Category: Postcards

Up from the ashes of 1886, our downtown

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Devastating downtown fires were a big hazard for 19th century American cities, large and small, from New York, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis down to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Portland and Bangor, Maine, closer to home. (For the record, San Francisco actually suffered more from the fires than from the 1908 earthquake just before them.) It’s a long list, actually, and some center cities were leveled by flames and intense heat more than once.

Eastport was one of them, with great fires in 1839, 1864, and 1886 – the last one barely missing our house but leaving the rafters spookily charred.

That blaze, in October, started in one of the sardine factories on the waterfront and spread quickly, consuming almost every building along the harbor.

An antique store window is fun to browse, even when the shop’s closed.

Remarkably, the city rebounded quickly, with most of the Water Street buildings completed and reopened within the next year or two – many of them designed by the same architect and resulting in a visual unity for the five-block stretch.

Today the entire downtown district is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Still, here’s what we have. Put another way, every city needs a center, and a shopping mall just ain’t the answer.

The big challenge, of course, is finding the right mix of business and residence to keep it vibrant. Eastport’s off-season populace falls short of what’s needed but just may be changing in the aftermath of Covid-19.
We have art galleries, thank you.

A downtown is more than a place to shop, for one thing, though that helps. It should be pedestrian friendly, with places to stop and sit and meet folks and chat or maybe just stroll afterhours. Cafes, restaurants, and pubs help, too. A post office and banks as well. Throw in a few theaters, nightspots, galleries, churches. Then offices, hair stylists and barbers, upstairs residences, even a hotel or more.

A tucked-in amphitheater overlooking the harbor actually has concerts in the summer. It also provides one more place to simply sit and relax.
The street’s not one-way but should be, if we could only conveniently connect it as an easy round-trip..

Tell us something that makes your community special. Where would you take us if we visit?

These stones speak

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Say what you will, the Chamber of Commerce lists the Hillside Cemetery as a thing for visitors to do here.

It’s unlike other celebrated burying grounds across New England I know of. There are no Colonial three-bump gray slate stones, the ones with the famed death angel heads, for one thing.

This one is newer, meaning mostly 1800s and Victorian, when the town thrived. Yet many of the inscriptions, in softer stone, have weathered to illegibility.

Many of them lean precariously or have toppled over, giving the site a spooky feel. Or at least neglected, even though it’s mowed regularly. The sandy soil itself is anything but level, instead mounded over many of the family plots.

Yet I keep going back, often reading between the lines.

Quite a flourish

Many of the men and women died young, along with a large percentage of children.

Young Sammy

Many of the stones tell of birth origins elsewhere in Maine or even New Hampshire and Massachusetts, as well as a few defiantly proclaiming “born in Ireland.”

A toppled memorial.

Many of the names begin with “Capt.,” sometimes followed with “lost at sea,” which is also found on other stones of first mates or sailors. Others tell of falling in Civil War action – many New England towns suffered heavy tolls.

Some of these markers were erected as memorials, with no bodies buried below.

Fittingly, in places as I walk, views of the ocean and islands in the distance open below me.