In the span of one week from late April to early May, three arson fires destroyed nine tenement buildings in downtown Lewiston, displacing their nearly 200 occupants. It was  the worst residential conflagration to hit the Twin Cities since the New Auburn fire of 1935.

This trio of disasters has meant different things to different people.

To those left homeless by the fire, it spelled emotional trauma coupled with a frantic search for new lodgings. To Lewiston Mayor Robert Macdonald, it meant local government should work with private landlords to evict miscreant tenants “we don’t want … in our city.” To code enforcement and planning officials, it highlighted the importance of accelerating Lewiston’s program of razing condemned and vacant buildings and cracking down on code violations in others.

For many local residents, it provided an opportunity to show community solidarity by donating clothing, furniture and appliances to the victims, while for Gov. Paul LePage, this citizen initiative was an encouraging sign that the ethos of private self-help was still alive and well.

For me, the fires conjured up the image of a sledge-hammer blow to the remnants of a neighborhood that once symbolized the vitality of Lewiston’s industrial heritage.

The area east of Kennedy Park, bounded roughly by Bates, Howe, Ash and Maple Streets, contains a substantial concentration of tenements built in the early 1900s, when Lewiston’s textile mills (as well as Auburn’s shoe factories) were booming and employing thousands of laborers, mostly immigrants from French Canada, Ireland, Italy and Eastern Europe. Although never officially designated as such, the “Tenement District” would be an appropriate label for the area.

Like many new industrial cities in New England, Lewiston’s economic prosperity during the period created a housing shortage for workers, a problem which was entrepreneurially solved by the so-called “triple decker” tenement – quick and inexpensive to build and economical in its use of space.

The triple-decker was a three- or four-story, wood-frame building, usually situated on a narrow lot with about 50 feet of street frontage. These structures were typically plain, linear and flat-roofed, though here and there, some sported ornamental flourishes, such as an Italianate cornice, hip roof, stained-glass window, bow front, or entry bracketed by carved decorative overhang. Inside, a single staircase connected the multiple stories, with each floor accommodating one to two apartments.

By today’s standards, the triple-decker would be considered unsafe, not to mention handicapped inaccessible. There was limited egress, no elevator, and no smoke detectors, fire alarms, fire-proof doors or sprinklers. Wooden balloon construction made the entire building a highly flammable flue. Moreover, the tenements were built so close together that a fire that broke out in one could easily jump the gap and spread to others.

For its time, though, the triple-decker was a good solution to the pressing need for shelter. Spacious enough for a family and affordable (provided both parents and their children were wage earners), it was located within easy walking distance of mills, churches, shops and social clubs. It also created a real neighborhood, where residents could live close to, and socialize with, kin, friends and fellow ethnics.

For ambitious immigrants, becoming the proprietor of an owner-occupied tenement was a favored way to climb the ladder to the middle class.

As the local textile and shoe industries began their steady decline in the 1960s and employed fewer and fewer laborers, the tenement district declined as well, becoming less a close-knit blue-collar neighborhood than a blighted ghetto for nonworking transients. Crime, drugs and absentee landlordism became common, and those who were able to do so moved out in favor of suburban tract or public housing.

A series of economic recessions that began in the early 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and most recently in 2007-2008 led to reduced property values, low rents and high vacancies, causing landlords to neglect and even abandon their buildings. Vacant buildings, in turn, became a magnet for theft, vandalism and arson.

The recent fires, therefore, were less the handiwork of evil people (two of the arsonists were only 12 years old) than the product of prolonged economic decay.

In the past two decades, Lewiston’s commercial downtown has tried hard to stage a comeback. There are encouraging signs in the Bates Mill renovation, Lisbon Street building restorations, gateway improvements, trendy new restaurants, Franco-American Heritage Center, Museum LA, and recent City Hall commitment to riverfront development.

If that positive trend continues and if more affluent people choose to live in the urban core (as is happening nationwide), then the area east of Kennedy Park has the potential to become a desirable upscale or mixed neighborhood, with at least some incoming property buyers choosing to restore and beautify aging three-deckers.

If not, then fire and bulldozers will soon decimate or obliterate an important chapter of local history and recite the final requiem for Lewiston’s tenements.

Elliott L. Epstein,a local attorney, is founder of Museum L-Aand an adjunct history instructor at Central Maine Community College. He is the author of “Lucifer’s Child,”a recently published book about the 1984 oven-death murder of Angela Palmer.Hemay be reached [email protected].