Reuben B. Dunn, center, and family.

by Mary Grow

Subpart one
– biographies one –

Dunns, Milliken

This article is planned as the first of a three-part subseries in which your writer introduces readers to some of the businessmen (and other people) mentioned in the previous weeks’ descriptions of Waterville’s Main Street Historic District, and sometimes to members of their families.

The arbitrarily-chosen subjects are arranged by birth order, oldest first. This week, please meet two men born early in the 1800s: Reuben B. Dunn, and several family members; and Dennis Milliken, with a bit about his son-in-law.

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Reuben Barnes Dunn (Dec 23, 1802 – Sept 9, 1889) was the man after whom the R. B. Dunn Block at the south end of the east side of Main Street, mentioned in the Aug. 25 article, was named. Two sons, Willard Morse Dunn and Reuben Wesley Dunn, were also well-known Waterville residents.

Reuben B. was born in Poland, Maine, and married his successive wives there: Emeline Davis in 1827; after her death in 1833, her sister, Eliza, in 1834; and after Eliza’s death in 1837, in December 1838 Lydia Richardson Ayer (Aug. 11, 1815 – April 5, 1900). Lydia was the mother of Willard and Reuben W.

Edwin Carey Whittemore’s Waterville history says Reuben B. was a country schoolteacher in 1820; a country storekeeper in 1821; a buyer and seller of timberland, lumber, clocks, threshing machines, hardware; a manufacturer of “scythes, axes and other agricultural tools” from 1841 until his death; railroad promoter in the 1840s and Maine Central Railroad president until he retired in 1870.

Reuben B. and Lydia moved from Poland to Readfield in 1841 and to Waterville in August 1850. Willard M. and Reuben W. were born in Fayette, the history says.

An on-line site says R. B. Dunn founded the Dunn Edge Tool Company in January 1840. It produced “scythe blades and edge tools.” Incorporated in 1856, it was sold in 1921 to Seymour Manufacturing Company; Seymour sold it two years later to North Wayne Tool Company. It closed in 1967.

By 1892, according to Reuben W. Dunn’s (perhaps self-interested?) chapter on Waterville manufacturing in Whittemore’s history, the Dunn Edge Tool Company’s scythe plant “is said to be the best and most conveniently arranged in America,” and the “axe shop is not excelled in convenience or efficiency by any of its size.” The company could produce annually 15,000 dozen scythes (180,000) and 6,000 dozen (72,000) axes, sold all over the United States and Canada. Reuben W. was the company’s “treasurer and manager”; his brother Willard was president.

The Dunn company was one of many early manufactories in the western part of Waterville, which became the separate town of West Waterville in February 1873 and was renamed Oakland in 1883. Manufacturers used water power from Messalonskee Stream, a smaller, more manageable source than the Kennebec River.

Whittemore suggested that Reuben B. Dunn and/or his sons were involved in other West Waterville businesses; and multiple sources credited them with bringing Amos Lockwood to Waterville to build the Lockwood Mill complex (see the Aug. 25 issue of The Town Line). Henry Kingsbury’s Kennebec County history identifies Dunn as the financier behind Mill Number 1 and the first president of the Lockwood Company.

In 1869, Whittemore wrote, Dunn donated $15,000 of the $18,000 needed to build the Methodist Church. Kingsbury says Dunn’s gift was $14,000 of $16,000.

Reuben B.’s older son, Willard Morse Dunn (May 11, 1845 – March 23, 1917), went to Maine Wesleyan Seminary, in Kents Hill, and started his business career in 1866 as a salesman in a Boston “cloth store.” In 1869 he moved to Auburn and joined a shoe manufacturing company. From 1873 he was active in organizing the Lockwood Company; he was still a company director in 1902, and was “interested in” other mills as well as president of Dunn Edge Tool Company.

Willard Dunn served as Waterville postmaster from 1879 to 1885 under Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes; he was replaced during Democrat Grover Cleveland’s first term and reappointed in 1889 by Republican Benjamin Harrison (this position was mentioned in the Sept. 29 history article).

Dunn was still postmaster in 1902. Redington called him “one of the most efficient postmasters the city has ever had,” and wrote that both he and assistant postmaster J. F. Larrabee were highly regarded by the residents they served.

