LEWISTON — There was little doubt Thursday afternoon that the city’s history began with the Bates Mill.
“This development made Lewiston,” historian Scott Hanson told the Lewiston Historic Preservation Review Board. “Without these mills and this canal, there is no city of Lewiston, just a small farming town here.”
Hanson heard no disagreements from board members as they considered a plan to place the area surrounding the Bates Mill Enterprise Complex on the National Register of Historic Places.
“It’s long overdue,” board Chairman William Clifford said afterward. The board would like to create a historic district including all of the city’s mill buildings.
“But at least we are getting part of it,” Clifford said.
The board voted 4-0 to recommend making the area between Lincoln and Canal streets and from Chestnut Street to Bates Mill No. 5 part of a new historic district.
The state’s Historic Preservation Commission is scheduled to review the district at 10:30 a.m. Oct. 22 in the conference room at Bates Mill No. 6.
The district plan will be sent to the national Keeper of the Registry in Washington, D.C., if the state commission agrees.
The commission’s Christi Mitchell said creating the district protects historic buildings from redevelopment and makes approved projects eligible for state and federal tax incentives — up to 20 percent in tax credits from the state and 25 to 30 percent from the federal government.
Being in the district doesn’t stop developers from doing anything to the building unless federal money is involved, Mitchell said.
“If they want, they can completely neglect it and do absolutely nothing,” she said. The only result could be losing their historic status, she said.
To qualify as a historic district, owners of the properties must agree. Mitchell said she was approached by the Bates Mill LLC, which owns most of the buildings. The corporation wanted the designation.
That left determining the historic value of the buildings, properties and structures. The state commission hired Hanson, an Augusta-based architectural historian, to review the district.
The district represents key importance in the cultural development and community planning of Lewiston as well as the development of industry in Maine, Hanson said.
Developments ranged from the founding of the company to the construction of Bates Mill No. 5.
“Benjamin Bates and his associates created a planned community when they built the mill buildings and the canals,” Hanson said.
He pointed to the architectural significance of the Bates Mill buildings, from the traditional red brick with decorative cornices to the massive Mill No. 5, one of the first in the nation to use steel-reinforced concrete.
“At the time, everyone could see they were creating something completely different,” Hanson said. “People were just awed by the construction of this building. There had never been anything like it.”
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