There is no better way to see America than on foot. And there is no better way to appreciate what you are looking at than with a walking tour. Whether you are preparing for a road trip or just out to look at your own town in a new way, a self-guided walking tour is ready to explore when you are.
Each walking tour describes historical and architectural landmarks and provides pictures to help out when those pesky street addresses are missing. A quick primer on identifying architectural styles seen on North American streets is included.
If anyone could ever wax poetic, it was Henry David Thoreau. Here is what the legendary wordsmith jotted down on one of his not infrequent visits to Bangor in the mid-1800s: “There stands the city of Bangor, with a population of twelve thousand, like a star on the edge of night, still hewing at the forests of which it is built, already overflowing with the luxuries and refinement of Europe, and sending its vessels to Spain, to England, and the West Indies for its groceries.”
New England never experienced too many boomtowns but Bangor was one. Sitting at the head of navigation on the Penobscot River (explorer Samuel de Champlain had called the river “handsome and agreeable” when he poked around the Maine coast in 1604) and possessing a natural harbor deep enough to comfortably handle oceangoing ships, Bangor was ideally situated to exploit the vast white pine forests that stretched unbroken between the town and Canada. The first sawmill was set up when the place was still called Kenduskeag Plantation in 1772. The name Bangor would come - so the most popular story goes - two decades later when the Reverend Seth Noble was sent to the Massachusetts General Court to incorporate the name “Sunbury.” But the good parson could not get his favorite Welsh ditty “Bangor” out of his head and blurted the hymn name out at the moment of truth.
A few decades down the line Bangor was incorporated as a city in 1834 and there were more than 300 sawmills humming. Bridges weren’t necessary to cross the Penobscot, you could just hop across on the traffic jam of logs. Bangor held the undisputed championship belt of “Lumber Capital of the World” and would continue to do so until the network of railroads opened up the hardwood forests of Central Pennsylvania and the Upper Great Lakes and the Pacific Northwest in the 1880s.
The lumber barons used their profits on opulent mansions and there was plenty of money for impressive civic projects. In many ways the Bangor streetscape could easily be mistaken for a city many times its size. Architects from Boston and New York City were regular arrivals in town. And then came April 30, 1911. Hay bales caught fire in a dockside warehouse and before the flames could be extinguished half of the city’s 100 downtown blocks had perished. It was the last major fire in Maine’s history and considered to be the last massive urban fire in the United States. Luckily, only two people died.
But Bangor shook off the conflagration like so many snow flakes on the shoulder. Rebuilding was so rapid that the Bangor Daily News editorialized two years later, “Our crooked streets have been made straight; our narrow streets have been made wider; our busiest streets have been newly paved with more durable material; our streets have been fitted for automobile traffic, and most wonderful of all, towering business blocks of brick, iron and concrete have sprung up along most of the former business thoroughfares.” Bangor suddenly possessed Maine’s first completely 20th century streetscape.
Maybe the recovery from destruction emboldened future generations in Bangor. The city was very aggressive with urban renewal projects later in that 20th century, much to its detriment. To explore how those streets look in yet another century we will begin our investigations at one building that has seen it all, a place where Thoreau would stay when he was marveling at the city...
Each walking tour describes historical and architectural landmarks and provides pictures to help out when those pesky street addresses are missing. A quick primer on identifying architectural styles seen on North American streets is included.
If anyone could ever wax poetic, it was Henry David Thoreau. Here is what the legendary wordsmith jotted down on one of his not infrequent visits to Bangor in the mid-1800s: “There stands the city of Bangor, with a population of twelve thousand, like a star on the edge of night, still hewing at the forests of which it is built, already overflowing with the luxuries and refinement of Europe, and sending its vessels to Spain, to England, and the West Indies for its groceries.”
New England never experienced too many boomtowns but Bangor was one. Sitting at the head of navigation on the Penobscot River (explorer Samuel de Champlain had called the river “handsome and agreeable” when he poked around the Maine coast in 1604) and possessing a natural harbor deep enough to comfortably handle oceangoing ships, Bangor was ideally situated to exploit the vast white pine forests that stretched unbroken between the town and Canada. The first sawmill was set up when the place was still called Kenduskeag Plantation in 1772. The name Bangor would come - so the most popular story goes - two decades later when the Reverend Seth Noble was sent to the Massachusetts General Court to incorporate the name “Sunbury.” But the good parson could not get his favorite Welsh ditty “Bangor” out of his head and blurted the hymn name out at the moment of truth.
A few decades down the line Bangor was incorporated as a city in 1834 and there were more than 300 sawmills humming. Bridges weren’t necessary to cross the Penobscot, you could just hop across on the traffic jam of logs. Bangor held the undisputed championship belt of “Lumber Capital of the World” and would continue to do so until the network of railroads opened up the hardwood forests of Central Pennsylvania and the Upper Great Lakes and the Pacific Northwest in the 1880s.
The lumber barons used their profits on opulent mansions and there was plenty of money for impressive civic projects. In many ways the Bangor streetscape could easily be mistaken for a city many times its size. Architects from Boston and New York City were regular arrivals in town. And then came April 30, 1911. Hay bales caught fire in a dockside warehouse and before the flames could be extinguished half of the city’s 100 downtown blocks had perished. It was the last major fire in Maine’s history and considered to be the last massive urban fire in the United States. Luckily, only two people died.
But Bangor shook off the conflagration like so many snow flakes on the shoulder. Rebuilding was so rapid that the Bangor Daily News editorialized two years later, “Our crooked streets have been made straight; our narrow streets have been made wider; our busiest streets have been newly paved with more durable material; our streets have been fitted for automobile traffic, and most wonderful of all, towering business blocks of brick, iron and concrete have sprung up along most of the former business thoroughfares.” Bangor suddenly possessed Maine’s first completely 20th century streetscape.
Maybe the recovery from destruction emboldened future generations in Bangor. The city was very aggressive with urban renewal projects later in that 20th century, much to its detriment. To explore how those streets look in yet another century we will begin our investigations at one building that has seen it all, a place where Thoreau would stay when he was marveling at the city...
