Belfast from Eastside

Belfast from Eastside

View of the Belfast waterfront from a hill behind the Durham house, in the foreground, on the East Side. From left to right one can see a number of items of interest. First is a three-masted schooner on the builder ways. Next, above and to the right, is Mathews Brothers (large square building) MATHEWS BOTHERS HISTORY In 1854 brothers Noah Merrill Mathews and Spencer Walcott Mathews began a partnership in a window sash and millworks company - called the N.M. & S.W. Mathews Company. In 1860 brother Sanford Hills Mathews joins the family business and the name is changed to Mathews & Co. By 1872, the brothers had expanded the products manufactured by Mathews & Co. to include doors, window sashes, blinds, shutters, window and door frames. On August 24, 1873, the company lost its storehouse on Front Street to the Great Fire of Belfast. The company reopened 70 days later at the corner of Cross and Miller streets as Mathews Brothers Company. By 1899, after the deaths of Noah, Spencer and Sanford, the company officers are made up of Clara Starrett Mathews, president; Addie Richmond Mathews, vice-president; Maude Elizabeth Mathews, treasurer; and Orlando Ephraim Frost, superintendent. Of the officers, Maude tended to be the most involved in the company. At that time it was the largest Maine business owned by women. In 1904 Orlando E. Frost assumed control of Mathews Brothers Company and added spiral staircases and coffins to the company's product line. Frost began Mathews Brothers long standing tradition of community involvement with his commitment to the Waldo County General Hospital. In 1906, Frost expanded the company by building a warehouse on Front Street. In late 1916 early 1917, Frost took a contract to build a 5-masted schooner named the Jennie Flood Kreger. The keel was laid and construction started in early 1917. Mathews Brothers Company completed the construction and launched the Jennie Flood Kreger March 5, 1919. It was the largest vessel and the only 5-masted schooner ever built in Belfast, Maine. Almost a decade later, Copeland Lang bought Mathews Brothers Company from O.E. Frost in 1928. A stock company was formed and incorporated. In 1946 Copeland Lang sold the company to his son Charles Lang and son-in-law Roger Haddock; with Roger becoming the next president and Charles assuming the role of treasurer. Charles became president only six years later after the early-and-untimely death of Roger. Just above and to the right of Mathews Brothers the steeple of the Baptist Church can be seen. Below and to the right of the church, near the waterfront, one can see the Dana Sarsaparilla Company building, the four story building with the gambrel roof. DANA SARSAPARILLA COMPANY In 1888, the success which had attended a sarsaparilla compound, formulated and patented by Dr. Gustavus Clark Kilgore, resulted in establishing a laboratory on Bridge Street, Belfast, where the next year, with Edgar Filmore Hanson as promoter, the manufacture of the article upon a larger scale was undertaken, followed by the organization of a stock company with the above title, having a capital of $25,000. By judicious advertising and enterprise, the business increased beyond the most sanguine expectations of its originators, and two dividends, one of twenty and one of a hundred per cent, were declared. The Dana Sarsaparilla Company was organized November 28, 1889, and produced hundreds of thousands of bottles of an elixir formulated by Dr. Gustavus Clark Kilgore, a Belfast physician, that was said to cure all ills. Edgar F. Hanson (ten term mayor of Belfast) became the manager of the Dana Sarsaparilla Company turning it into one of the nation's three dominant patent medicine concerns through innovative marketing of its product. Hanson became wealthy from his involvement with Dana and when the company was sold in 1894 at a profit of 1300% for its investors, he built a lavish mansion on Northport Avenue across from what is now the City Park. A year later he was elected to his first term as mayor of Belfast. In 1891, 300,000 bottles of the medicine having been sold, more extensive accommodations were required, and the foundry building on Front Street was purchased and enlarged. During the first six months after removal the sales reached half a million bottles. Such good fortune soon attracted outside parties, and in July, 1892, the controlling part of the stock was disposed of to a Boston syndicate for $300,000 cash. The holders thus received twelve hundred per cent on their original investment, besides the previous dividends of one hundred and twenty per cent. Nearly all of this remained in Belfast. Arrangements for placing immense quantities of the article were at once entered upon. The importation of ingredients by the ton, the establishment of a printing-press costing $30,000, and the circulation of millions of advertising sheets which doubled the revenue of the Post-Office, constituted some of the new features. The concern flourished during 1893, but the next year, owing to the transfer of its headquarters to Boston, resulting from a change of management, and dissensions among the stockholders, it began to decline, and the following year became a thing of the past. In June, 1896, its whole property was sold at auction by the sheriffs to satisfy the claim of a New York creditor. Such was the rise and fall of a corporation whose career is remarkable in the history of patent medicines. To the right, the long building near the