A building is like a person: The architect is the father, the builders the mother. A building has personality and character in the details of its style, its occupants and usage. It has a family in buildings related to it, either in style, period or human association. The St. Joseph’s rectory was one of five siblings, all located on Lewiston’s Main St.
A building is a piece of art. The architect draws on imagination and style to achieve aesthetic and practical effect. Often, historical or cultural allusions, even humor, are embedded in the details of a building. The St. Joseph’s rectory was a classic of its style, with a French-inspired roof and Italian-inspired windows.
A city is a visual tapestry. We see it every day and it impacts our living in subtle ways. If the threads of that tapestry complement each other, we have a subtle, if unconscious, appreciation of that beauty. If the threads do not complement each other, we have a subtle, if unconscious, sense of clash, conflict. That visual tapestry has an underside, too — the emotional connections to what we see.
The destruction of the St. Joseph’s rectory was an act of cultural violence, theft — architectural murder. Someone cut a hole out of the tapestry of Lewiston, severing threads of the city’s Irish, French, Catholic and American heritage. It is said that a parking lot will appear in its place.
Lewiston was not designed for parking; it was designed for walking. That is a good thing, and the people at Central Maine Medical Center know that. Too many of us are too fat simply because we don’t take all the small opportunities to walk every day. Being too fat has health consequences. But there is a public parking lot and garage almost immediately behind St. Joseph’s, a short walk away.
By the pace at which Lewiston tears down its historic architecture, one would think that the city aspires to be Lowell, Mass. — a city whose visual tapestry looks like somebody went to the mixed rag bag for the material to cover the holes that have been gutted from the heart of the city. The colors of the rags don’t match the tapestry, and the rags are much thinner than that the original weave of the tapestry. Lewiston was once called the “City of Spindles.” Its visual trademark now makes it the “City of Spires.”
Portland’s Congress Street has very little parking and few, if any, pocket parking lots as the St. Joseph’s rectory is rumored to become. Yet Congress Street thrives. Grace restaurant, a former Methodist church just off Congress, has no immediate parking. People love to make the short walk from a parking garage or some side street in Portland to their destination. It gives time for the anticipation to build, time to think, and a small dose of needed exercise. It is refreshing.
Lewiston should aspire to be more like Portland, and less like Lowell.
Though Lewiston’s riverfront may become a focus for development, the heart of the city is still well into the land side. Lisbon Street lends itself to walking, the Kora Shrine building is a visual and seasonal attraction, and She Doesn’t Like Guthrie’s is a vibrant site of cultural vitality. St. Joseph’s Church is the next asset in that district waiting to become the city’s art gallery or a signature restaurant.
If the site of the rectory indeed becomes a parking lot for an appropriate use of the church building, then the architectural murder will be lamentable, but less so. Otherwise it will be a premeditated lack of imagination.
John Henderson is a graduate of Lewiston High School and produces art and history as Hometown History Works — Memories Made Manifest. He lives in Auburn.
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