On Dec. 31, 1873, Willard Dunn married Alma Burbank Lowell (Oct. 4, 1851 – March 25, 1936) in Waterville. Willard and Alma had one daughter, Mabel Esther (Nov. 24, 1882 – March 4, 1980), Reuben B.’s granddaughter.

Mabel Dunn married Burnham native Herbert Carlyle Libby (1878 – 1965), who graduated from Colby, Class of 1902, and wrote Colby Stories As Told by Colby Men of the Classes, 1832 to 1902 (1900) and Yarns for Boys (1908).

Reuben B.’s younger son (Mabel Libby’s uncle), Reuben Wesley Dunn (Feb. 8, 1847 – Nov. 11, 1927), attended Maine Wesleyan Seminary (and became a trustee in 1877) and graduated from Colby University (as it was briefly titled) in 1868. He was teacher/principal at Corinth Academy for two years before going into business.

Like his father’s, Reuben W.’s business career was varied. An on-line site and Whittemore’s collaborators list: cotton mill agent in 1880; “visomess agent” (any reader who know what this title means, please contact The Town Line), 1870-1886; “in the department store business” with Lorin A. Presby, 1884-1891; “connected with the Lockwood Company” and other mills, including president of Madison Woolen Company from 1894 to1898; president of the Somerset Railroad, 1897-1907; treasurer and manager of Dunn Edge Tool Company after 1897.

Reuben W. married Martha S. “Mattie” Baker (Jan. 21, 1848 – July 22, 1915) on Aug. 19 or Sept. 2, 1873 (sources differ).

Martha Baker Dunn was a novelist and a contributor to “leading literary magazines.” Her two novels are Memory Street: A Story of Life (1900) and ‘Lias’s Wife: An Island Story (1901); an on-line site adds a book titled Cicero in Maine: And Other Essays (1905).

Whoever described her in Whittemore’s book praised her “depth of insight, clearness in portraiture and true feeling, sometimes veiled in humor,” and wrote that readings of her unpublished stories were “a delightful feature” of the Women’s Association and Women’s Literary Club programs.

As mentioned above, Reuben W. wrote the chapter on manufacturing in Whittemore’s history. Martha wrote the chapter on social life.

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The Milliken Building, at the corner of Main and Silver streets, now occupied by the Silver Street Tavern.

Dennis Libby Milliken (Feb. 1 or 4, 1804 – Oct. 28 or Nov. 2, 1879) was identified in the Sept. 15 article in this series as the prominent banker in whose honor the 1877 Milliken Block on the south corner of Silver and Main streets was named. A Scarborough native, he married Jane Larrabee (born about 1804, and died after her husband) in that town on May 7, 1829. The couple had two sons and two daughters.

In 1830, at the age of 26, Milliken joined Jacob Southwick, of Vassalboro, in the lumber business. When the family moved to Waterville is unclear.

Whittemore’s history says Milliken served in the Maine House of Representatives and the Maine Senate, but does not say when, nor what town he represented. That information precedes the information that he was a member of the Governor’s Council under Democratic Governors John Fairfield (who served non-consecutive partial terms, 1839-1841 and 1842-March 1843) and Edward Kavanagh (Fairfield’s successor for the rest of 1843) and Republican Governor Lot M. Morrill (1858-1861).

In 1856, Milliken became president of Waterville National Bank, chartered in 1850 and first located in the second story of the north end of the Ticonic Block (Ticonic Row), described Sept. 15. He remained in charge, overseeing the building of the new brick bank that became the Milliken Block, until the bank closed in 1879.

Horatio Bates, who wrote the chapter on banking in Whittemore’s history, said Waterville National Bank “was well managed and paid good dividends.” When it closed, stockholders got the full value of their stock and a 20% dividend.

By the 1860s Milliken was prominent in Waterville affairs. Whittemore listed him among those chosen to address an April 20, 1861, public meeting called “to take action concerning the rebellion” in the southern states. He was a non-combatant in the Civil War; General Isaac Bangs listed him (and R. B. Dunn) among Waterville’s “prominent older men” who supported the Union cause whole-heartedly.

Bangs (March 17, 1831 – May 30, 1903) was a Civil War veteran and businessman who wrote the military chapter in Whittemore’s history. He married Dennis and Jane Milliken’s older daughter, Hadassah Jane, on Oct. 20, 1857.

