February 5, 2007
Same as it ever was | Historic preservation worked for Hallowell — and it can work for your town, too
By Chris Churchill
Visit downtown Hallowell on a Friday night, and you'll find bars and restaurants that are packed, live music blaring inside. Show up on a warm Saturday afternoon, and you'll encounter legions of shoppers strolling along Water Street, coffee cups in hand, as the Kennebec River rolls by.
Hallowell, it's universally agreed, is central Maine's most happening downtown, and it's arguably the state's liveliest year-round downtown outside of Portland. But it wasn't always so.
Four decades back, the prospects for downtown Hallowell seemed grim. Vacant storefronts were abundant, as retail had departed for shopping centers in nearby Augusta. Many of the district's 18th and 19th century buildings were in disrepair. Most downtown apartments were, at best, tenements. "When I moved here," says Shirley McKay, who came to Hallowell in 1964, "the waterfront was nothing but rats and garbage."
Some at the time thought the city's old buildings had little remaining value. The Maine Department of Transportation even pushed a plan, backed by Hallowell's mayor at the time, that would have demolished many of the buildings on the eastern side of Water Street and turned the city's main street into a four-lane highway to the Statehouse.
But in the face of decline and urban renewal threats, this old river city became one of the first cities in Maine to embrace historic preservation. Volunteers completed a survey of Hallowell's large stock of historic structures. They formed in 1969 a nonprofit, Row House Inc., dedicated to restoring and preserving threatened structures. They applied for ˆ and received ˆ Maine's first federal grant under the National Historic Preservation Act.
To combat the DOT scheme, Row House held a two-mile-long protest march. Carrying placards and wearing "Save Hallowell" buttons, they marched from downtown Hallowell to the capitol. The death knell to the department's plan, however, apparently was the placement of downtown Hallowell and surrounding blocks on the National Register of Historic Places, after locals asked for the designation, and the creation of a local historic preservation ordinance that gave protections to the area. "That prevented the highway project from occurring," says Earle Shuttleworth, director of the Maine State Historic Preservation Commission. "It would have had to go through an arduous review, and it was decided that it wasn't worth pursuing."
The downtown prosperity found in Hallowell today, of course, would have been impossible had the state built that highway. "That would have just blown us away," says Sam Webber, who has lived in the city since 1941. "We'd have been like Manchester ˆ a wide place in the road."
The 'it' factor
With about 2,500 residents, Hallowell is nearly the smallest city in Maine. (Only the city of Eastport, with 1,600 residents, is smaller.) But for a few blocks in and around downtown, at least, Hallowell is decidedly urban. Three- and four-story buildings loom over narrow brick sidewalks. Many of the buildings include occupied apartments on the upper floors, and the area has several large apartment buildings, including the five-story Cotton Mill building, built as a factory in 1866, and the Worster House, constructed in 1832 as a grand hotel and visited in later years by literary luminaries like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Venture away from downtown, up a steep hill and away from the Kennebec River, and apartment buildings give way to single-family homes, churches and historic mansions built for ˆ and still occupied by ˆ some of the Augusta area's wealthiest residents.
The city has become popular with the young, and among state government workers. Property values here are relatively high, at least by central Maine standards. Area real estate agents say homes in Hallowell are worth about 20% more than similar sized homes in other area towns. And, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, the average house value in Hallowell was $92,000 ˆ about 15% higher than in Augusta and about 20% higher than in nearby Gardiner.
"In my opinion," says Realtor Jim Pepin of Sprague and Curtis Real Estate in Augusta, "Hallowell has that 'it.' People definitely want to be there." And a leading reason they want to live there, he adds, is the city's large set of preserved buildings.
Part of that value seems to come from the security of knowing that the way the city looks today is likely how it will look in the future. While some homeowners in nearby Augusta in recent years have waged (mostly losing) battles against large commercial projects, their counterparts in Hallowell have been able to rest easy. The historic preservation rules, says Shuttleworth, encourage investment and "create an undercurrent of stability. People in the 1970s felt that the community was committed to coming back."
Which isn't to say there haven't been battles in Hallowell. Anyone active in the city's historic preservation circles can remember controversies. In the 1970s, for example, there was debate over the city's decision to deny a property owner's plan to install solar panels. And in the 1980s, there was significant heat when Irving Oil tried to open a brightly lit gas station on Water Street. The city denied that plan, too. "We didn't want a modern filling station in the middle of the historic district," says Webber, who serves as the city's historian. "And they wanted to be open 24 hours a day."
