Photos’ cutline: Lisbon Street in Lewiston emerges from a snowstorm in February 1952. Photo courtesy of the Androscoggin Historical Society.

Expressions of pride
Doomed downtown buildings were social, commercial center of Lewiston

At the turn of the 20th century, the three Lisbon Street buildings destroyed in Tuesday’s inferno were the beating heart of Lewiston’s downtown commercial and social scene.

“The buildings were an incubator for social organizations,” said Douglas Hodgkin, a retired Bates College professor and noted Lewiston historian. Social groups such as the Fraternal Order of Eagles, the Young Men’s Christian Association, and the Kora Temple occupied the buildings then.

Each structure was built around 1895, according to Hodgkin, as part of the rapid economic development of Lisbon Street during the city’s booming mill period. Their brickwork and granite facades, now public dangers after the fire, represented the ornateness of the era’s Victorian architecture.

The blocks scheduled for demolition are known as the Cressey, Greely and Kora buildings, after the persons or groups that built them. Hodgkin, despite copious research into Lewiston’s history, has discovered little about David Cressey. Cyrus Greely, however, is quite well-known.

A local contractor and politician, Greely served on the first Lewiston City Council, according to Hodgkin, and participated in the design and construction of Lewiston City Hall.

The Kora Temple sold its building soon after construction, and moved to its current home at Sabattus and Main streets in 1908. In 1912, the temple was purchased by one of Lewiston’s most famous sons, William “Rough” Carrigan, the famed World Series-winning manager of the Boston Red Sox.

Carrigan owned the building until his death in 1969. He managed the Red Sox to its only repeat World Series championships in 1915 and 1916, and was noted for being the catcher of a pretty fair Red Sox pitcher at the time, George Herman Ruth.

He briefly returned to manage the team in the late 1920s, but suffered three consecutive subpar seasons before returning to Lewiston. In his hometown, Carrigan rose to prominence as the president of People’s Savings Bank, which was also on Lisbon Street.

The former temple, as well, housed one of Lewiston’s first motion picture theaters on its upper floors, and the city’s first telephone exchange, according to Hodgkin.

Though prosperity led to the buildings’ construction, the haste in which they were erected may have led to their demise, as builders used common walls to link the downtown business blocks.

On Friday, the City Council authorized the demolition of four buildings relating to Tuesday’s fire, including one undamaged by flames, but weakened by heat. According to Hodgkin, Lisbon Street has seen this happen before, with a fire in one building causing the razing of a neighboring structure.

These brick-and-granite edifices were expressions of their builders – Cressey, Greely, the temple – who stamped their name into their building’s exterior with pride. As long as they stood, the builders would live on with their buildings, Hodgkin remarked.

He described the fire as a tragedy, which would leave a “big hole in the streetscape.”

“We keep losing these buildings to fire, and neglect,” he said. “It’s very discouraging.”