(Why the name Hadassah? No explanation. Her brothers were George and Edward; her sister was Mary; and her father is listed among organizers of Waterville’s first Unitarian Society in 1863.)

Bangs became Waterville National Bank’s cashier in 1861 and resigned in 1862 to join the army; he was on the bank’s board in 1879. In addition to banking, he was in the granite business and had interests in mills.

After the war, Milliken invested in building the first dam across the Kennebec and developing water-powered mills. His 1868 grist mill was one of the first two industries using the Lockwood Dam. His business career included an undated stint as president of the Androscoggin and Kennebec Railroad.

He served as a trustee of Waterville, later Colby, College from 1859 until his death.

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, Centennial History of Waterville 1802-1902. (1902).

Websites, miscellaneous.

The Clukey Building, located on the corner of Main and Silver streets, location of the Paragon Shop today.

by Mary Grow

Main Street west side and 2016 expansion

This article continues the description of Waterville’s Main Street Historic District, going northward on the west side of Main Street between Silver and Temple streets, and adds most of the buildings in the 2016 expansion of the district.

Your writer hopes she has already inspired people to park their cars and stroll along Main Street, heads high as they admire the storefronts above street level (taking care to avoid colliding with other pedestrians with their heads down as they admire their cellphones).

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On the north side of Silver Street, at 40-44 Main Street, is what Matthew Corbett and Scott Hanson, of Sutherland Conservation and Consulting, in Augusta, called in their 2012 application for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places the Rancourt Building. This building dated from 1936 and had been so altered between 1992 and 2005 that it no longer counted as historic.

Frank Redington, in his chapter on businesses in Edwin Carey Whittemore’s Waterville history, described an earlier building on the same corner. Writing in 1902, Redington called the brick building with granite trim “a splendid block, three stories, and modern in all respects.” F. L. Thayer built it, on the lot that had housed a wooden building where David Gallert had a dry goods store and another building that Joseph Nudd rented out as a saloon.

By 1902, Charles J. Clukey owned the brick building. Clukey was one of the 100 residents who formed the committee to plan the 1902 bicentennial celebration. He was a partner with Luther H. Soper in the dry goods business for some time before starting the Clukey & Libby Company in 1901.

The Maine Memory Network on line says Clukey & Libby “ran a large department store on Main Street.” The Waterville history includes William Abbott Smith’s partial description of the company’s contributions to the tremendous parade that marked the end of Waterville’s centennial celebration on Tuesday, June 24, 1902.

One of Clukey & Libby’s entries featured “twenty-four boys in gray dusters with red advertising umbrellas.” Another was “a float with twelve young ladies in white with white and rose sunshades, the team being decorated with 500 poppies and drawn by four gray horses with white harnesses.”

The Plaisted Block, 46-50 Main Street (according to Kingsbury the second building of that name on the same site), was built in two parts, a double building on the south in 1883 and a third, wider section in 1890. Portland architects Francis Fassett and John Calvin Stevens designed the Romanesque Revival style brick structure.

Each of the three sections housed a different business in 2012, Corbett and Hanson wrote. They described brick and grey sandstone trim, arches above second-story windows and the building’s name and date “carved into the sandstone lintels flanking the central [brick] pier between the original southern two sections.”

Next north is the 1890 Soper Block, another Romanesque Revival building designed by Fassett and colleague Frederick Thompson. The three-story brick building had “a slightly projecting narrow bay at the south end” that Corbett and Hanson surmised might have covered an entrance to the upper floors.

The application describes decorative elements of brick, “rock-faced brownstone” and terra cotta. Third-floor windows have a continuous band of brownstone sills above a terra cotta band, with “a half-round arched top with a fanlight pattern above each window.”

The building date is on a brownstone plaque on the projecting bay. The name is on another brownstone plaque on the five-bay section, in a terra cotta frame and set “within a taller portion of the parapet that is framed by terra cotta scrolled brackets.”

In the business chapter in Whittemore’s history, Redington wrote that in April 1901 Luther Soper installed the first motorized passenger elevator in Waterville, running from the basement to the top floor.

Smith described Soper’s “charming” contribution to the 1902 centennial parade as a yellow and white float with “open oval panels” on sides and ends and nine girls riding on top.