center of the photo is the Shoe Factory: FROM VOL. II OF WILLIANSON'S HISTORY OF BELFAST This shoe factory was built by the Belfast Manufacturing Company on lower Main Street in 1872. It was first leased to Richardson and Critchett, who employed one hundred fifty workers. From 1875 to 1897 the factory of the Critchett, Sibley Company, was operated by Oliver Gordon Critchett, successor of Richardson & Critchett, under a lease from the Belfast Manufacturing Company and made shoes for Jenkins, Lane & Sons of Boston. Mr. Critchett, with Adin V. Chipman, of Boston, then conducted the business on their own account until the summer of 1880, when it was terminated, and the factory remained idle for two months. In October of that year, Ami Cutter Sibley became interested, and formed a partnership with Mr. Critchett. In 1884, Horatio Palmer Thompson was admitted as a member of the firm, which adopted the name of Critchett, Sibley & Co. Three years later, Mr. Sibley purchased the property of the Belfast Manufacturing Company for $7245, and increased the size of the building. The next year further enlargements took place, including a detached power-house on the opposite side of the street, and a tower. Another addition was made in 1893. After the death of Mr. Critchett, in September, 1900, the manufacturing business of the late firm passed to a new corporation, called the Critchett, Sibley Company, and its real estate to the Manufacturing Real Estate Company, Mr. Sibley being president of both. Since 1880, the factory has run steadily more days than any other establishment in New England. Its specialty is now boys' and youths' medium-priced shoes; the capacity being two thousand pairs a day. It is fully equipped with the most approved machinery, and the employees are nearly all permanent citizens. FROM A HISTORY OF BELFAST IN THE 20th CENTURY For nearly one hundred years, men's, boy's and women's shoes and boots were produced. During World War II the factory supplied combat boots to the U. S. Army. As many as 500 workers stood shoulder to shoulder in the shoe factory, producing up to 3,600 pairs of shoes per day. Shoe production continued at this factory until 1949, when a more modern facility was built. This building was razed in 1965. Trouble began in the shoe factory on August 1899 after the posting of wage cuts in each of the factory's work rooms. An accompanying explanation by the owners, Oliver Critchett and Ami Cutter Sibley, said the cuts were necessary due to a decline in the competitiveness of their product. "Trusting that the changes which we are now compelled to make will result, as we think it will, to the material benefit of yourselves and of our community as compared with what might occur if we allowed your wages to remain as they are, we remain, your friends and employers, Critchett, Sibley & Co." What was unusual about the first serious labor trouble in the history of Belfast was not that the workers struck, but the remarkably civil manner in which the strike played out. An aging gentry, many wealthy from fading shipbuilding fortunes, ran the city's important institutions. The relationship between the gentry and the working class was based on mutual respect, and it was strongly patriarchal. Worker were taken care of, managers were obeyed. Workers and managers did not mingle, and blue collars spoke to white collars only with deference, no matter how angry or disgruntled they were. The workers finished making the shoes on hand that day and packed them up for delivery before walking out, without the report of a harsh word. Critchett and Sibley then gave them a choice. Either work at the old wages, without the promise of steady employment, or at the new lower scale, with guaranteed steady work. The owners asked each employee to report personally his or her decision. Within a week the strike was "amicably adjusted" presumably at the lower wage scale, and all returned to work. It was the end of labor trouble in Belfast for almost a quarter century. When, later, power began to shift from the firm grasp of owners into the shaky, not always willing hands of the workers and citizens of Belfast, it signaled not only the changing relationship between workers and owners, but also how Belfast had been transformed from a genteel coastal Maine city into a working, "company" town. The shoe industry, which dominated Belfast's economy for 80 years, encompassed these changes, and in many ways the story of Belfast shoemaking is the story of the coming of age of labor in the city. The original shoe factory was built in 1872, as industrialism picked up speed after the Civil War. Shops ere evolving into factories, and the large wooden building was constructed on Pleasant Street, off lower Main Street, on a shoulder of the hill overlooking the harbor. It was the largest employer in the city almost from its inception , and it grew steadily. At the turn of the century 300 workers produced 2,000 pairs of shoes each day. The payroll to the workers supplied the substrate upon which the townspeople - the merchants who sold them their clothes, the grocers who sold them their food, the bankers who lent them their money - thrived, providing a measure of economic health to the entire community. To the left of the shoe factory, running from the waterfront to Post Office Square is Main Street and heart of the business district. Additionally, but too numerous to mention, are the assortment of businesses, warehouses and wharves with ships alongside, along the water's edge.