Central FIre Station- Springvale, Maine B174

Central FIre Station- Springvale, Maine B174

The central fIre station in Springvale, Maine with a four-bay fire station with four trucks parked out front in1949 The Springvale Station is located at 5 Oak St., Springvale, Maine. The Springvale Station was opened in 1925. A single story annex was added in 1961. In May 2008 the 47 year old annex was torn down and rebuilt to a larger size, to accommodate modern fire apparatus. Springvale currently houses Engine 1, Forestry 1, and the Rescue boat. Staffing is 1 Lieutenant and 1 Firefighter The house in the background, on the left, was known as Butler House at 11 Oak Street. It was built by Charles E. Butler in the mid 1800's and was a hotel for a time. His son, Fred, was a lumberman in town, and his family lived there, including my grandfather, Willis Butler. He and Elsie raised a family there, and in later years, housed students from Nasson. Nasson* eventually bought the house, turned it into an an infirmary, and then tore it down for parking space. A sad end to a great place. [Wende Brock - 2018] *Nasson College was a private four-year accredited liberal arts college in Springvale, Maine. It was founded in 1912 as Nasson Institute and changed its name twenty-three years later, in 1935. It closed in 1983, after which its in-town campus sat vacant well into the 1990s. As the Nasson Institute, the college operated as a two-year Women's program. It became a four-year college in 1935, turning co-ed in 1952. History After turning co-ed, Nasson quickly grew into a well-respected, four-year accredited liberal arts college, reaching a student enrollment of over 900 in the late 1960s. Nasson offered majors in such fields as Biology, English, Environmental Science, Government, History, Mathematics, Medical Technology, and many more subjects. The New Division In 1963, President Roger C. Gay proposed the possibility of having one or more colleges, under the control of Nasson College. The planning and preparation began, and in the fall of 1966 the New Division, an experimental college became a reality. The aim was to provide a liberal education involving extensive student participation in social, academic and discipline policy; independent study in provinces of knowledge, not in individual courses. The New Division operated from a separate, newly constructed building located west of the original campus, containing both housing and community facilities. The realities of operating two substantially different educational models (the old and new divisions) under the same college umbrella resulted in substantial internal conflict at Nasson, primarily voiced by faculty members at the old division. As a result, the New Division's autonomy was rescinded in 1969. Most New Division faculty and students left for other alternative institutions, and the program was formally ended the following year. The shakeup also saw Gay's removal as college president. Many students arrived in the fall of 1970 expecting to be joining the New Division, only to find that it was gone, and they were at a rather old fashioned college. Most left quickly, helping to lead to the end of Nasson. Closure Faced with declining enrollment (due to the close of the New Division) and financial pressures, Nasson College eventually closed in 1983. Most of the buildings on the original campus are now being adaptively reused for other purposes. The three buildings located on the west campus (including the New Division building) were obtained in the 1990s by a group hoping to establish a preparatory school on the site; building renovations were only partially completed, however, and in 2008 the property was for sale.