BANGOR – The Bangor YMCA, now in its 135th year, wears an impressive mantle of history, both as a local entity and as part of the organization’s broader spectrum.

“We plan to set up displays of historical photographs and artifacts in the lobby in 2003,” said YMCA executive director Rob Reeves.

The Bangor YMCA had its genesis in the Bangor Young Men’s Society in 1833, Reeves said, 11 years before George Williams founded the Young Men’s Christian Association in London.

Edward Kent, later a governor of Maine, was the first president of the Bangor Young Men’s Society. He, along with 109 others, signed the society’s articles of organization.

In 1851, the YMCA movement in England, with the purpose of deterring unhealthy social conditions and idleness among young workers in large cities, spread to Boston. By 1854, 26 associations had been formed in the United States and Canada, making a total of 397 in seven countries.

With the coming of the Civil War in the United States, U.S. YMCA membership declined by one-third as young men went off to battle. The remaining 15 YMCAs in the north formed the U.S. Christian Commission to aid troops and prisoners of war, with the support of President Abraham Lincoln.

Poet Walt Whitman was among the 4,859 commission volunteers who distributed more than 1 million Bibles to soldiers and worked with the U.S. Sanitary Commission, which organized a hospital supply system and nursing care for wounded soldiers.

In 1867, members of the Bangor Young Men’s Society returning from the Civil War – who had YMCA contacts while in the service – and other citizens met to form the Bangor Young Men’s Christian Association. Their goal was the improvement of the spiritual, mental, social and physical conditions of young men. Their first office and reading room was on the corner of Park and State streets, and from the 1870s until the late-1880s it was at 15 Hammond St.

By 1886, it was determined that the Bangor YMCA needed a new building.

“A first donation of $7,512.82 for the building fund was received from the ladies auxiliary, with Mrs. N.E. Bragg as president,” Reeves said.

The ladies, no doubt, held bake sales and bazaars to benefit the YMCA, at which they sold the finest examples of their knitting, crocheting and embroidery.

Although at that time women were excluded from YMCA membership, they taught YMCA classes and raised funds to benefit the organization as early as 1851.

The new building at 127 Hammond St. was completed Aug. 1, 1891, at a cost of $55,388.95, raised through 377 individual donations in amounts from 10 cents to $6,000. It was solid testimony that Bangor citizens endorsed the mission of the YMCA, an attitude still reflected in the fact that the organization’s annual fund-raising goals usually are met and frequently are exceeded.

The building, designed by architect Wilfred E. Mansur, who also designed the Penobscot County Courthouse and the Bangor Theological Seminary gymnasium, was three stories high with a two-story wing containing a gymnasium. The foundation was made of ledge stone quarried in Bangor. The outside door sills and chimney caps were of granite from the Jewell quarries in Lincoln.

The main hall of the building, which could seat 750, featured a beamed ceiling with a center chandelier, balconies on all four walls and stained-glass windows over the stage.

The interior was finished in ash. With few exceptions, the materials in the building were made in Bangor or came from Maine sources. It was a magnificent setting for an organization whose work sought to nurture young men in spirit, mind and body.

Activities at the Bangor YMCA at that time mirrored what was happening in YMCAs throughout the United States. Many people were introduced to sports, activities that were invented at YMCAs – the concept of bodybuilding in 1881, basketball in 1891, professional football in 1895, softball named in 1926 and racquetball invented in 1950.

In addition, the YMCA literally wrote the book on swimming. The “YMCA Swimming and Life Saving Manual” was published in 1919.

By 1965, the Bangor YMCA had outgrown itself and plans were made to tear down the old building. The YMCA’s current facility was constructed in 1971. Higgins, Webster and Lloyd were the architects and Nickerson & O’Day the building contractor.

Today, the Bangor YMCA continues its long history of service to Greater Bangor. In 2001, the YMCA child care program served 273 children, of whom 33 percent received some form of scholarship, Reeves said.

It provided free programming for more than 100 children in the YouthWorks Club programs, for 35 children in the Y-Outreach program in old Capehart neighborhoods and for 54 youths in the JumpStart program for first-time juvenile offenders.

In addition, 798 people received subsidized Y memberships, 114 campers received scholarships and 18 children received free swim lessons. And that’s only a tiny part of the services and programs the YMCA offers, Reeves said.

Volunteers are indispensable to the mission of the YMCA, said marketing director Carrie Anderson-Paquette.

“In 2001, the organization benefited from more than 18,000 volunteer hours from more than 5,200 people – for an estimated value of more than $274,000,” Anderson-Paquette said.

The volunteers served as mentors, board and committee members, coaches and sports officials, clean-up crews at Camp Jordan and Camp Peirce Webber, nurses for the cardiac rehab program, fund raising, architectural work, advertising, engineering and legal services.

“The volunteers included Bernard ‘Doc’ Mann, 94, who teaches chess at the YMCA, and board member Lloyd Willey, 68, who has been a Bangor YMCA member for 51 years,” Anderson-Paquette said.

Other plans to keep the YMCA growing include a possible building expansion project, Reeves said. The agency also hopes to enlarge after-school outreach programs to Brewer.

In addition, the following projects have been completed this year: a reconstructed sauna, new carpeting, trim, paint, tile and sink in the men’s locker room; a renovated sauna, new carpeting, trim and paint in the women’s locker room; new paint, carpeting and trim in both general locker rooms; floor refinishing at the sports and fitness center; a newly refurbished Cole Gymnasium, including refinished wood floor and new matting on the walls; Coombs Pool upgrades, including a regrouted pool deck and acid wash cleaning; resealed floors in the racquetball courts, group fitness studio and Viner Room; and a new air-conditioned, baby-sitting space.