Rockland, ME -- 1941

[LizzieMaine]

Found some interesting old snapshots while going thru some boxes --

This is the North corner of Park and Main Streets, Rockland ME, on a cold fall morning in 1941, with all the downtown loafers hanging around watching the traffic go by. The drugstore remained in this location -- complete with original fixtures and soda fountain -- until a bank bought the entire block and evicted all the tenants last spring. (That bank won't ever get any business from me.)

 

[LizzieMaine]

This is the Strand Theatre -- my current part-time workplace -- as it was, fall 1941.

The theatre is the only building on this block still standing -- the gas station has long since been replaced by a bakery, and the grocery store long ago gave way to an alley that leads to a parking lot behind another bank.

 

[AdmiralTofu]

I'm from Thomaston!

I'm currently living in South Carolina for financial reasons :cry: but I was born and raised in midcoast Maine and hope to return one day. Even though these pictures are from an era long before mine (or even my parents'), it still feels like I'm walking down Main Street right this second. I'm honestly not sure if I want to smile or cry right now.

Very sad and upset to hear Goodnow's isn't there anymore. :rage: Which bank was it? If I ever make it back home, I want to know so I can do like you and never give them my business.

Thanks for the great pictures... and memories.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Hey! Great to meet a fellow Midcoaster!

It was Camden National that bought out the block -- there was controversy about it, but money won out. Goodnows is still in business though -- they moved into the building on the corner of Park and Union there, where the Wayfarer East Hotel used to be. They moved the fountain and all, but it's not the same as having them right down town.

If you ever get back to town, drop by the Strand for a show -- I;ll get you in for free!

 

[Hemingway Jones]

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Wow, Lizzie, those are great photos. It is wonderful to see pieces of our New England heritage being preserved.

If ever you have the chance, it would be neat to take a photo of your theater now from the same angle.

 

[AdmiralTofu]

So glad to hear Goodnow's is still around. I mean, that really is the important part -- it's people that make a business, more than some ol' building. At the same time... like you said, it's just not the same.

I still have a standing account with Camden National... *grumble* Granted, it's only a few dollars by this point (heh), but it still bothers me a little.

I can't wait to get back to town, even if just for a visit. I'll be sure to stop by!

 

[LizzieMaine]

The same locations, as of this morning --

The marquee shown in the 1941 photo was actually an update installed in 1939 -- when the theatre was restored, the original 1923 version was recreated since the 1939 version was too far gone to save.

Well on its way to being just another featureless office building. And you can't even get a Coke there.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

Great photos, Lizzie. I love before and after photos. Sometimes they are depressing. At least in the case of the theater, it looks pretty good.

 

[AdmiralTofu]

Yeah, the Strand looks really great. I haven't been there since the restoration (in fact, I believe the last time I was actually there was as a wee tot, to see Spaceballs back in 1987), but it's looking really, really nice.

Sad about the Goodnow's location, but overall, I'm happy with what Rockland's doing with itself. A far cry from the dumpy, slightly creepy feel of the town fifteen years ago. A complete 180.

 

[Fletch]

I'm a little let down that the Strand marquee no longer looks like the Edward Hopperesque visual in the "Sunny Side" bumper on TCM. (A fake, BTW; here's Hopper's original.)

Chop Suey, 1929

 

[Fletch]

Meanwhile...half a continent away...

Ames, Iowa, 1941.
Lincolnway, US 30, leads thru Campustown, the business hub of Iowa State College of A&M (after 1959 a University).
Here you're heading east on L-way toward Main Street and downtown about 2 mi away. Two business districts in a town of just over 10,000 is pretty impressive in that day and age.
And just look what's playing at the Ames Theater.

After the show, it's Campus Drug for that good College Ice Cream.
(Does any school besides Penn State still make its own ice cream?)

2006. The same view, a little forelengthened (is that a word?).

Most of the buildings that were there in 1941 are there today, but not a storefront remains.
The Varsity Theater is the only one still doing what it did 65 years earlier. (And of course, the interior is all carpet and plastic.)
The Ames don't play pictures no more. Campus Drug and Service Foods are a big bar. Student Supply is an Indonesian cafe. (Your average Iowa Stater in 1941 couldn't find Indonesia on a globe, and probably couldn't today.)
A local rental baron built that big apt bldg a few blocks back. Then another one, even taller. The restaurant atop the second one has a nice view of the campus.
Lincolnway has been 4 lanes for decades.
Ames has grown from 10,000 to way past 50,000. ISU has grown into a giant scientific and research institution.
Main Street, of course, has been slowly drying up for years.

Sidelight: (lest you think Ames in 1941 was a sleepy backwater...)
In 1939 this man, a professor in ISC's physics department, invented an all-electronic digital computer. He took it to the department head and asked that patent papers be filed. The dep't stalled on it for 3 years, then said, "Oops. Too late. War on, y'know."
(hmm, maybe it was something of a backwater...)

It took 35 years and a Federal court case to establish that John Atanasoff invented electronic computing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yeah, the Strand looks really great. I haven't been there since the restoration (in fact, I believe the last time I was actually there was as a wee tot, to see Spaceballs back in 1987), but it's looking really, really nice.

Sad about the Goodnow's location, but overall, I'm happy with what Rockland's doing with itself. A far cry from the dumpy, slightly creepy feel of the town fifteen years ago. A complete 180.

Yep, I started working in Rockland, at the old WRKD studios downtown, in 1986 -- and you could scrape the fish goo off the windows with a putty knife when the processing plants were running. Icky.

But I really do miss parts of the old city -- things haven't been quite the same since we lost Newberry's. I used to eat at the lunch counter there every afternoon, and I've never had a hamburger anywhere else with quite the same -- distinctive -- flavor!!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Ames, Iowa, 1941.
Lincolnway, US 30, leads thru Campustown, the business hub of Iowa State College of A&M (after 1959 a University).
Here you're heading east on L-way toward Main Street and downtown about 2 mi away. Two business districts in a town of just over 10,000 is pretty impressive in that day and age.
And just look what's playing at the Ames Theater.

Geez -- was that the *only* picture on the small town circuit in 1941?? Now I'm going to have to see it, and see if it was any good.

Meanwhile, just for you, here's a shot I took of the old marquee just before it came down. Hopperesque enough?

 

[Fletch]

It'll have to do until the fake thing comes along.

 

[dhermann1]

Neon sign

What became of the old neon sign on the Drug Store? I've always wished that more people would preserve these, but they're a little oversized for the avreage collector.
BTW, Indonesia didn't exist in 1941. It would have been known as the Dutch East Indies, I believe.

 

[CharlieH.]

Swell pics, Lizzie and Fletch!
Boy...I just love the fonts on the drug store signs...

 

[LizzieMaine]

That sign came down in the '70s when the city passed an anti-neon ordinance as part of the whole misguided "beautification" movement. It was replaced by a very dreary back-lit plastic sign. The theatre had to get a special exception to have neon -- but even with that we aren't allowed to blink the neon or use chasing lights around the rim of the sign. Dratted Philistines.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I really hope to make it up there one of these days.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Look! Lamb legs were 28 cents! How campy! How ironic and kitch!

.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Look! Lamb legs were 28 cents! How campy! How ironic and kitch!

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Nah, the *real* hipsters would go for the 27 cent Pork Loin. Washed down with a Pabst.