Bath

Approaching Bath from the south, Route 1 becomes a tunnel of fast-food restaurants, chain-link fencing and dirty snowbanks that offers little indication one is passing through a community that has been nationally recognized for its historic preservation efforts. As this small city beside the Kennebec River continues to collect honors from national preservation groups, however, more people are likely to detour from the highway to see for themselves the architectural wealth and vibrant downtown that account for these awards. Last week Bath became one of a dozen communities from Key West, Fla., to Bisbee, Ariz., named as America's Distinctive Destinations by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The business of Bath has always been shipbuilding, a 400-year-old tradition that continues today with the construction of Navy warships at Bath Iron Works. Though recent news from the Navy has cast uncertainty over BIW's future, the industry long ago left an indelible mark on the city in the form of varied and elegant architecture.

Bath's historic buildings are closely tied to the wealth and worldly outlook of those who made fortunes building sailing vessels on the banks of the Kennebec and sending Bath-built ships around the globe in the 19th-century sea trade.

More recently, through preserving and documenting its heritage, Bath hasmade something of a cottage industry of history. It is this high regard for the past that many local business people say has helped the city keep its downtown alive with an array of locally owned stores, from a drugstore that delivers to an auto parts shop and a chocolatier.

Bath has not always been so committed to historic architecture. In the late 1960s, a grocery store and two department stores left downtown for strip malls on the outskirts of the city. With a downtown district that was sliding into disuse and disrepair, the city held a referendum on whether to compete with the strip malls by emulating them through a program of urban renewal, popular at the time.

"They wanted to tear down these buildings and put up those flat-top buildings they have everywhere outside of Maine," said Barbara Boyland, part owner of a downtown antique store housed in an 1840 brick building on Front Street.

Residents rejected the urban renewal plan. Instead of tearing down their historic infrastructure, they decided to invest in it by burying utility lines and installing brick sidewalks and iron street lamps. A few years later, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to preserving historic buildings, Sagadahoc Preservation Inc., formed to save the 160-year-old Winter Street Church at the edge of Bath's City Park from demolition. In 1977, Bath earned a Presidential Award from the National Trust for these early preservation efforts.

SPI has helped preserve several historic buildings in Bath, most of which can be seen in an hour's walk through the historic district, encompassing the downtown and residential neighborhood along north Washington Street where those with the greatest share of success in the shipbuilding industry made their homes.

No two homes are alike in this neighborhood of stately houses, and most are still occupied by single families. The predominant architectural style is Greek Revival, a combination of classic lines and temple-like features popular in the mid-19th century during Bath's most prosperous period of shipbuilding.

Two years ago, Sagadahoc Preservation applied for and received a national historic designation for a second region on the south side of the city where the houses are smaller but architecturally similar to those on the north side. This neighborhood was traditionally where the coopers, shipwrights, ironworkers and other craftsmen involved in the shipbuilding industry lived.

A walking tour of Bath's notable architecture might begin with City Hall on the hilltop at Front and Centre streets. Fronted with a central bay that juts out toward the street like a ship's bow, it is a commanding structure although not especially old, having been built in 1928 with funds from Bath benefactor George Davenport.

A bell cast by Paul Revere in 1805 occupies the belfry. Inside the building, copies of the Bath Daily Times from 50 and 100 years ago to the day are on display. City Clerk Mary White said many people make a daily ritual of coming in to read the newspapers, some of which feature advertisements from businesses still operating in downtown Bath. Many summer visitors interested in tracing family histories come to mine the city's records.

"We call it genealogy season, not tourist season," White said.

A block south on Front Street, the Italianate stone Custom House was built in 1858 at a time when ships were sailing to and from Bath from all over the world. Bath was the fifth-busiest seaport in the United States in the early 19th century before being superceded by larger cities to the south. North of downtown, the Patten Free Library is a Romanesque Revival style building built in 1890. The collection contains the personal library of William King, Maine's first governor, including volumes King received from Thomas Jefferson. Upstairs, the history room is a favorite haunt of genealogists and people interested in architectural history. The library's periodical room is also the temporary home of The Spirit of the Sea, a recently restored sculpture by William Zorach that will return to a pond in Bath's City Park in the spring. Across City Park from the library, the 1843 Winter Street Church has the tall, pointy lines of a Gothic Revival structure. The elegant white church with 15 spires was slated to be demolished and replaced with an apartment building before Sagadahoc Preservation bought it in 1971. The church housed part of the Maine Maritime Museum until the museum moved to its present location at the south end of Washington Street in 1987. The preservation group is working to refurbish the church rectory. The Chocolate Church, built on Washington Street in 1847, is another Gothic Revival building saved from demolition by Sagadahoc Preservation in 1971. Both churches came up for sale when the two parishes merged and built a new church elsewhere. The Chocolate Church was reinvented as a year-round arts center. A few blocks South of Route 1, the Maine Children's Home has the mansard roof characteristic of Second Empire-style structures and was built in 1866 around an earlier 1800 building. Constructed as a home for children orphaned by the Civil War, it was a children's home until 1996 and is now a private residence. One mile south of the city center, the Maine Maritime Museum occupies the former William Donnell and Percy and Small shipyards, where wooden sailing vessels were constructed until the early 20th century. The largest wooden sailing ship ever built, the six-masted Wyoming, was launched here in 1909. The museum hopes to erect an outdoor sculpture this year in the form of the ship's 330-foot hull.

Originally published Sunday, March 6, 2005
Staff Writer Seth Harkness can be contacted at 282-8225 or at sharkness@pressherald.com

More about Bath >