The old Central Block, with Garcelon’s pharmacy on the street level at the corner of Lisbon and Main streets in Lewiston. That’s where a fire started in June 1870 that destroyed the structure, including city offices on the upper floors. Androscoggin Historical Society
LEWISTON — At 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning in June 1870, a blaze broke out in a drug store on the first floor of a huge brick building at the corner of Lisbon and Main streets.
The Central Building had eight stores on its ground floor and housed the city’s government operations upstairs.
It didn’t take long before the fire raged throughout, burning so hot that window glass melted and dripped onto the sidewalk. It broke through the roof as flames consumed the beams and walls inside.
By dawn, the floors had given way and the brick walls tumbled into the street, leaving nothing behind but a smoldering pile that onlookers viewed in stunned amazement.
The Lewiston Evening Journal, whose building stood next door and barely survived, called the scene a picture of perfect desolation.
The city, which lost many of its records, quickly rented new space.
The ruins of the Central Block, which burned on June 12, 1870, gutting eight businesses and the city’s offices upstairs.
But it also raced to construct a new City Hall on a lot the municipality had purchased in 1866 at the corner of Park and Pine streets.
With commendable speed, it was approved, designed and built in time to open before Christmas 1872. less than two years later.
The Gothic-inspired structure of brick and stone, which stretched from Lisbon Street to the park, had a hall inside capable of accommodating 2,200 people. Its council chambers, which relied on gaslight, had velvety walls and bronze radiators.
Inside, it held one of the finest public libraries in the nation.
The Journal called it “one of the finest buildings in New England.”
But it didn’t last.
The city’s first actual City Hall, which opened before Christmas in 1872, lasted only 17 years, destroyed by yet another fire in January 1890. Lewiston Public Library
About 17 years later, on Jan. 7, 1890, a fire began to rage in “an enormous building furnace” that saw flames leap 200 feet in the air, the Journal reported.
“It was a carnival of fire,” the newspaper said.
By the time it was done, the library, most city records and hundreds of prize chickens from across Maine, on hand for a poultry show, were gone.
A vast, sad crowd watched in wonder as the building spires collapsed.
Only four people were happy that day: all prisoners who were in the basement lockup when the blaze began and were freed by the city marshal “and told they needn’t come back.”
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