The next time you take a stroll along the sidewalk next to the Kenduskeag Stream between State and Washington streets, pause a moment to imagine the past. You are walking where thousands of sailing ships once tied up, sometimes side by side, when this section of the Kenduskeag was much wider and located at the heart of Bangor’s working waterfront.
That stretch of the stream was triple the width it is today. My 1875 “Birds Eye View” map of Bangor shows nearly 20 schooners tied between State Street and the Maine Central Railroad drawbridge at the mouth of the stream. From what I have read, this is an accurate representation of activity there for much of the latter half of the 19th century, well before city fathers decided to tame the stream.
A century ago, navigation up into the stream was declining, just as it was along the river. “ONLY 99 SCHOONERS,” reported the Bangor Daily Commercial sadly in a headline on Nov. 26, 1910. “KENDUSKEAG UNPOPULAR, Fewer Vessels Entering the Stream As Year Succeeds Year.”
F.H. Sylvester, the man assigned to open the drawbridge maintained by the railroad, reported that only 99 vessels had come through the bridge so far that year, and he didn’t expect any more. There had been 123 in 1907, 116 in 1908, and 118 in 1909. This was back in the days when both Bangor newspapers employed a shipping news reporter, and doings in Bangor Harbor symbolized the lifeblood of the city.
“Most of the schooners to enter the stream this summer, have, as usual, been small, although one or two good-sized three-masters came in out of the Penobscot, notably the Margaret G., a Britisher bringing salt for Towle [J.N. Towle & Co., 82 Broad St.]. The Jewell has brought lime to Dunning [R.B. Dunning & Co., 54 Broad St.], every trip, and sometimes sailed light and sometimes with lumber from H.F. Andrews [66 Exchange St.]. Other craft have also brought in lime,” the reporter wrote. Not a yacht or steamer had sought admission that summer, nor had a scow or even a raft of logs demanded entry.
No accidents had been reported. Once, however, the main shaft had broken in the draw and it was necessary to use a rope to move the bridge that day. Typically, the bridge was open for about five minutes, but never more than seven, said the tender. It had been opened often at night, causing less inconvenience for pedestrians.
Of course, in those days, if you wanted to cross the stream in a wagon or an auto, you had to go up to the State Street bridge. All that would change in 1930 when a new bridge would open between Broad and Washington streets for growing motor traffic, but no draw would be included to admit stray sailing vessels. By the 1920s shipping in the Kenduskeag had shrunk to almost nothing. It had gone from 57 vessels in 1920 to 10 in 1925, according to figures supplied by the MCRR to the Bangor Daily News on Oct. 12, 1925. Two years later only three vessels appeared.
The debate over the bridge was being conducted in earnest by then. Should it include an expensive drawbridge mechanism? The Bangor Daily News, which had its offices on Exchange Street, was a diehard backer of a drawbridge, but even its old historian, quite possibly the famed editor Lawrence T. Smyth, who had worked for the city’s harbor master as a boy, had a hard time convincing anyone.
“Time was when hundreds of vessels of all rigs and sizes, from a bay coaster to an 800-ton bark, came into the stream to discharge their cargoes, and when the late Gilbert Fickett, draw tender for many years, was kept busy every high water with the passage of shipping in and out,” wrote the newspaper’s maritime expert on Dec. 21, 1927. “Recently with the vanishing of the lumber trade and the practical monopoly of general cargo carrying by rail or steamer, the Kenduskeag shipping has fallen to almost nothing, and the wharves that were formerly busy places now are deserted or covered with extensions of the stores facing Broad and Exchange streets.”
But, he continued, “no man knows what the future holds, what commercial developments there may be in years to come that may make free navigation to the city’s heart as valuable a privilege as ever — or more so. It is not safe to assume that there never again will be any use for those wharves.”
Franklin Bragg of N.H. Bragg, which had its offices on Broad Street, however, said his company was willing to take its chances without the draw. It would be expensive and might pose a hazard in the event firefighters needed to get their equipment across the bridge when it was open. Bragg represented the majority. The compromise that resulted led to building a bridge that would allow installation of draw equipment, if the need was seen later.
Of course, it never was. In his annual report in 1930, Harbor Master Edward Lord declared it looked as though the stream was permanently closed because of the new drawless bridge and because of the way the Maine Central had placed its rails across its drawbridge at the mouth of the stream.
The new bridge connecting Broad to Washington was described as part of “the Atlantic highway” through Bangor, a mighty thoroughfare “accommodating traffic from the Bath and Rockland road to Lucerne, Bar Harbor, Washington County and the north.” Nobody had heard of the interstate yet.
Another part of the plan was to build “two grand parkways” along the Kenduskeag between the new bridge and the State Street bridge. The stream would be narrowed with retaining walls and on its banks, behind the businesses, would be parking spaces and a public road on both sides. The “unsightly conditions of the rear of the storehouses” would be eliminated, and perhaps something could be done about the odor of sewage from the stream at low water in the summer.
At the time, the Bangor Daily News described this plan as “a bit fantastic … absurd, not to say dangerous … something for the lawyers to argue about. Has the city or anyone the right to substitute a street for tidewater?”
This vision, the Kenduskeag Plaza, was not completed until 1962 as an urban renewal appetizer. The stream was narrowed from 250 to 80 feet between the bridges on State and Washington streets. The inner sidewalk marks where the old rotting wooden cribwork once held up the bank. The outer sidewalk marked where schooners had once unloaded their cargoes.
Watch your step the next time you walk along there. Don’t fall into the open hatches or trip on the coiled lines. Listen for the creaking rigging and the shouts of the stevedores. And enjoy the view.
Thanks to John Frawley and Dick Shaw for some of the information in this piece. An illustrated collection of Wayne E. Reilly’s columns, ”Remembering Bangor: The Queen City Before the Great Fire,” is available at bookstores. Comments about this column may be sent to wreilly.bdn@gmail.com