Economic engines revved in Queen City 100 years ago

Bangor’s boom times were long gone a century ago, yet when local businessmen looked over their shoulders at the end of 1906 they pronounced the year a prosperous one. “1906 A FAT YEAR FOR THE QUEEN CITY,” the Bangor Daily News trumpeted gleefully on New Year’s Day, 1907. The thought no doubt was a welcome antidote to hangovers from Broadway to the Devil’s Half Acre.

The Bangor Board of Trade was more staid in its assessment, but the message was the same: “The year that has gone has been one of exceptional prosperity in Bangor and in all the avenues of industry and trade good times have prevailed. Jobbers and retailers report excellent business and collections have been highly satisfactory, Manufacturers have been busy.” Its report was reprinted in newspapers that month.

Bangor was already making the transition from manufacturing and shipping port to service center. The harbor was in decline partly because of the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad’s new port at Searsport. Lumber was still a thriving industry, but Bangor no longer could boast it was “the lumber capital of the world.” As the country north and east of Bangor expanded economically, however, the Queen City’s role as the region’s mercantile center grew. A new paper mill or a successful potato crop upriver meant more money flowing to Bangor for all sorts of commercial transactions.

One of the surest signs of this phenomenon was the construction then under way. “A MILLION DOLLAR BUILDING BOOM: 1906 the Busiest Year on Record in Bangor,” declared a headline in the BDN on Nov. 16, 1906.

In describing some of the activity, the Board of Trade found it necessary to stretch its arsenal of adjectives. There was a handsome seven-story building on Exchange Street by the heirs of C.G. Sterns, the magnificent business edifice on Central Street by John R. Graham, the enterprising president and manager of the Bangor Railway & Electric Co., the superb bank building of the Merrill Trust Co. on Hammond Street at the Kenduskeag Stream, the handsome bank block of the Merchants National Bank at Mercantile Square on Broad Street, the commodious block of Wm. P. Dickey & Co. on Broad Street and the new and handsome home of the Tarratine Club on Park Street.

Improvements also had been made to the blocks of John Cassidy and A. Langdon Freese on Main Street, and additional floors had been added to the blocks of E. & I.K. Stetson and C.G. Sterns estate on Exchange Street. “[T]he appearance of Bangor’s business section has been materially improved by the replacing of the old-time pitch roofs on many of the business blocks by flat roofs,” according to the board’s report.

Of course, the most spectacular building then going up – the one that everyone was talking about and that so many people remember today – was the Maine Central Railroad’s new station at the foot of Exchange Street. When completed, the papers said, it would be the best train station in any city of Bangor’s size in New England. The Eastern Steamship Co. that year had also built a modern terminal on Front Street.

To this list were added the names of several companies that had expanded or were starting up. The Bangor Moccasin Co. had erected a tannery on Valley Avenue, while the New England Electric Clock Co. had started up in a factory formerly operated by the Bangor Electric Clock Co. The Northern Manufacturing Co., successor to the Great Northern Paint, Chemical & Manufacturing Co., had begun making paint in the city, while the Maine Realty Development Co. was manufacturing concrete blocks across the river in Brewer. Also in that city, the Eastern Manufacturing Co. had made extensive improvements and additions to its plant.

The area’s transportation network also was studying various plans for expansion. The Bangor & Aroostook Railroad was considering building a 145-mile extension up through Allagash country from West Seboeis to St. Francis on the St. John River, thus opening a huge section of the North Woods to lumbering. Meanwhile, closer to home, the Bangor Railway and Electric Co. was talking about extending its trolley lines out to Dexter and down to Winterport and Frankfort or even Stockton Springs and possibly along the east side of the Penobscot River from Brewer.

All this talk of improved transportation, none of which ever came to pass, soon led to an even more grandiose subject in the Board of Trade’s report. Bangoreans had a case of manifest destiny fever. Certain business leaders were suggesting the Queen City swallow up parts of smaller adjoining towns. “[H]as not the time about arrived when at the head of navigation on the imperial Penobscot there should be one municipality whose territorial confines should include not only the Bangor of today … but also Veazie, East Hampden and Northern Maine Junction [in Hermon]?” There was no shortage of dreamers in Bangor even as the country’s demographic, industrial and agricultural heartland continued its westward push.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.