Century of kindness King’s Daughters Home for women marks 100-year Bangor location

BANGOR – A century after a Bangor philanthropist gave an Ohio Street house to be used as a home for transient women, the property still offers a home away from home to Christian women.

The 100th anniversary of the donation of the property at 89 Ohio St. by Dr. Thomas Upham Coe to be used as the King’s Daughters Home will be celebrated on Sunday. Events include tours of the house and a lecture by John Donovan, property manager, on the Coe family’s impact on Bangor over the past two centuries.

The home was founded in 1891 by the Order of King’s Daughters, a Christian women’s organization made up of representatives from 14 Bangor churches. Its first location was a rented property at 35 Columbia St. in Bangor.

It moved into the circa 1853 Italianate-style house on Ohio Street in December 1905. Originally, the house served transient women who probably paid by the day or week. It could house 21 or 22 women at a time.

During its first four years, 500 women and girls found shelter there, according to Judy Lambert, who along with her husband, the Rev. Richard Lambert, serve as resident directors. Today the house can accommodate nine residents. Five women live there today.

“Back then, a girl would have had a little suitcase,” Judy Lambert said recently. “Now she arrives with a TV, a computer and boom box.

“About [15 years] ago, the board downsized to give them more room and created a lease system. We really target college-bound women between 18 and 25, especially those who come from outlying areas and feel like Bangor is a big city.”

The home offers independent living in a smoke-free and drug-free environment with off-street parking, shared bathrooms, kitchen privileges and a resident staff available for emergencies, according to information on its Web site. Rent is between $325 and $415 a month, depending on the size of the room, and includes two meals a day, Monday through Friday, and all utilities.

“It still operates for the purpose for which it was established – to offer housing to women who are seeking to become self-sufficient and independent,” Linda Allen, a member of the board of directors, said recently. “It’s also a sanctuary for students, as well as some starting their careers.

“It’s that step between leaving the safety and security of home and being grown up and living on one’s own out in the world,” she continued, “which allows the opportunity for personal growth and self-discovery.”

Allen said that the anniversary event would focus on the Coe family and how its philanthropic works in the 19th and 20th centuries still are felt in the community today.

The Coes prospered in Maine after venturing north from New Hampshire in 1842, Allen said. Partners with the Pingree family in the timber trade, they put up a block of buildings on Main Street and developed Columbia and Exchange streets in Bangor. A generous family, the Coes established an infirmary at Bowdoin College in 1917 and donated a mansion on Court Street for use as a school.

“We wanted to make a big deal out of Coe’s history because a lot of the past efforts by citizens of Bangor are no longer recognized,” Allen said. “It would be a shame to let that get lost.”

The open house will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 16, at the King’s Daughters Home, 89 Ohio St., Bangor. For information, call 945-3844 or visit www.allsoulsbangor.com/kdh.

Excerpt from the Bangor Daily News, 1905

“Not long ago on a cold, rainy, blustering night, after 12 o’clock, a patrolman found a girl on Main Street, thinly clad, and shivering. Upon questioning her the officer learned that she was a stranger in the city in search of work, and that she had been wandering about the streets all night, not knowing where to lay her head.

“If there had been no King’s Daughters’ Home she would have been taken to the police station for shelter, among the criminal inmates, to her shame and degradation. As it was the policeman at once went with her to the home and upon application from him she was admitted, warmed, fed and given a clean bed to sleep in. She stayed at the home until she found work, and so, perhaps, was saved from many things which might have befallen her.

“When the patrolman who found this girl told the incident sometime afterward, he said, Every time I pass that house, and see the lights in the windows, I feel like thanking God that there is such a place in Bangor.”