LEWISTON — There was one safe haven for all of Lewiston-Auburn’s discarded relics — Bates Mill Building No. 5.

Rachel Desgrosseilliers of Museum L-A said she’s taken full advantage of the wide open space beneath the building’s saw-toothed roof.

There are old looms there, spools, beams and even a fringing machine from the Bates Manufacturing operation. There are shoe forms and work stations from the Hill Mill and even the ticket booth, some seats, the marquee and part of the balcony from the old Empire Theater.

But now that the city is preparing to tear the building down, Desgrosseilliers and Museum L-A are scrambling to save as much as they can.

“We need boxes, lots and lots of recyclable boxes,” she said. “We need pallets, and we need volunteers to help pack things up. And we need a forklift operator.”

City officials and representatives from North American Site Developers were touring the building Friday. They plan to begin tearing the building down early in March, using loaders and cranes to pick the the walls apart piece by piece. They’re supposed to begin on the Main Street side and work their way south

They’ll stop just before they reach a hydroelectric power-generating station just below the last two saw-toothed peaks, building a wall there to seal in that facility and the floor above it.

Desgrosseilliers said the museum is being allowed to move most of the unused artifacts to the space above that power station.

“We have two weeks, and a lot of things to move,” she said. “We have a pretty good action plan, but I don’t know how we’ll get it all done. But we’ve been under the gun before. If we have to just put on our jeans and work, that’s what we’ll do.

There’s a lot of stuff, boxes of manufacturing artifacts and supplies. There’s an entire vault full of Bates Manufacturing business records that will have to be boxed and moved upstairs.

Then there are old machines, too — too big to be moved by hand.

“But in some cases these are the only pieces like them we have left,” she said. “That’s why we have a forklift coming in next week. But we don’t have a driver. We need a volunteer that can do that.”

The collections committee came through the building a few weeks ago, reviewing and vetting all of the artifacts still there.

A volunteer from the Maine Heritage Weavers Association is coming in next week to build one working loom out of the four partial machines in the building. That working loom will be saved; the rest won’t.

“Eventually, we have plans to move to a new museum, but that’s three years from now,” Desgrosseilliers said. 

[email protected]