When Central Maine Healthcare announced last week that it was buying the former St. Joseph’s Church to turn it into a parking lot, it showed how little it really cares about the social health of a community which patronizes its services and contributes heavily to its coffers.

In corporate doublespeak worthy of a Dilbert cartoon character, Chuck Gill, CMH’s vice-president for public affairs, said the health care group planned to be respectful of the church’s history, probably by installing a commemorative marker on the site.

Respect is not the way I’d characterize the demolition of one of Lewiston’s most important historic sites and architectural gems.

Historic landmarks like St. Joseph’s are part of the social fabric of this community. They’re the visible links between its past and present, between tradition and the march of progress. They can be a point of pride, a magnet for tourism, a teaching tool, glue for inter-generational bonding, and an eye-catching delight.

Most communities have nondescript modern shopping malls, glass-fronted office buildings, suburban housing tracts and garden-apartment complexes. There are few, however, that can boast of a church that is more than a century old and features a soaring steeple, Gothic Revival façade and stained glass windows– in short, a building reminiscent of those found in Europe’s picturesque older cities.

St. Joseph’s also stands out as a significant symbol. It reminds us of an important act of religious tolerance in Lewiston’s early history.

The Franklin Company — a Boston-based water-power and real-estate business concern that planned and developed much of Lewiston’s riverfront and downtown in the 19th century — owned a prime building site on the corner of Bates and Main Streets. Infected by the anti-Catholic, anti-Irish “Know-Nothing” sentiment that grew out of mass Irish immigration starting in the 1840s, the company’s directors stubbornly refused to sell the lot for the erection of a Catholic church. (Yes, 21st century Somalis are not the first immigrants to have encountered prejudice upon arriving here).

But Irish-Catholic immigrants formed an important part of the work force in the textile mills which were owned and operated by the Franklin Company’s directors, and they ardently desired a permanent place of worship. Albert Kelsey, the company’s local agent, hoodwinked the directors by slipping a deed of sale to the church into a bunch of routine papers for their signature. The deed was signed and the land duly transferred.

In 1864, the cornerstone of St. Joseph’s was laid.

Not every old building can be saved from fire or the wrecking ball, but a vigorous effort should be made to preserve the important ones. CMH has the resources and know-how to preserve and find a new purpose for St. Joseph’s, just as it did with the former Knapp Shoe Company factory on Lowell Street.

If CMH needs 50 or 60 more parking spaces, it can build another parking deck on one of the lots behind its Central Maine Medical Center complex. Besides CMH has already sacrificed one historic church building for the sake of expanding the hospital campus — a small, quaint stone Lutheran edifice that formerly stood on Main Street. It shouldn’t give itself dispensation to eliminate a second.

What use would an old church be to a health-care conglomerate? Well, CMH hosts a number of conferences and events (such as the Dempsey Challenge) for public relations, fund-raising and educational purposes.

A renovated church building would be a great venue for it to stage large meetings, lectures and performances. (For example, Handel’s “Messiah” was performed there by the Maine Music Society and Androscoggin Valley Community Orchestra during several Christmas seasons before the church closed its doors). The rectory could accommodate a museum exhibit paying tribute to Central Maine Medical Center’s (formerly Central Maine General Hospital’s) contribution to this community’s health since 1891 or perhaps provide smaller meeting spaces for more intimate gatherings.

I doubt that St. Joseph’s has fallen into such a state of disrepair, as CMH suggests, that it is beyond salvaging. Its renovation would undeniably be expensive, but expense has never stopped CMH from pursuing its mania for building before.

At some point, Lewiston government and business leaders, including CMH, will catch onto the importance of historic preservation, but by then it may be too late.

Just in the past two decades, Lewiston has lost a large chunk of its historic building stock to fire and demolition, including the Libbey and Cowan Mills, the Continental Mill cupola, the Bates Mill superintendent’s office, the Bergen Block, the Empire Theater and the United Baptist Church. Bates Mill 5 has been living on borrowed time for years, and St. Patrick’s Church is unoccupied and in danger of suffering the same fate as St. Joseph’s.

Ironically, the wholesale destruction of historic landmarks is taking place just as Lewiston’s downtown is starting to show signs of life again and becoming a place where locals not only go to work but where they choose to live and recreate. However, the downtown they’re returning to will have little distinctive to offer, unless historic preservation becomes a higher priority for the community.

In order for Lewiston to have a brighter future, it will have to learn to respect its past.

Elliott L. Epstein,a local attorney, is founder of Museum L-A and 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. He may be reached at epsteinel@yahoo.com.

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