Photo courtesy of Barbara Sanborn
Photo courtesy of Barbara Sanborn
At Your Service
circa 1922, Bangor
Before Holiday Inn and Motel 6 began teasing travelers with cheap rooms and continental breakfasts, urban hotels kept the light on for tourists and transients. Downtowns were defined by such sparkling landmarks as the Augusta House, Lewiston’s Atwood Hotel, Brunswick’s Tontine, the Lancey House in Pittsfield, and Portland’s palatial Eastland.
The servants in this circa 1922 photo worked, and lived, at the Bangor House. Opened on Christmas Eve 1834, the five-story landmark soon became a premier New England destination, taking its place alongside the Penobscot Exchange Hotel.
The hotel’s clean rooms were only one reason why it prospered. The roast duck and prime rib were sumptuous, as Donald Petrie—seated front, second from the left—along with other hotel servants, knew well. Born in North Sullivan in 1903, Petrie went to work in Bar Harbor as a teenager, only to spend his days cleaning hotel spittoons. He later moved to Bangor where he worked from about 1920 to 1924. His daughter, Barbara Sanborn of Brewer, recalls the Chapman family promoting him from bellboy to headwaiter, and possibly even to maitre d’.
Hotels revolutionized American cities in the 19th century, bringing together strangers and locals, and allowing a new level of cultural and economic exchange. First-class accommodations also attracted highbrow guests. In its heyday, the Bangor House hosted celebrities from President Taft to actress Bette Davis. Even the finest Maine hotels could have their unseemly side, tolerating prostitution and, often, the exclusion of blacks and Jews. A landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling desegregated public accommodations.
The Bangor House remains a fixture of the city’s downtown, though it no longer needs a maitre d’: It was reconfigured into low-income housing in the late 1970s.
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To supply these resorts, using those in the RANGELEY lakes as an example, entrepreneurs created competiting RR lines that connected with steam ship lines. They were able to provide overnight shipments from Boston Produce markets to Chesunkcook and other lakes…and all this in the late 1800′s . We stayed at BEMIS LANDING and discovered a ‘dump’ under low water and started excavating a trove of thrown away crystal ware…a cut glass bottle stopper, a pipe stem made in Ireland, etc. Instead of what appeared to be a d empty site came to life at the library, when we read of the hotel that flourished there housing ‘sports’ who arrived on the RR; and then took steamships up Mooselook. lake and stagecoach even further. The RR went over the hill to Rangeley Lake…and and menus were lavish!
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