A Bangor photographer’s legacy

BANGOR – For decades, Frank L. Franklin was best known as a refrigerator service man, one whose handwriting was so beautiful that customers would save his bills.

But there was another side to the Bangor photographer, a legacy of images from the 1920s that years later give his daughter a special glimpse of her dad and the Bangor where he lived and worked.

It was 1922 when a poster in a store window invited local women to enter a contest if they resembled a movie star:

Do you or any of your friends look like Norma? If so, send a picture of yourself which in your opinion resembles any of these four of Norma Talmadge posed in “The Eternal Flame” now at the Park Theatre.

Flanking the poster was the nun’s robe and evening gown “actually worn” by the silent film star in “The Eternal Flame.” The store? It was The Besse System Co., which sold clothing at 27 Main St.

Up at 98 Main St., the window of Andrews Music Co. was full of posters for the same movie, set off by a cutout figure of Talmadge. A placard with a candle promised that the film was “Norma Talmadge’s Greatest!” The movie could be seen at the Park at 36 State St. – now the site of a parking lot – for four days in October that year.

In a vertical photograph Franklin took, several Harlow Street businesses are visible – the doorway to the Wellington Hotel, the pagoda awning of the Peking Restaurant, the entrance to L.W. Somers Co. Insurance, and the Texaco pump outside Ray Motor Co.

Franklin’s daughter, Betty Shibles, holds out another picture.

“That’s Knight’s Auto,” says the Orrington woman. Right, she is. Rows of vintage cars line the entrance to Used Car Sales Corp. at 54 Cumberland St., future location of Knight’s, and now P.M. MacKay Group.

Other old photos show displays at what appears to be a type of home show. Given the windows, high ceilings and wall trim in each picture, the event was probably held at what is now Norumbega Hall, suggests Dick Shaw, area historian and Bangor Daily News employee.

“Free! The Great New Vac-Mop with every SweeperVac,” promises a sign in the booth of H.L. Wheelden Co., a store at 93-95 Central St., where House of Brides is now located.

Ceiling, floor and table lamps in the display by The Dole Co. indicated that the firm from 61 Main St. was in the electrical business.

Yet another booth, that of Grant Bros. and Winchell of 277 Main St., was so festooned with lanterns and flowers that it was hard to tell what the company offered. But there in the foreground is a shiny tub on legs, and a sign proclaiming “America’s First Washer, The Savage, Washes Everything and Dries without a Wringer.”

Another picture shows a display of guns and ammunition by Rice & Miller Co. from 28-32 Broad St., probably taken during a sportsmen’s show.

Dick Shaw points out that while the store most associated with the Brady Gang is Dakin, outside which two members died in a 1937 shootout with federal agents, the gang also had purchased weapons at Rice & Miller while in town.

Outdoor photos in the Franklin collection are easiest to identify, with a Ferris wheel, carousel, tents, and farming and lumbering equipment leaving no doubt that one image shows the fairgrounds in Bangor. A couple of men in boater hats peek from behind one of the steel-wheeled tractors. People riding the Ferris wheel, and in the background a sign marked “Whip.”

The photographer lived in the community where he took these pictures, residing with wife June and children at 125 Allen St., his daughter explained. Most of the images were taken before she was born, but a few were made later. Shibles remembers a non-descript building at 569 Hammond St. that was fascinating to children in the neighborhood.

Upstairs was the premises of “Fred C.N. Parke, Taxidermist, Successor to the Crosby Taxidermy Co., Dealer in Deer, Moose, Elk and Caribou Heads. Furs, Robes, Rugs, Etc. Fox Mounting a Specialty.” Pictures show many animal heads mounted, and also several kinds of fish.

“They didn’t mind if you went in,” Shibles recalled of the taxidermists. “Nobody ever said a word. They just let us wander around.” Before moving to Hammond Street, the business had been on Exchange.

A recurring theme in the Franklin photos is buildings and class gatherings marked “EMCS.” These were taken in Bucksport rather than Bangor.

At the time of the photos, the campus on Oak Hill was home to East Maine Conference Seminary, built by the Methodists in the 19th century. Later it was a training and education facility for the Oblate Religious Order.

The summertime photographs of young men and women in their graduation best are beautiful, but it’s a picture from Bangor that holds a special place in Shibles’ heart.

“This is my favorite,” she says, holding out a black-and-white nighttime view of the old City Hall, streetlights aglow. Torn down more than 30 years ago, the building stood across Hammond Street from another edifice that is also gone, American Railway Express.

As a commercial photographer, Franklin worked for various studios and for himself, his daughter said, adding, “He tried valiantly and long to make a living at it.”

But eventually he turned to carpentry, and then spent many years as a member of the Refrigeration Engineers Society. He died in 1964.

Still, Shibles has the Frank L. Franklin photographs to remind her of a dad with a special talent – and the community where he used it.