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The picture shows a building caked in ice, with men, women and children posing in front of the scene.
No, “Ice Palace” is not a photograph of the former Masonic Hall in downtown Bangor, which burned in January 2004 and was packed in an icy glaze as firefighters attempted to put out the flames.
Instead, it’s an 1890 photograph of the old Granite Hall in Augusta, pictures of which showed the building also covered in ice from the water used to fight a fire from that year.
The photograph is one of 50 in “What’s in a Picture? Uncovering the Hidden Stories in Vintage Maine Photographs” by Down East magazine deputy editor Joshua F. Moore.
Moore is also in his fifth year as the editor of the magazine’s back-page “What’s in a Picture?” feature, which he said is consistently mentioned by readers as one of the publication’s most popular regular sections. He picked several of the most arresting and historically interesting images for the book, which was released last month.
The feature’s popularity made it a natural for a book, Moore said.
Each photograph is accompanied by the history of the picture – as much information as Moore was able to gather through his research. Most of the information is the same as originally appeared in Down East, but some of the stories have been expanded since the first publication because readers saw something they recognized and called in to the magazine to share their knowledge.
The story behind the photo is important, but the visual impact is Moore’s top criterion for including a photograph in the book.
“I look at literally hundreds of pictures a month, and the big criteria for me is, I need to be stopped [by the image],” he said. “If I’m stopped, I figure, the readers are going to be stopped, too.”
The ice-covered building in Augusta certainly qualifies as a show-stopping image. So do many of the other pictures, including “White Hate,” a 1923 photo of a Ku Klux Klan march which took place in Milo. The subject matter is eye-catching, but the visual impact of the line of people dressed in white against the darker buildings, street and cars, and Stars and Stripes of bunting hanging from some of the windows is just as striking.
The composition of five women is an interesting feature of “The Pause That Refreshes,” a 1900 photograph taken on the coast in Camden. Four of the women sit on rocks, drinking what is presumably soda out of glass bottles, while a fifth sits on the ground without a bottle. The dresses and shoes of the women on the right side echo each other, while the two on the left side seem to mirror each other. The fifth woman, with a sour impression on her face, looks away from the scene.
As Moore tries to do with the magazine feature, the book covers a wide range of eras, geography and subjects. There is a 1980 photograph, “Potato Blockade,” taken in Fort Fairfield. The 1911 fire in Bangor is the subject of another photo, “Ablaze in Bangor.” In a 1934 photograph, “Boys Will Be Boys,” from Fryeburg, a group of boys goof off in a broken canoe.
“It is a little tour of Maine,” Moore said.
Bangor appears in several other photographs. There’s “Blood Red Carpet,” a 1984 shot of author Stephen King with a then-child actress Drew Barrymore during an opening-night party for their film “Firestarter” held at the Bangor Civic Center, and a 1927 photo, “Bangor Bathers,” of two Eastern Maine General Hospital nurses sitting in a bathtub, in a light moment perhaps to try to put a smile on patients’ faces.
In putting together the magazine feature, Moore himself tours Maine. He travels to university and college libraries, state collections in Augusta, and small-town historical societies. He often sits in the back room of a building, going through old boxes for those photos that stop him.
There’s no way, Moore said, he can pick one favorite.
“For me, my favorite pictures were the ones that allowed me to meet new people or discover new things,” he said. “The photographs come first, and then the stories that come out of them, those are the most fun.”
“What’s in a Picture: Uncovering the Hidden Stories in Vintage Maine Photographs” is available at local bookstores, through www.amazon.com and www.downeast.com.
jbloch@bangordailynews.net
990-8287
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