Poster offers 1933 bird’s-eye view of city

BANGOR – A new resource is now available to those who want to travel to the city’s past. With the help of several area businesspeople, the Cole Land Transportation has published a poster of the first known aerial view of the downtown, with references to many of the businesses located there.

In 1933, when Bangor’s population was 28,749, Arthur McHale of Bangor made an aerial photograph of the city. McHale was employed for 38 years as a projectionist at the Bangor Opera House, and was an amateur photographer interested in aerial photography.

Before his death in May 1992, McHale gave the 1933 aerial photograph and negative to Galen Cole, founder of Cole Land Transportation Museum.

Cole said he wasn’t quite sure what to do with the photo besides display it, but thought it might make an interesting poster if information about downtown 1933 could be gathered. The idea simmered on the back burner for a few years.

Cole enlisted the aid of several area businessmen, including Elmer Saltzman, Charles Bragg, Cliff Eames, George Chalmers, John Bacon and Phil Higgins, who were local youngsters in 1933. They pooled what they remembered of downtown Bangor and, with the help of old city directories, identified more than 200 buildings and their tenant businesses.

The men worked informally with Cole on the project, as time allowed, for about five years. The result of their work is an annotated 23-inch-by-35-inch poster with a key listing nearly 1,000 businesses.

Even a quick study reveals that the poster is more than a photograph of the downtown. It also is a sociocultural portrait, the names of the local businesspeople of the times- Cohen, Zoidis, Wong, Floros, McPherson, Snow, Frati and Boudreau – reflecting the diversity that made Bangor hum.

The poster’s key also is testimony to the abundance of businesses operating, even at the height of the Great Depression – knitting mills, fur dealers, real estate agencies, clothing stores, restaurants and cafes, shoe stores, card shops, candy shops, garages, dressmakers, hat makers, trucking companies, timberland dealers, lawyers, log drivers, hotels, movie theaters and even a corset shop, to list only a few.

Some of those businesses have survived into the 21st century, among them N.H. Bragg and Sons, Beal College, WLBZ, Getchell Bros., Bangor Daily News, Snowman Printing, Frati’s, Brown & White Paper Co. and Greyhound Bus.

The photo poster project, said Mark Burnett, museum operations manager, was made possible with financial support from area businessmen Tom Sawyer, Arthur Tilley, Jon Dawson, John Bragg, Cliff Eames, Bob Strong, Bill Buckley, Marc Berlin and Earl Black, as well as the Bangor Public Library and the Bangor Museum and Center for History.

To purchase a photo poster, call the Cole museum at 990-3600. The museum is open this season through Nov. 11 at 405 Perry Road. The poster also is available at BookMarc’s Bookstore, at the Bangor Museum and Center for History, and – for in-library use – at Bangor Public Library.