Bangor library fight stalled new building

The Bangor Public Library is recognized today as one of the great institutions of eastern Maine. A century ago, however, its future was anything but certain as political factions engaged in a brutal battle over where a new “fireproof” building should be located.

Squeezed into the second story of a large commercial block next to the Kenduskeag Stream on State Street, the library’s fire risk was well known. Yet the possibility of losing its priceless collection in a conflagration wasn’t enough to stop the arguing. Events boiled over between March and June of 1905, revealing how divided the city was politically and socially.

On March 21, the Bangor Daily News ran an extensive story and architect’s sketch of a building that the library board of trustees had decided to build on the brow of State Street Hill between Broadway and French Street (where All Souls Congregational Church is today). The headline left no room for doubt: “Bangor’s Magnificent Library To Be Built This Year: $126,000 Now Available and Construction Will begin This Spring – Description of Splendid Temple of Literature to Adorn State Street Hill.”

But a large number of important people felt they had been left out of the planning process. The site had been donated in 1893 by N.C. Ayer, president of the Second National Bank and owner of a mansion on Broadway. The design had been completed by 1900 by Bangor native Frank A. Bourne, a Boston architect. Criticism had bubbled previously, but now the floodgates of vitriol were about to swing wide open.

Ten days after the trustees made their announcement in the pages of the BDN, the city’s other paper, the Bangor Daily Commercial, let loose a barrage of criticism. The trustees’ plan was “one of the most inconsiderate, inconsistent, unworthy acts that can be imagined,” ranted the Commercial. They were supposed to be “servants of the people,” yet they were controlled “by men devoid of a broad, liberal, enlightened public spirit, and devoid of an understanding of what a modern up-to-date public library building should be.” The site was too small and too steep. The library would cost too much, and it wouldn’t be big enough to hold the growing collection. Plus many people would find it difficult to walk there.

The Commercial’s owner, Joseph P. Bass, offered to donate $10,000 if the trustees would put the building on a lot for sale at the corner of Hammond and Franklin streets, nearer the city’s center. Of course, Franklin Street needed to be widened, and perhaps a new bridge over the Kenduskeag was involved. This plan soon collapsed under its own weight.

The trustees expressed their shock and dismay at the Commercial’s heavy-handed attack, even though they were well aware that other groups, such as The Citizen’s League of Bangor, were opposed to their plan. Through the pages of the BDN, they asserted with monotonous regularity that they planned to stick to their guns because they would lose pledges and have to buy a new lot if they changed.

Another powerful faction, the Bangor Board of Trade, soon weighed in with its favorite site: Park Street at its intersection with Penobscot Street (behind today’s City Hall).

On April 12, two more locations, which seemed to have more support than the others, were aired at an “anti-State Street convention” attended by hundreds of people at City Hall. The sites were on Harlow Street at Prospect Street (current site of the library), and on a portion of Center Park, which was located where City Hall is today.

The fight was turning into a battle between the uptown mansions and the downtown tenements. The “moral condition” of Harlow Street, a center of industry and working class housing, was questioned. Some women and children didn’t feel comfortable there at night, and there were rumors of a liquor problem. Harlow Street had long had a reputation for rowdiness. Once the site of Peppermint Row, a string of grog shops, it had also been a red light district – home to the notorious Fan Jones. Yet, ironically, the high school and an elementary school were located nearby.

An anonymous writer of a letter to the editor got right to the point: “It seems to me that the Harlow Street site is about as fitting a place for a public library as a pig’s ear is for a diamond ring. … ‘Down on Harlow Street’ … That sounds just about as you would expect to hear it in response to an inquiry as to where to sell your old iron and rags, or to hire a horse, store your furniture, get your boiler repaired, or find your way to mills and factories.”

Defenders of Harlow Street were quick to jump to the defense of the neighborhood: “I know of few more quiet and respectable localities in the city of Bangor,” said George W. Vickery, a foreman at Morse & Co. “The occupants of the tenements of Harlow Street are human beings, at least just as are the occupants of the mansions of Broadway – and it is for the people who live in tenements rather than for the people who live in mansions that public libraries are built.”

Even the trustees now seemed willing to accept the Center Park site if the City Council approved it. But as usual, a faction of naysayers quickly appeared. It included the influential Bangor Board of Trade and the city’s park commissioners. A petition against the park idea quickly materialized containing 400 names.

“Of all the parks in the city, Center Park is the nearest to the business section and is more utilized by the public than any of the other parks in the city’s system,” complained Edward Blanding, secretary to the trade board.

The matter was soon settled disastrously. The Common Council and the Board of Aldermen, split on whether to donate part of the park for the project, and the plan was tabled. “The Public Library Project Is Killed: Enterprise Smothered by Controversy Over Site – Loss of Subscriptions Means Delay of Years,” read a BDN headline on June 5. The trustees, “disgusted” and “discouraged,” had thrown up their hands.

Four years later, in 1909, the site question was finally settled in a referendum in which a Harlow Street site – the current one – was chosen over the State Street site and four other locations. Gradually the building fund topped $150,000. Delay after delay stalled the process, however. The trustees held three meetings in April 1911 in an effort to explain to the City Council what was taking so long.

But time had run out. On April 30, the great fire of Bangor destroyed much of the downtown, including the library. “Fortune In Books Went Up in Flames: Early Bangor Records Which Can Never be Replaced Destroyed With $300,000 Collection of Volumes,” said a BDN headline. These included irreplaceable old newspapers and nearly 70,000 books.

What might have happened if the city had overcome politics and built a “fireproof” building in 1905? Only one of the proposed sites, the least popular one, at Hammond and Franklin streets, lay outside the fire zone. The much-maligned trustees’ site, however, lay right at the edge of the destruction. Some nearby buildings, like the First Congregational Church, burned; others were saved through heroic measures or happenstance. If the trustees had gotten their way, would the library’s invaluable collection have been saved?

Richard R. Shaw contributed information to this column. Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.