Preservation model
The city's historic preservation ordinance attempts to curb external changes to buildings within the district, but it's flexible and gives the planning board leeway. For example, in 2005, the board, after much debate, granted a Water Street bar permission to replace its historic doors with some more modern ˆ and energy efficient ˆ entrances. "People still talk about that," says Jerry Mahoney. "There were differences of opinion in terms of what is appropriate and what isn't. It can be a tough ordinance to work with."
Though there are none now within its borders, the city might not reject a fast-food restaurant or chain store, but would likely try to force the chain to conform to its historic look ˆ much like a certain southern Maine retail Mecca has done. "If it came to that," says Mahoney, "I'm certain Hallowell would treat it the same way Freeport treated its development. We're going to be extremely careful in how any development impacts the rest of the historic district."
There are efforts underway to strengthen Hallowell's preservation ordinance. Mahoney notes that while the ordinance does not allow property owners to make external changes without review, it does nothing to prevent a building within the historic district from falling into disrepair. "You can let a building fall down through lack of maintenance," he says. "As long as you don't do any exterior modification, you don't fall within the regulations of the historic district ordinance."
Disrepair is an issue now with a large mansion built in 1875 and once the home of former Gov. Joseph Bodwell. Though its future is up in the air ˆ it's owned by the town ˆ it is a candidate for yet another Hallowell historic preservation effort.
Over the years, those efforts have been numerous. They started with the purchase, restoration and resale in the late 1960s of a string of row houses near downtown by Row House Inc., the project that gave the organization its name. The efforts continued with the successful push in the 1980s to turn an old cotton and shoe mill into housing for the elderly. "That was a very early adaptive reuse of a mill," says Shuttleworth, who lives in nearby Gardiner. "That not only secured a significant historic building, but it also created a large walking community downtown."
More recently, there's been a lengthy and expensive project to restore City Hall. In the early 1990s, the building was crumbling and some pushed for the construction of a new municipal complex. But in 1996, the city initiated a $1 million restoration that is finally nearing completion.
Such efforts have made the city a model for how preservation can work. "Other cities in the U.S. took what we did," says McKay, an early member of Row House, "and used it when they created their historic districts." And the efforts have formed the bedrock for the city's energetic downtown. "We've seen a real renaissance down there," Shuttleworth says. "It really is a very vital downtown."
Hallowell, it's universally agreed, is central Maine's most happening downtown, and it's arguably the state's liveliest year-round downtown outside of Portland. But it wasn't always so.
Four decades back, the prospects for downtown Hallowell seemed grim. Vacant storefronts were abundant, as retail had departed for shopping centers in nearby Augusta. Many of the district's 18th and 19th century buildings were in disrepair. Most downtown apartments were, at best, tenements. "When I moved here," says Shirley McKay, who came to Hallowell in 1964, "the waterfront was nothing but rats and garbage."
Some at the time thought the city's old buildings had little remaining value. The Maine Department of Transportation even pushed a plan, backed by Hallowell's mayor at the time, that would have demolished many of the buildings on the eastern side of Water Street and turned the city's main street into a four-lane highway to the Statehouse.
But in the face of decline and urban renewal threats, this old river city became one of the first cities in Maine to embrace historic preservation. Volunteers completed a survey of Hallowell's large stock of historic structures. They formed in 1969 a nonprofit, Row House Inc., dedicated to restoring and preserving threatened structures. They applied for ˆ and received ˆ Maine's first federal grant under the National Historic Preservation Act.
To combat the DOT scheme, Row House held a two-mile-long protest march. Carrying placards and wearing "Save Hallowell" buttons, they marched from downtown Hallowell to the capitol. The death knell to the department's plan, however, apparently was the placement of downtown Hallowell and surrounding blocks on the National Register of Historic Places, after locals asked for the designation, and the creation of a local historic preservation ordinance that gave protections to the area. "That prevented the highway project from occurring," says Earle Shuttleworth, director of the Maine State Historic Preservation Commission. "It would have had to go through an arduous review, and it was decided that it wasn't worth pursuing."
The downtown prosperity found in Hallowell today, of course, would have been impossible had the state built that highway. "That would have just blown us away," says Sam Webber, who has lived in the city since 1941. "We'd have been like Manchester ˆ a wide place in the road."