The next two buildings north of the Soper Block dated from the 20th century and had been modernized on the street level, but nonetheless counted as historic. Corbett and Hanson listed them as the Robinson-Davison Company building and the Jackson Company building.

The Robinson-Davison building at 58 Main Street, put up about 1911, is described as three stories tall, Commercial Style, with a brick and metal front.

Next north, at 62 Main Street, the two-story Jackson Company building was constructed about a year later. Its façade features brick, metal and concrete elements.

The Kennebec Savings Bank building, 64-70 Main Street, had undergone several changes; as of 2012, it was dated from 1974 and was thus too new to count as a historic building. Corbett and Hanson wrote that it “was originally two late 19th century buildings” that were remodeled in 1974, 1985 and 2011-12.

“The current façade is more in keeping with the historic character of the district, and thus has a lesser impact on the district’s integrity than the previous designs,” they added.

The Barrell Block at 72-76 Main Street was built in two pieces 25 years apart, Corbett and Hanson found. The Greek Revival style north end came first, in 1850; in 1875 the Italianate south building designed by Francis Fassett was added. By 2012, a modern storefront at street level and an Italianate wooden cornice on top (replacing the earlier gable roof on the north part) united the two sections.

Next north was the Emery Department Store building at 80-86 Main Street, built in 1912 and expanded north in 1920. The 1912 Renaissance Revival style section was designed by Lewiston architects William Miller and Raymond Mayo. There were five openings onto the street; the center one held “the primary entrance in a deep recess”; the northern one provided access to the two upper floors.

The upper part of the earlier section “is divided into three sections by large two story pilasters with elaborate bases and Ionic capitals of white molded limestone.” More “molded limestone ornament” decorates a band between the second and third floors. Corbett and Hanson described a double cornice, below and above an attic section, with “EMERY MCMXII” inscribed.

The last building before the Temple Street intersection was the two-story McLellan’s Department Store building at 90-100 Main Street, dated 1920 and described as Commercial Style. It was of buff brick, with cast stone windowsills on the second floor and brick trim. The “compatible” single-story addition on the north was built after 1944.

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In 2016, the Waterville Main Street Historic District was expanded to add the connected buildings on the east side of the street north from Temple Street to Appleton Street, plus two others (to be described next week).

The June 3, 2016, application was prepared by Scott Hanson, again, and Kendal Anderson, of Sutherland Conservation and Consulting.

They explained that the additional area did not qualify in 2012 because of “the number of facades that had been covered after the period of significance [1860-1931]. The removal of these false facades from two significant buildings, exposing largely intact historic facades, extends the integrity of the existing district sufficiently to include these ten additional resources.”

129 Main St.

Four buildings were too much changed to count as part of the expanded historic district.

• The two-story building at 129 Main Street, the corner of Main and Temple, is identified as the last surviving wood-framed building on the street; but it was covered by unhistoric aluminum siding.
• 131 and 137 Main Street are flat-roofed two-story buildings sharing a false façade added in the 1920s to buildings originally constructed before 1884.
• The 1913 Waterville Steam Laundry Building at 145-147 Main Street also has a false façade, metal.

The southernmost of the historic buildings is the three-story brick Moor Block at 139-141 Main Street, built in 1905. Its style is Renaissance Revival; the street side has granite windowsills and decorative brick trim.

Skipping the non-contributing laundry building, the Eaton Block (153-155 Main Street), designed by architects Bunker and Savage, of Augusta, and built in 1923, is described as Colonial Revival style. A two-story brick building with a two-story addition on the east (back) side, it has a recessed storefront “set within the historic cast concrete surround of the original storefront. Two steel columns support the structure above.”

The Eaton Block is one of the buildings where the 1960s façade was removed in 2016, “revealing the historic buff tapestry brick façade.” The second floor is little changed, with brick and stone details, fancy windows and stone panels with the name and date.

Hanson and Anderson added, “The [brick] pilasters on the façade were originally topped with cast stone urns that stood on the parapet above the cornice line.”

Next north is the Edith Block; one granite inset on the front says “EDITH BLOCK 1906” and another says “W. T. HAINES OFFICE.” Three stories high, brick with granite windowsills and brick trim, the Edith Block was designed in Early 20th Century Commercial style by Waterville architect A. G. Bowie.

This building, too, acquired a false front in the 1960s; as of 1916 only the ground floor covering remained, and Hanson and Anderson wrote that it was scheduled for removal.

