Odd Fellows Building getting facelift

NORWAY — Work on the facade of the Odd Fellows Building is underway.

Building owner Harvey Solomon said the work will include taking down the wooden overhang and changing all the glass windows in the front.

Workers completed part of the job Wednesday with the removal of the overhang exposing a steel girder with decorative medallions.

Solomon and his wife, Dawn, of New Horizon Capital Investment in Norway, purchased the vacant and gutted building last year for $63,500 from mortgage-holder Northeast Bank in Lewiston.

Solomon’s work crew had been working on the infrastructure when a fire last year, which gutted a Cottage Street apartment Solomon owns, and problems with the adjacent Opera House put a temporary hold on the interior work at the downtown building.

“We’re holding off on that. We’re a little bit nervous,” said Solomon of putting any more money into the building’s interior while the fate of the adjacent Opera House remains uncertain. The back wall of the structure has been stabilized, he said.

The basement and first floor of the Odd Fellows Building was built sometime after the great fire in downtown Norway, which destroyed some 70 buildings in May of 1894.

About three months after the fire, members of the International Order of Odd Fellows Lodge Number 16 purchased a lot owned by Whitcomb & Oxnard. On it, they planned to build a three-story, brick building, according to reports in the now defunct Oxford Democrat newspaper.

Seventeen years later, in February of 1911, the second and third floors were completed, housing a courtroom, the telephone company, the superintendent of school’s administrative office on the second floor and the IOOF Lodge and banquet hall on the third floor.

Initially only one additional story and not two were going to be added in 1910 because of the unstable foundation on the brook side of the building, according to newspaper accounts. But after strengthening the southeast corner, it was decided that a third story could be built.

Workers at the building Wednesday said they are not sure if the facade will have one or two entrances, but they are working off several early 20th century photographs of the building to determine how the renovation will take place.

The structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is part of the historic downtown district. The interior was gutted during earlier renovations but some of the original fixtures such as the ornate steel ceiling and lighting fixtures remain.

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Project Manager Cimeron Colby points to the Odd Fellows Building on Wednesday as he and Sonny Heath look at early 20th century photographs of the building where they are reconstructing the facade to its original appearance.

Brian Dennison drills into the brick facade of the Odd Fellows Building where he took down the wooden overhang, which has been on the building for decades.

This early 20th Century photograph of the Odd Fellows Building and a bustling downtown business district is one of the photos that workers are using to recreate the facade.

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