s workers discovered a small tin box, which had been sealed with its joints soldered, under the floorboards.

“The guys thought they had found a treasure chest,” Kelly said with a laugh. “I guess they did, if you’re a historian.”

It turned out the box was a time capsule. Inside were handwritten notes verifying when the porch was first built (1872), and then rebuilt (1909). Also included were Bangor daily newspapers from those two years and a copy of the Boston-based newspaper Our Dumb Animals, also from 1872, all in pristine condition.

The papers told stories of bygone eras. The Whig & Courier on June 20, 1872, told of a reporter’s meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant. The Oct. 19, 1909, Bangor Commercial led with a story about Russian Czar Nicholas’ visit to Italy. The Nov. 1, 1909, Bangor Daily News told of the death of a West Point cadet who broke his neck playing football.

“It was fascinating to find old papers in that kind of shape,” Kelly said. “[The notes] are kind of like communicating with people from 100 years ago.”

Kelly has moved those papers to a new home, a steel munitions box (which will be painted, to avoid a call to future bomb squads). Kelly is adding newspapers from recent years (including a tabloid marking the ice storm of 1998), a history of the house, pictures of the house before renovations, information about when his company rebuilt the porch, an autographed photo of the restoration crew, and a list of the building’s tenants when it reopened. The capsule will be reburied sometime in the next couple of weeks.

This marks the first time Kelly has found such an item in any of his restoration projects, and the first time he has planted a time capsule.

“Maybe I will start leaving a little time capsule behind on other projects,” he mused.