During a long and recent period of historic preservation, a trend we are grateful for, much discussion has been evolving and has now emerged about whether a strict adherence to the characteristics of the original is always the best approach toward restoring or otherwise affecting the salvation of an historic building. A popular and sensible alternative is to affect a restoration that approximates the original as closely as is possible while acknowledging practical accommodation.
Such a restoration is underway on Vinalhaven.
Our old engine house was built in 1888 to accommodate a new steam fire engine and the assorted paraphernalia comprising one or both of the two fire companies that served the island in those days. The two companies were formed around 1870 when more men than a single company could accommodate stepped forward to serve as volunteer firemen.
Regular competitions were held between the two companies, each of which fielded a hand engine pumper. In fact, though, neither, not even when working together, was capable of serving the town’s needs.
In 1872, E. P. Walker (a founder of the Bodwell Granite Company) obtained a ten-inch stroke Jeffers hand engine from a Brooklyn, N.Y. fire company as partial payment for granite supplied for the Brooklyn Bridge. The engine was used in Vinalhaven for many years but was eventually sold, leaving the town without firefighting equipment.
In 1886 the Granite Hotel burned to the ground, the old Ellsworth having failed to be of any use, and a proposal was made to purchase a steam engine for $3,200 from the Silsby Manufacturing Company of Seneca, N.Y.
At the time there were many small farms on the island and the opposition to the expensive new acquisition and to the costs of constructing a new building to house the fire department was considerable. The farmers felt that neither the fire wagon nor the company would ever get to their various farms in time to save anything and that the whole thing—the new building, the steam engine, the fire department for that matter—was a big waste of money.
In an editorial the year before, one farmer described proponents of the project as narrow-minded and short-sighted, appallingly reckless, perpetually folly-ridden, dangerously ill-advised and a threat to whole community. Ultimately, however, purchase of the steam engine was approved as was construction of the engine house on land donated to the town for that purpose by one of our founding fathers, Capt. Reuben Carver.
The machine was delivered only days after the engine house was completed and christened Old Reuben in honor of the grantor. Used for decades but then abandoned and neglected, the engine house began to succumb to the ravages of time and neglect.
In 2012, the town cleared up some messy title work, acquiring clear ownership of the land upon which the building stood. The following year, a local non-profit group, Historic Downstreet Inc., having formed the year before, asked selectmen for their blessings in pursuing a practical restoration of the old engine house, declaring its intention to “restore the historic artifact to its former glory, one of elegance, and of function as a showpiece for the town’s antique firefighting equipment.”
Today, the practical—two more windows than the original to balance fenestration, a light bright interior instead of dark wood paneling to better showcase the display within, a metal roof instead of the original wood and removal of an inadequate and un-appealing exterior stairway that had been added in the early 1900s—restoration is nearly complete.
