158,
160, 162 & 164 Main Street
by: Doris Sherrow
A narrow
patch of what Main Street used to look like still stands between Dunkin
Donuts and the Getty station. Numbers. 158, 160, 162 and 164 Main Street
characterize what a 19th century commercial district would have looked
like before it was taken over by huge 20th-century concrete boxes with
a shelf-life of no more than twenty years.
The oldest member of these four 19th-century-style
buildings is Café 66, at 164 Main Street, next (south) of the Hess
station. It was probably built around 1871 by barber Christopher Cranmer.
Cranmer may have been an immigrant. Sometime during the 1870s his name
switched from Cranmer to Cramer, and the building was sold in later years
as the Cramer Building. Native-born Americans would have been unlikely
to change their surnames.
Cramer married a local girl, Leonora
Laverty, in 1871. She was probably a sister or a daughter of James
Laverty, who was running a very successful tavern at 188 Main Street.
Laverty became a local legend in July of 1888, when his tavern burned
to the ground, and he was up and running, serving patrons from a shed
in the rear of the property, by the end of that terrible week! He was
back in business in the two-story brick building still standing at 188
Main, now Portland Restaurant, by November.
The 1874 Beers’ Atlas shows
"Cranmer Store" at this site by that time. Christopher
and Leonora had ten children, and the 1914 City Directory lists a Charles
F. Cramer as running a barbershop here, though it is not clear what
relation he was to them. Now called Café 66, this building was
long known as Mendello's Restaurant, and before that, Hulf's
Tavern.
The next oldest building is Ireland’s,
just north of Dunkin’ Donuts, at 158 Main. The 1874 map shows "J.Hall
Meat Market" in this spot. However, it is likely that John
Allen built this building about 1893. At that time, John and his wife
Emma mortgaged the building – only the building, not the land,
which belonged to the Brainerd, Shaler, and Hall Quarry Company
– for $4,635. That was a large amount of money for just a building
at that time — I suspect they would only be able to get that much
money if they had a brand new building on the site.
Furthermore, the architecture of 158 Main
seems likely to be from the 1890s--it is quite similar to the Main Street
Cycle building at 184 Main Street – the steep gable roof, the two-story
porch. The Main Street Cycle building was built around 1890, also as a
residence on top of a commercial building. Unfortunately it is difficult
to trace buildings in this area by title search -- most of this side of
the street was owned by one or another of the quarry companies. The lots
and buildings were leased, rather than sold, to individuals, and leases
are rarely filed in the land records.
John Allen had come to Portland around 1870
and married Mary Emma Edwards, a Portland girl. He was English.
He and Mary had eleven children, though only six of them survived to adulthood.
Quite likely Allen had worked in Hall’s Meat Market before
building the newer building, because the birth records, beginning in 1871,
list his occupation consistently as "butcher." He died in 1913,
and his widow held onto the building for the next five years. From at
least 1943 to at least 1975 (based on City Directory listings), this building
was Cannata’s Tavern, Restaurant, and finally, Café.
The two buildings between these Victorian
classics were built in 1936. However, they were preceded by other buildings,
rather similar in style. The 1874 map shows a commercial building in both
areas, though the one at 160, now A.R. Dutting Tire Repair Shop,
was not on the site in 1907 when the Sanborn Insurance map was drawn.
At 162 Main Street stood a neat, white gable-to-street
two-story shop with dark wood trim, cornice returns in the gable pointing
to a carved-lettered sign: "Hardware, paints, etc." A tiny addition
ran along the south side, no more than six feet wide, with a similar carved-lettered
sign: "Undertaker." The Portland Historical Society’s calendar
from 1992 shows it over the January page. It belonged to Arthur Emmons.
A Middletown Press reporter wrote of the
shop, "Mr. Emmons’ place of business was one of the landmarks
of Main street, having been conducted as an undertaking parlor and hardware
store for many years by him, and previously by W. G. Spencer, for
a long period."
An "undertaking parlor and hardware
store" from this era offers us some food for thought. In the 1800s,
even into the early 1900s, an "undertaking parlor" would not
have the same functions as it does today. The deceased would be washed
by family members, laid out in his own home, and often buried in a coffin
made by a family member. Emmons offered caskets and an elegant black wagon
with horses and a driver. He also offered ice to preserve the body.
But the building now at 162 Main is not
the building Emmons had, although its lines are similar. Nor is A.R.
Dutting’s shop at #160 the same structure.
At 3:45 A. M. on April 8th, 1936, a fire
broke out in a small building behind Emmons’ enterprise. A strong
wind quickly spread the flames to #160 and #162. Several cars were saved
from the garage, but Emmons lost the wagon that was his hearse, a Packard
coupe, and over fifty caskets.
Fire companies No.1, No.2 from Gildersleeve,
and, finally, No.1 from Middletown struggled to fight the fire. Houses
across Main Street, and there were several graceful old homes there at
the time, were wet down to avoid igniting from the sparks flying across
the road. Arthur Emmons and his family lived in the one at #159.
The April 8th Middletown Press said, "Dull
booming sounds came from the blazing Emmons building [#162], as cans of
paint exploded, and thick tongues of flames kept darting through the broken
front windows…"
The two outer buildings, #158 and #164,
stood only five or six feet away from the burning buildings. But they
were mercifully spared – because both were stuccoed!
The firemen fought the blaze for several
hours. They were still spraying areas where flames jumped up from the
charred rubble when the paper went to press.
Also by the time the paper went to press,
Emmons had received a kindly offer from W. J. Coughlin Sons of
Middletown (now Coughlin-Lastrina) to use their premises until he was
able to rebuild or relocate his undertaking parlor.
Within the next two years, two similar gable-to-street buildings were
constructed on the lots.
Emmons rebuilt #162 in 1936. A few years
later, he moved his funeral parlor to 231 Main Street, which is now the
Portland Memorial Funeral Home, but the hardware business remained on
the site even after his death, run by his widow, Nettie.
In 1937, A. R. Dutting rebuilt #160,
albeit with an "old Western" façade, and they remain
on the spot to this day.
These four buildings recreate the type of
streetscape you would have seen if you had walked the Main Street of the
1890s. Even if two of the buildings are considerably newer. And with time
flying the way it has, they are now both over sixty years old themselves!
