E. Leavitt St., Skowhegan, ME.-14

E. Leavitt St., Skowhegan, ME.-14

View of E. Leavitt St., Skowhegan, ME, a tree lined street with several wood framed houses. A small group of children can be seen on the sidewalk. The children appear to be watching the Eastern Illustrating photographer. Very little has changed over the years. Still white wood clapboard...still original shutters...original windows with wooden storms. The storm windows each have one pane of glass that is on its own hinges so that one pane swings open to allow fresh air in during the winter. Tin ceilings and original chandeliers in the front rooms. The porches have been replaced twice in my lifetime so those have changed the most. All of my life, and all of my mother's life the porches have been closed in with railings, but my grandmother always talked about the fact that when she was little, the kitchen porch was open and there were wide steps down off the very end of the porch, and then steps built into the embankment down to a service driveway that circled around the house. So, when I saw this photo earlier this month, I felt like I had seen a ghost. The only historical information about the house that may be of interest includes the following: If you look at the current photo, that "shed' door at the end of the porch goes into a shed that used to be a "summer kitchen". No bedrooms overhead...only attic space. The center door on the porch leads into an entry way that separates the summer kitchen on the left from the main kitchen on the right. The service steps you can see at the end of the porch in the original photo were for ice and milk deliveries that went right into that end door so the family didn't have to be bothered in the main kitchen. Up in the attic I still have the Ice Box that was in that summer kitchen. The family didn’t get an electric fridge until ice stopped being delivered in the 1940s. (My father grew up on the south side of the river on Turner Ave, and spent a good amount of time playing at the Skowhegan Ice House next to Falls Lumber Yard, aka Hammond Lumber on Pennel St.) I also have the ceramic water tank from the original kitchen of the East Leavitt St house...until the 1940s there was a constantly flowing gravity fed water system for all the houses in this neighborhood that came down from the pumping station pond behind the armory up off North Ave. About 10 years ago during road construction, they pulled out one of the old gravity fed "pipes"....made from hollowed out logs of wood. Also, I believe the house was the last private residence in Maine to be heated by a coal furnace. My grandparents had an oil furnace put in about 17 years ago, but Gramp was still shoveling coal into his 80s...Their coal delivery company out of NH told him on their last visit that they appreciated delivering to this house for almost 100 years but that maintaining customers so far north had cost the company about $7.35 per year for the last several years. You certainly don't see that kind of customer service loyalty anymore. - Ryan Quinn, 2020 (family home)