The landscape of downtown Bangor was permanently altered 20 years ago this week, when a massive fire gutted the historic 1870-built Masonic Hall at the corner of Main and Water streets.
By Friday morning, Jan. 16, the building was coated in a crystalline shell of solid ice, the result of firefighters spending hours battling the blaze with millions of gallons of water. Bangor Daily News photographer Kevin Bennett captured a striking image of the building that was reprinted in newspapers across the world — starkly beautiful in its depiction of the destruction.
The fire began on the evening of Thursday, Jan. 15. While no specific location has been identified, it is believed it started somewhere in the basement of the building and quickly spread to the first floor. By 8:30 p.m. firefighters were on the scene. They didn’t leave for another four and a half days.
The building housed the Masonic Lodge and the Masonic Learning Center, as well as businesses including Yankee Shoe Repair and the Riverside Art Gallery. The Bangor Masons eventually moved their headquarters to the former campus of the Bangor Theological Seminary in 2009. The cobbler and the gallery did not reopen. No one was injured in the fire.
By Friday, it was clear the building was unsalvageable. Late in the afternoon on Friday, Jan. 16, a crane and wrecking ball arrived, and the rest of the building was demolished. The pile of rubble that remained was still smoldering, and smoke rose from it for four more days.
Brewer, Holden and Orono fire departments assisted the Bangor Fire Department in putting out the blaze. By the time the fire was completely out on Tuesday, Bangor fire chief Jeff Cammack estimated they had used more than 10 million gallons of water, including reserve water from the Thomas Hill Standpipe.
A Bangor firefighter is shrouded in water vapor rising off the pavement after Bangor and Brewer firefighters responded to Thursday night’s fire at the Masonic Hall in Bangor. Credit: Stephen Katz / BDN File
Workers from Caribou-based Soderberg Construction continue to remove debris Tuesday from the Masonic Hall site on Main street in Bangor. The debris is loaded into plastic-lined containers and then trucked to a Norridgewock site designed to handle asbestos debris. Credit: Kevin Bennett / BDN File
After months of investigation, by May 2004 the state fire marshal had still not determined the cause of the fire. To this day, it remains unclear what actually started it.
Firefighters from Bangor and Brewer are shrouded in water vapor and smoke as they respond to a blaze at the Masonic Hall on Main St. in downtown Bangor Thursday night. Credit: Stephen M. Katz / BDN File
Bangor public works employees help to ease the flow of water along Water street as fire crews dump 4000 gallons a minute on the Masonic hall on Main Street. Credit: Kevin Bennett / BDN File
Bangor’s Masonic Hal sits shrouded in ice as fire crews continue to pour water on a stubborn fire that started on Thursday night. Credit: Kevin Bennett / BDN
Traffic lights on the corner of Main and Water streets in Bangor bow under the strain of ice from water being sprayed on the Masonic Hall as fire crews battle a stubborn fire on Friday morning. Credit: Kevin Bennett / BDN File
A crane knocks down the rear of the fourth floor of the Masonic Hall on Main street as night falls on downtown Bangor. Credit: Kevin Bennett / BDN
Flames glow inside the fourth floor of the Masonic Hall on Main street in Bangor on Friday afternoon. Credit: Kevin Bennett / BDN
It was one of the biggest and most difficult-to-fight fires in recent Bangor history, bringing to mind other devastating blazes like the Great Bangor Fire of 1911. In the case of the Masonic Hall fire, huge advances in firefighting technology and in building safety over the decades meant the blaze was contained to just that building — unlike the 1911 fire, which leveled nearly a third of the downtown district.
The building itself was completed in 1870, designed by Bangor architect William Carlisle, who also designed the Unitarian Universalist church on Park Street. It featured an ornate third floor lodge room with stained glass windows overlooking Main Street. Among the historic items lost in the fire was a set of Paul Revere silverware, antique walnut furniture and a custom chandelier.
The Ward family of Brewer were among the drovers of curious onlookers that turned out Saturday and Sunday to survey the Masonic Block’s fire damage. From left to right are Dana Ward, wife Paula, Michelle, 5, and Ryan, 8. Photographed late Saturday morning. Credit: John Clarke Russ / BDN File
Bangor firefighters continued to douse the smoldering remains of the Masonic Block this weekend after a fire broke out there Thursday evening. Smoke contined to rise from the rubble on Sunday. Thais photograph was taken early Saturday afternoon on the corner of Main and Water Streets while a section of downtown Main Street and part of Water Street were closed to traffic. Credit: John Clarke Russ / BDN File
A parking garage view overlooking Water street towards Main Street where the Masonic Block continued to smolder late Saturday evening and into Sunday. Credit: John Clarke Russ / BDN File
Debris from the fire was left to sit for more than three months before it began to be hauled away in April 2004. Once the area was cleared, an empty lot was left — a lot that remains empty 20 years after the fire. It is owned by Haymarket LLC, a property management firm that also owns downtown commercial buildings including 6 State St. and 23 Water St.