The Waterville Savings Bank Building, on the south corner of Main and Appleton streets, dates from 1903 and was designed in Renaissance Revival style by architect William M. Butterfield, from Manchester, New Hampshire. The building has “reinforced concrete floor construction” and “a façade of tan Roman brick with limestone trim,” Hanson and Anderson wrote.

The central entrance on Main Street is recessed inside an arch supported by Doric columns; on each side “are piers with limestone details and granite bases.” On the floors above, eight windows are separated into three bays, with three windows in each side bay and two in the middle one. Some of the windows are set in arches. On the Appleton Street side, the windows above the ground floor are arranged in five sections of two or three windows.

Waterville Savings Bank was organized in 1869, according to Whittemore’s history, and in 1902 was the city’s largest bank, with more than $1.25 million on its books. The 1903 building as used until 1939, when, an on-line source says, the bank “moved across the street to a larger block” (which your writer guesses is the present home of Waterville’s branch of TD Bank, successor to Waterville Savings Bank).

The on-line source says Butterfield was born in Sidney and lived briefly in Waterville. He established his architectural business in Manchester in 1881. Because of his central Maine connection, he designed “at least ten major buildings” in Waterville between 1900 and 1910.

By 2012, the Savings Bank Building had been vacant for 15 years and was on Maine’s list of most endangered historic buildings. Area residents seeking its preservation gained their goal with the 2016 expansion of the Main Street Historic District.

Main sources

Corbett, Matthew, and Scott Hanson, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Waterville Main Street Historic District, Aug. 28, 2012, supplied by the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.
Hanson, Scott, and Kendal Anderson, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Waterville Main Street Historic District (Boundary Increase) June 3, 2016.
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, Centennial History of Waterville 1802-1902 (1902).

Websites, miscellaneous.

by Mary Grow

An article in the latest issue of The Saturday Evening Post says the television show M*A*S*H pioneered Sept. 17, 1972, 50 years ago this month.

The show was based on the movie of the same name, which came out in 1970; and the movie was based on the novel MASH, written by Richard Hooker and published in 1968 by William Morrow & Company.

Richard Hornberger Jr.

“Richard Hooker” was the pen name of Waterville surgeon H. Richard Hornberger, Jr. (Feb. 1, 1924 – Nov. 4, 1997). The H. stands for Hiester.

A United Press International obituary dated Nov. 5, 1997, says Hornberger chose the pen name as “a reference to his golf swing.”

Hornberger was a New Jersey native who graduated from Bowdoin College and Cornell University Medical School. Drafted for service in the Korean War, he served in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH unit, whose doctors worked close to the front lines, usually in tents, to treat – often to save – wounded soldiers.

The UPI obituary said Hornberger’s family had summered in Maine and had roots here that went “back several generations.” After the war, Hornberger moved to Bremen.

His post-war career included a stint with the Veterans’ Administration at Togus and surgical practice in Waterville, from which he retired in 1988. He began writing drafts of his first novel in the late 1950s; it was followed by M*A*S*H Goes to Maine and M*A*S*H Mania, neither as successful as the original.

His Nov. 7, 1997, obituary in the New York Times said survivors included his widow, Priscilla Storer Hornberger, two sons, two daughters and three grandchildren.

Dr. Hornberger’s circle included two other Waterville doctors, both with national reputations. Fairfield resident Loring Withee Pratt was an otolaryngologist (a specialist in ear, nose and throat problems); Skowhegan’s George E. Young was a radiologist and surgeon.

A long obituary of Dr. Pratt (May 26, 1918 – March 13, 2012), published in the Waterville Morning Sentinel on March 16, 2012, said he was born in Farmington, graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont in 1940 and studied medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.

The obituary says Pratt spent two years in Air Force flight surgeon training in Texas. After his June 1948 discharge, he and his wife Jennie (Jeanette Burque) came to central Maine, where he ran a Waterville ear, nose and throat medical practice until he retired in 1985.

