A place in history This week marks 100 years since the opening of the opulent Tarratine Club on Park Street in Bangor

The gentlemen of the Tarratine Club knew how to have a good time. The summer of 1907 was particularly notable. They started things off in June at trolley magnate John R. Graham’s stock farm in East Corinth. Graham, president of the Bangor Railway and Electric Co., provided two trolley cars for a party of about 75 of his fellow Tarratiners, including “the majority of Bangor’s prominent citizens,” said the Bangor Daily News. Boarding at 2 p.m. June 17, the festive company was at its destination in less than an hour.

Entertainment included a baseball game, card-playing, a fine supper on the grass under canvas, and a mock trial featuring two of the Queen City’s foremost lawyers, Frederick Appleton and Gen. Charles Hamlin. That evening one could wander about the grounds, which had been wired with electric lights.

But the highlight of the day was the stock show. Club members were treated to exhibitions featuring the highly bred Corinth MacGregor, Margaret MacGregor and Lady Sea Shell. Then Graham’s son Ed gave a riding exhibition on Nickel Plate, the fastest quarter-miler in the country, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Later that summer – a month and a day later, to be exact – club members accomplished their greatest achievement. A century ago this Wednesday they moved from their quarters on Main Street, where Hannibal Hamlin had played many a game of cards in an earlier generation, to their new clubhouse at 81 Park St.. The building remains today a local monument to the Gilded Age, when the rich spent extravagant amounts on sprawling estates, giant yachts and exclusive clubs.

Founded in 1884, the Tarratine Club was certainly exclusive: Applicants for membership needed unanimous approval of the members. Then they were expected to pay a $50 initiation fee (more than $1,000 in today’s currency) and annual dues. In 1907, there were perhaps a half-dozen names on the membership roster indicating ethnic backgrounds other than British, and certainly no women or any of the Indians whose tribal name the club had appropriated.

The new building, situated where Thoms carriage factory had been, was an example of “the modified Colonial School of Architecture,” with massive “Harvard brick” walls and decorations of white terra cotta, “a material new to the city.”

Wrought-iron balconies at the second-floor windows and grillwork protecting the first-floor windows completed the effect of “an architectural ornament,” as it was described by the Bangor Daily

News on July 18, the same day club members moved in. Windows in the front looked out over Center Park with its trees and bandstand, instead of into the back of City Hall as is the case today. Behind the building were the well-kept gardens and lawns of French Street.

On opening day, the Bangor newspapers described the styling and decor of each room in minute detail. Suffice it to say the ceilings were high and the corridors were wide, and some rooms, such as the dining room, which could seat 60 people, were big with dark woodwork, oak furniture and large fireplaces. The list of materials and finishes used suggests opulence – plenty of mahogany, oak, southern pine, walnut, cypress, cherry, birch, leather, cut glass, ornamental ironwork, wall tapestries and so on.

Architectural historian Deborah Thompson faults the place for being “a little chaste and too perfect in its conservative and carefully proportioned details.” Yet these conservative men were liberal in their use of the latest technology, including electric lights and hot water. Even the marble and silver nickel toilet fixtures were remarkable to the reporter. He also marveled at the ease of delivering ice and coal and removing ash and garbage from the premises.

Electric “annunciators” made communication possible throughout the building. A dumbwaiter ran from the first-floor kitchen to a serving room near the roof garden where members could enjoy an impressive view and a late-night snack. Many of these features, including separate stairways, were devised so members would never have to run into the servants on the grand staircase.

What set this building apart from a hotel or a mansion more than anything, however, were the numerous rooms devoted to having fun. After picking up a Havana cigar at the steward’s desk on the second floor, a member could spend some time in one of the two lounges nearby reading a newspaper, playing cards or talking business. On the third floor was a large pool and billiards room, several rooms for cards and two bedrooms. Revenues were raised by “taxing” members for every game they played.

The most famous room of all was “the locker room.” Along the wall were wooden lockers where members could keep their liquor. Under Maine’s temperance law, groups of powerful men formed social clubs where they kept private stashes of liquor free from police interference. With its beamed ceiling and carved mantel, the room reminded the Bangor Daily News reporter of pictures “wherein the very merry gentlemen of old England used to smoke their long-stemmed pipes and get inspiration from cheerful songs and so forth.” Every reader knew what “so forth” meant.

Financial problems beset the Tarratine Club periodically throughout the 20th century until the building was sold in 1991. It is a private dwelling today. The club lives on, however, with about a dozen members, including one woman, continuing to meet in private homes. Its famous paintings, including Jeremiah P. Hardy’s portraits of Sarah and Molly Molasses and John Neptune, hang in the Bangor Public Library today to be enjoyed by all.

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