Poking Around in Maine

Poking Around in Maine: Bangor Area
Two Little City Mysteries Solved
by Craig Mains

While wandering around Chain's Little City neighborhood in the fall I noticed some street-side markers and wondered what they were for. One kind was a cast concrete pillar like the one shown above. I noticed several of these at various locations in the neighborhood, always on corners. This one has 1950 cast into it.

Here is another of the cast concrete pillars. I think this one was at the corner of Center and Cumberland. This one has a bracket attached to it, which is not very visible since it's in a shadow.

Here's a close up of the bracket, which made me think something had been attached to the post at one time. Some of the other posts had holes where the bracket would have been but the bracket was missing. Some had no holes. Shown in left, lower corner is Angel's nose.

The other kind of marker was a granite stone with the letter H on it. I noticed 10 or 12 of these scattered around the Little City neighborhood, always on corners. They are about six inches square.

Since both types were found only at corners I wondered if the two types of markers were somehow connected---perhaps some kind of survey markers. I emailed the Bangor HIstorical Society and, surprisingly, the person who responded wasn't aware of either of them. He thought the concrete markers were likely old stone hitching posts. There were several granite hitching posts around the neighborhood but it didn't seem likely to me that the concrete pillars were hitching posts since they had what I assumed to be dates cast into them that were all well after the horse and buggy days. On some of the concrete posts you could see exposed rebar so I knew they couldn't be old enough to be hitching posts. The concrete pillars were also only on corners while the stone hitching posts were usually in front of houses.

As for the granite H markers, he had never seen any so he had no idea what they could be. He didn't seem all that interested in either of the markers, which made me think maybe Chain was right---that I was the only person who wondered about these types of things.

I noticed that some of the concrete pillars had remnants of blue paint on them and it made me wonder if they were connected with the Postal Service. I remembered that I used to see small letter drop boxes when I was a kid and wondered if these were pillars that the drop boxes were formerly mounted on. It turns out that is what they were.

A reverse-image search led me to this photo from the Forgotten New York website. The pillar has a date of 1949 cast into it and still has a bracket attached. I would be curious what the total length of these poles are because they would probably have to be installed fairly deep to keep them upright.

Shown above is the type of letter drop box that was attached to the pillars. Apparently, some of these old drop boxes were still in use in a few locations in New York City in 1999, when the Forgotten New York article was posted. They were referred to by the Postal Service as Style B letter boxes (Style A was flat-topped and was phased out in 1918). The Postal Service used round-topped, pole-mounted letter boxes similar to these going back into the 1870s. They were modified occasionally over the years. The last time the Postal Service purchased these types of letter boxes was in 1955. In 1962, there were 109,263 in service. By 2016, there were only 169. I haven't seen one for a long time.

The reason there aren't more of the leftover concrete pillars is that the Postal Service, when possible, attached the letter boxes directly to utility poles such as the one shown above. The concrete pillars were used when that wasn't an option. I remember the letters boxes from when I was a kid, but not the concrete pillars.

This photo and the previous photo were both also from the Forgotten New York website. It was nice to know that I wasn't the only oddball pondering the significance of these types of overlooked urban artifacts. (The Forgotten New York website is sort of an Atlas Obscura, except it is geographically limited to NYC. It has been around longer than Atlas Obscura, however.)

The pole-mounted letter boxes were replaced by these larger, free-standing letter boxes, which were able to accept small packages as well as letters. They are now also gradually becoming less common. I overheard someone refer to one of these not long ago as an "old-fashioned letter box." Those are the types of little things that make you realize you are getting old---when someone refers to something as "old-fashioned" and you realize that the thing they are referring to is the thing that replaced the thing you think of as "old-fashioned."

As for the granite H stones---while browsing the internet I found this bit in the Bangor city code:

City of Bangor, ME / The Code / Part II: General Legislation / Streets
Article IV
Street Monuments
[Adopted as Ch. VI, Art. 6]
§ 271-19
Composition.

All street monuments shall be either of granite or iron and granite. If of granite, the street monument shall be not less than four feet in length, not less than one foot square at the bottom and not more than six inches square at the top and shall be marked with the letter "H." If of iron and granite, the street monument shall be a granite post not less than 2 1/2 feet in length, and an iron rod firmly fixed into the same, and extending to the surface of the ground. All of said monuments shall be located, set and reset by the City Engineer and placed perpendicularly in the earth and not less than four feet deep.

That answered some questions and left some unanswered. What exactly is a "street monument?" And, what are they for and what the heck does the H stand for?

Since the City Engineer was mentioned, I emailed the the Bangor City Engineering Department. I was informed that they were indeed survey markers to show the location of the city's rights-of-way. He told me they were scattered around the older parts of the city and he thought the H stood for Highway, but he didn't seem too sure about that.

The thing about the H markers is that while only a few inches show above ground, the markers are four feet long so practically the whole thing is underground. The city must have really wanted to make sure no one moved those markers! The person in the City Engineering Department said he didn't think the city was still bound by the ordinance. (It is, however, still in the code.) He'd been with the City for eight years and was not aware of the Engineering Department ever setting a granite marker. He didn't know when the last one was placed. Since the markers only protruded a couple of inches above the ground surface, I suspect there are additional "street monuments" here and there that aren't visible because the tops have gotten covered over the years. I never saw any with an iron rod fixed into them, although they all had holes where an iron rod could have been inserted.

October 2022

 

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