The 'it' factor
With about 2,500 residents, Hallowell is nearly the smallest city in Maine. (Only the city of Eastport, with 1,600 residents, is smaller.) But for a few blocks in and around downtown, at least, Hallowell is decidedly urban. Three- and four-story buildings loom over narrow brick sidewalks. Many of the buildings include occupied apartments on the upper floors, and the area has several large apartment buildings, including the five-story Cotton Mill building, built as a factory in 1866, and the Worster House, constructed in 1832 as a grand hotel and visited in later years by literary luminaries like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Venture away from downtown, up a steep hill and away from the Kennebec River, and apartment buildings give way to single-family homes, churches and historic mansions built for ˆ and still occupied by ˆ some of the Augusta area's wealthiest residents.
The city has become popular with the young, and among state government workers. Property values here are relatively high, at least by central Maine standards. Area real estate agents say homes in Hallowell are worth about 20% more than similar sized homes in other area towns. And, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, the average house value in Hallowell was $92,000 ˆ about 15% higher than in Augusta and about 20% higher than in nearby Gardiner.
"In my opinion," says Realtor Jim Pepin of Sprague and Curtis Real Estate in Augusta, "Hallowell has that 'it.' People definitely want to be there." And a leading reason they want to live there, he adds, is the city's large set of preserved buildings.
Part of that value seems to come from the security of knowing that the way the city looks today is likely how it will look in the future. While some homeowners in nearby Augusta in recent years have waged (mostly losing) battles against large commercial projects, their counterparts in Hallowell have been able to rest easy. The historic preservation rules, says Shuttleworth, encourage investment and "create an undercurrent of stability. People in the 1970s felt that the community was committed to coming back."
Which isn't to say there haven't been battles in Hallowell. Anyone active in the city's historic preservation circles can remember controversies. In the 1970s, for example, there was debate over the city's decision to deny a property owner's plan to install solar panels. And in the 1980s, there was significant heat when Irving Oil tried to open a brightly lit gas station on Water Street. The city denied that plan, too. "We didn't want a modern filling station in the middle of the historic district," says Webber, who serves as the city's historian. "And they wanted to be open 24 hours a day."
Preservation model
The city's historic preservation ordinance attempts to curb external changes to buildings within the district, but it's flexible and gives the planning board leeway. For example, in 2005, the board, after much debate, granted a Water Street bar permission to replace its historic doors with some more modern ˆ and energy efficient ˆ entrances. "People still talk about that," says Jerry Mahoney. "There were differences of opinion in terms of what is appropriate and what isn't. It can be a tough ordinance to work with."
Though there are none now within its borders, the city might not reject a fast-food restaurant or chain store, but would likely try to force the chain to conform to its historic look ˆ much like a certain southern Maine retail Mecca has done. "If it came to that," says Mahoney, "I'm certain Hallowell would treat it the same way Freeport treated its development. We're going to be extremely careful in how any development impacts the rest of the historic district."
There are efforts underway to strengthen Hallowell's preservation ordinance. Mahoney notes that while the ordinance does not allow property owners to make external changes without review, it does nothing to prevent a building within the historic district from falling into disrepair. "You can let a building fall down through lack of maintenance," he says. "As long as you don't do any exterior modification, you don't fall within the regulations of the historic district ordinance."
Disrepair is an issue now with a large mansion built in 1875 and once the home of former Gov. Joseph Bodwell. Though its future is up in the air ˆ it's owned by the town ˆ it is a candidate for yet another Hallowell historic preservation effort.
Over the years, those efforts have been numerous. They started with the purchase, restoration and resale in the late 1960s of a string of row houses near downtown by Row House Inc., the project that gave the organization its name. The efforts continued with the successful push in the 1980s to turn an old cotton and shoe mill into housing for the elderly. "That was a very early adaptive reuse of a mill," says Shuttleworth, who lives in nearby Gardiner. "That not only secured a significant historic building, but it also created a large walking community downtown."
More recently, there's been a lengthy and expensive project to restore City Hall. In the early 1990s, the building was crumbling and some pushed for the construction of a new municipal complex. But in 1996, the city initiated a $1 million restoration that is finally nearing completion.
Such efforts have made the city a model for how preservation can work. "Other cities in the U.S. took what we did," says McKay, an early member of Row House, "and used it when they created their historic districts." And the efforts have formed the bedrock for the city's energetic downtown. "We've seen a real renaissance down there," Shuttleworth says. "It really is a very vital downtown."
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