BANGOR IN VINTAGE POSTCARDS, Arcadia Publishing, Portsmouth, N.H., 126 pages, $19.99.

More than 30 years ago, a 25-cent postcard kindled Richard Shaw’s lifelong interest in small snapshots of Bangor’s history. So it is that we now have “Bangor in Vintage Postcards,” a nice installment in the Arcadia series.

A lifelong city resident and author of two previous Arcadia books on Bangor, “Bangor” and “Bangor: The Twentieth Century,” Shaw has a fine appreciation of Bangor landmarks in print, from the old Bangor Auditorium to the original City Hall to the beloved Union Station.

Especially good is an interior shot of Union Station, which the author notes was the through station for trains returning from Nova Scotia with remains of victims of the Titanic disaster in 1912.

In fact, it is Shaw’s passion for historical tidbits that so enlivens this historical volume, augmenting three views of the Standpipe, for instance, with the information that the water tower was painted olive drab during World War II.

The Bangor waterfront was busy, the postcards show, for craft from the little ferry Bon Ton II to the Boston steamer Belfast to a canoe paddled by female fisherman Jennie Sullivan all plied the Penobscot River.

The Kenduskeag Stream comes in for equal treatment in Shaw’s book, including several views of the rocky Lover’s Leap. And thanks to postcards, we can remember nearby Maxfield’s Mill and Morse’s Bridge.

Most amazing, perhaps, are views of the stream and downtown buildings – three blocks’ worth or more – before the destruction of the Great Bangor Fire of 1911. Shaw has to say what’s what along the shore, because otherwise, how would we know?

One postcard commemorates the starting of the fire and how it jumped the stream when an easterly breeze carried embers from Broad Street to Exchange – even though the stream was wider then.

The Great Bangor Fires get a chapter all their own, and sad to say, there are enough postcards to justify it. One view shows “the burnt district from the tower of City Hall,” then on Hammond Street.

Still another postcard of the $3 million in devastation is two pages wide, including a portion of the seven-story Morse Oliver building.

Yet another major fire destroyed the original Bangor Opera House on Jan. 15, 1914 – 90 years to the day before the Masonic Building across the street burned down.

There are other types of monuments as well, from Charles E. Tefft’s The River Drivers to Normand Martin’s Paul Bunyan to the U.S.S. Maine memorial in Davenport Park.

Then, too, there are “Stout-Hearted Men and Women,” among them explorer Robert E. Peary, who came to the Bangor House shortly after discovering the North Pole.

There are country musicians such as Ray Little and his band, and also Frances and Dana “Shorty” Thomas, the latter who had his own television show in the 1960s.

Organizations range from Anah Temple Shriners to the Knights of Columbus, who carried a gigantic flag up Main Street in a parade, which may have been held on the original Armistice Day.

Other downtown views take in Freese’s Department Store – familiar not only to Bangor residents and visitors but to countless children who tuned in to the Freese’s-sponsored Santa show in the 1960s.

And does anyone remember when Park Street was called “Undertakers Row” because of the mortician’s facilities that lined the street?

Whether you remember what you see in these postcards, whether you’ve only heard about it, or whether you’re finding out about an event for the first time, Richard Shaw’s “Bangor in Vintage Postcards” is well worth a look.

Roxanne Moore Saucier is editor of The Weekly. She can be reached at 990-8139 and familyti@bangordailynews.net.