Additional responsibilities included “assistant director of the F.T. Hill Seminar at Colby College in Waterville; chief of staff at Thayer Hospital in Waterville 1979-1981; and chief of department of otolaryngology — head and neck surgery 1977-1979 at Thayer Hospital.” He worked with tuber­culosis pa­tients at Fairfield’s Central Maine Sanato­rium and was “on the consulting staff of Waterville Osteopathic Hospital; Kennebec Valley Medical Center, Augusta; Franklin Memorial Hospital, Farmington; PenBay Medical Center, Rockland; Redington Fairview General Hospital, Skowhegan; Veterans Administration Hospital (Togus), Augusta; and the Charles Dean Memorial Hospital, Greenville.”

After he retired, the obituary says he continued his connections with the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, and at Johns Hopkins.

The writer of the obituary said of Pratt, “For a doctor from a small Maine city, he had accomplishments on a national level in the field of medicine.”

Pratt was a fellow of numerous American medical associations; the writer listed as three “of his most prized” the American Medical Association (since 1948), the American College of Surgeons (since 1952) and the Triological Society (aka The American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society, Inc.) (since 1954).

Other contributions the writer mentioned were “publishing papers in medical journals and presenting at professional conferences. One of his specialties was chainsaw injuries to the head and neck. He was recognized nationally for this work.”

In his spare time, Pratt was active in community organizations, including the Masons and the Fairfield Historical Society, and pursued interests in plant and animal life, gardening, geology and photography.

Pratt was survived by his wife, their nine children and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The large Pratt house on Lawrence Avenue in Fairfield remains a private residence.

Dr. Hornberger’s other nationally known colleague, about whom little information is available from on-line sources, was Dr. George E. Young (Nov. 15, 1888 – Aug. 7, 1960), an early radiologist and a surgeon. He and his wife Clara (1894 – 1978) lived in a large house on Madison Avenue in Skowhegan; like Dr. Pratt, Young worked extensively with tuberculosis patients at Central Maine Sanatorium.

George and Clara Young are buried in Skowhegan’s Southside Cemetery.

The newest building at the former Central Maine Sanatorium, which closed June 30, 1970, is the Young Surgical Building at 50 Mountain Avenue, on the east side of the campus. Built in 1955 and named in honor of George E. Young, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 28, 2021.

The application for National Register status was prepared in March 2021 by Preservation Consultant Christine Beard, of Essex Preservation Consulting, in Amesbury, Massachusetts.

The application says the building has historic value “for its association with the treatment of tuberculosis in Maine” between 1955 and 1970. Maine’s most seriously ill tuberculosis patients were sent to Central Maine Sanatorium because it was there that “surgery could be performed if necessary.”

The explanation continues: “The [Young] Surgical Building is the only building constructed by the state solely for use as a surgical center for tuberculosis patients. At the time it was constructed, the Surgical Building was considered state-of-the-art and greatly expanded the ability to treat advanced cases of tuberculosis.”

The physical description of the building calls it “a three-story brick Modern style institutional building with masonry bearing walls and steel framing. The building has a T-shaped plan, with a rectangular three-story main block and a two-story rectangular rear ell.”

The building’s architect was Stanley S. Merrill, of Auburn, the application says.

Also on the lot, and part of the historic listing, is a 1935 brick boiler house just north of the main building. It is described as one and a half stories high with a single-story wooden addition built around 1950.

At its height, Central Maine Sanatorium consisted of 12 buildings, the application says; five remained when the application was prepared, standing on separate lots since a 1984 division of the property. The demolition of most of the buildings and changes to the surviving ones “preclude the formation of a cohesive historic district.”

The Young Surgical Building was a nursing home for some years. It is currently undergoing major renovations, with the goal of making it Mountain View apartments.

Maine’s other two tuberculosis sanatoria were Northern Maine in Presque Isle, built in the 1920s and improved in 1938 and 1939 with federal funds, and Western Maine in Hebron, started in 1904 as a private hospital and taken over by the state in 1915. Both closed in 1959; 18 of Hebron’s 30 patients came to Fairfield, and the other dozen were discharged.

The Fairfield hospital also began as a private venture about 1909, in Waterville, run by the Central Maine Association for the Relief and Control of Tuberculosis. The temporary housing –- patients spent the day at the facility and went home at night, according to the historic district application – was moved to Fairfield in 1910.

After Frank Chase’s widow, Valora Chase, donated money for the first building, the institution became Chase Memorial Sanatorium in 1914. It too became a state institution in 1915. The additional buildings were built between 1938 and 1955. In 1933 and 1934, Mountain Avenue was rebuilt with federal money.