At the May 18th, 1931, meeting of the Camden Board of Selectmen, a letter was read that had come from the woman who donated most of the land for Camden’s library and adjacent park. The minutes from the meeting include only these words: “Letter from Mrs. Bok regarding building over river, read.” Mary Louise Curtis Bok hired and worked closely with the famed Olmsted Brothers to do the design work for this and multiple other locations around Camden and Rockport.
I always wondered. Did she want to build something over the river? Did she want to improve the buildings already there? Something else? I filed it away for a time when I would have more context, but anyone reading those minutes at the time would have had a pretty good idea. Now that the Camden Herald has digitized so much of their archive (actually credit goes to the Camden Public Library, not the newspaper), it’s clear Mrs. Bok was not a fan of allowing the river to be hidden under buildings.
The discussion had been going on for a few years, ultimately prompting a Camden Herald Editorial in the August 23rd 1928 edition in response to a presentation given by Edward Bok (the husband of Mrs. Bok) and Dr. Charles Codman (think, Codman Island on Megunticook Lake) which encouraged the townspeople to value the fact that in Camden we “have the greatest gifts of nature” but have allowed “a beautiful mountain stream, flowing right through the very heart of the town to become a foul cesspool, hidden from view by a few buildings.”
The editors of the paper agreed:
“Dr. Charles Codman, at a recent Board of Trade meeting, pointed out the fact that the river flowing through the town as it does, is not a sanitary or desirable thing. Moreover, we are wondering whether it is lawful for any town to allow the placing of buildings on spiles over a public stream in such a manner as to clog the stream, catch waste and sewage, and hold it. A few years ago, we had a heavy flood and the first place that clogged and gave rise to serious danger was the main Street bridge with the buildings across it.”
They were referring to the devastating rain storm of 1922 which swept at least one Main Street building and many bridges into the river. Dean’s stable — which used to be sandwiched in between the House of Logan and the Leather Bench — gave way, drowning one horse and nearly the rest of them. Most of the Main Street businesses were flooded and the recovery effort required the cutting open of the bridge on Main Street where debris was trapped.
As Mrs. Bok worked with the Olmsted Brothers to design Harbor Park, she slowly removed every building existing on the parcels she owned, but the park design also required working around private property, including the dam. At that time, what we know as Montgomery Dam was all part of a larger parcel that included most of the buildings on Main Street. Over time, the owner of that parcel had leased out space to proprietors of businesses that wanted to perch their buildings over top of the river to gain store frontage on Main Street.
The 1912 edition of the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps shows multiple buildings in Harbor Park that have since been demolished, and three fewer buildings over the river on the harbor side than there are today.
Eventually, each of these new buildings became separate parcels.
But before that, on June 23rd, 1931, a special town meeting was held at the Engine Hall “for the purpose of granting authority to the Board of Selectmen to invoke condemnation proceedings with regard to certain wooden buildings now located on the Main Street bridge.” The paper reported that the meeting “was well attended by a representative group of citizens… The vote was unanimous, there being no dissenting voice raised.”
On July 1, 1931, the municipal officers of Camden gave notice of their intention to take, “for public park purposes”, the land over which was situated the Stratton fish market and the Drinkwater Garage. But it wasn’t all about Mrs. Bok and her vision for restoring the view of the harbor from Main Street. Plans were underway for replacement of the Main Street bridge — then owned by the county — and the Town had been told that work could not proceed until the buildings were removed.
August 1931, Mrs. Bok stated she hoped that someday the buildings which now rested directly over the falls on Main Street, hiding their beauty, would be removed, and a new artistic bridge erected on Main Street. In the same issue of the Camden Herald, the editors opined over “what a treat it was to hear from Mrs. Edward Bok herself” on the project underway at the Camden Public Library lot and that “many a rumor was put to rest by Mrs. Bok’s keen and masterly appreciation of the fine points of the scheme from the architectural and community standpoint.”
They went on saying “we agree with many of the suggestions that Mrs. Bok set forth, namely — the removal of the buildings from over the stream:—the diversion of waste, etc., into direct sewer lines to the harbor — a new bridge over the stream that shall be a thing of beauty for Camden. We hope that these suggestions will come to pass.”
It’s not clear what happened next, but it appears that compromises were made on the bridge design, and the buildings were allowed to stay. The compromise has involved a delicate balancing act where the water level is raised to improve aesthetics and then lowered as needed to work on the buildings and bridge. The Megunticook River is visible from only one spot on Main Street and so it’s easy to lose perspective of its course as it disappears beneath a labyrinth of bridge piers and building supports before re-emerging on the other side of the Smiling Cow (the former Drinkwater Garage).
The way the buildings and the bridge are designed requires that the water be lowered in order to perform a variety of maintenance tasks. When the flow is at low to moderate levels in the river, the pool underneath the Camden Deli can be drained by opening up the gate on the Montgomery Dam and letting water out the sluiceway into the harbor.
During the May 1st storm, logs and debris got caught in the bridge and the buildings, and had it been worse, we may have gotten a taste of what they saw in 1922. One of the purposes of the early dams was to help float logs over long distances, and the Montgomery Dam in the closed position facilitates floating of debris, which then has to pass through narrow openings of the support systems for the bridge and buildings. This is one of the reasons why modern bridges give rivers more room with wider spans and no center pier if possible.
Luckily, a few days after the storm, the pool under the bridge and buildings could be drained in order to make it possible for MDOT to pull things out with a boom truck. The same thing happens when one of the building owners needs to paint, fix their footings, or make other improvements. Sometimes, additional water must be held back from the lake in order to make this possible.
Unfortunately, draining the pool reveals a scene that is cringeworthy under the bridge and buildings. A derelict fuel tank, impounded sediment, hanging wires, fallen plumbing, sunken timber and collapsed piers. It’s not clear who is responsible for all the stuff, but everyone usually agrees it looks awful enough that they request to fill the pool again as quickly as possible. Out of sight out of mind.
Almost 100 years after Mary Louise Curtis Bok proposed a more aesthetically pleasing bridge on Main Street, we are no longer generating power at the site, but we are still treating this section of the river more like a canal than a beautiful mountain stream. No matter what happens with the dam, we can't put off cleaning up the mess underneath forever.
Communities are wrestling everywhere with the collective responsibility to clean up their waterbodies and remove debris to prevent flooding. Luckily, we are at an unprecedented moment where federal funds are available to improve all of it and the funds can even be used to help improve the support structures under the buildings so they are resilient and aesthetically pleasing.
I am so curious as to what Mrs. Bok would have envisioned for a bridge on Main Street now that it is once again due for replacement. Was she imagining something like what we have on Knowlton Street or near Megunticook Market or would it have been more like the arched granite of some of the other Olmsted parks?
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