>
> PTN is on a mission. (you hear Mission Impossible music in the
> background) You are invited to join. The mission is to bring to the
> light of day the names and history of people in the trades, from the
> past. People that we should all know about and learn from.  As usual, if
> you choose to go on this mission PTN will acknowledge your involvement.
>

The opportunity to single out identifiable individuals who deserve credit
for their contributions to the historical, built environment in this part
of Maine (Midcoast region) is unfortunately quite limited. Most of our
construction is of the vernacular/anonymous variety, and the historical
record affords little opportunity to assign credit to particular craftsmen
with any confidence. Our rollcall of contributors to the treasury would
read something like a volume devoted to Medieval ecclesiastical painting,
except that instead of listing "The Master of the Bruges Alterpiece" etc.,
it would have to list people like "The craftsman who's hand can be
identified with having festooned seven different 'best parlors' in four
different towns with outlandish dentilated crown mouldings surmounting
fluted or reeded facia boards", or the earlier craftsman who is associated
with four homes that contain his elegant corner cupboards, all with X
paneled lower doors.

Several individuals do, however, immediately come to mind, who's
contributions are known and can be appreciated. For starters here's two of
them.

The first craftsman sui generis, the ship carver Elbury W. Hatch, born in
Newcastle, Me. in
1849, who produced a few examples of his art as exterior architectural
ornament.
Those that survive (two porches and a gazebo are known to me, as well as
some carved frieze detail) show him to be a master of fluid Victorian
decoration
in wood that is most usually found in cast iron constructions in urban
settings.
These three examples are all located away from main roads so that
encountering them adds an element of serendipity and much needed variation,
common
in urban landscapes, but rare in Northern New England where almost all
exteriors of any
aesthetic and architectural distinction tend to hew close to the expected
forms
and details of the periods from Colonial through Victorian.

The second craftsman is a local character and preservationist named Joel
Houston Dodge, who
now in his late 70s is still pursuing his life's work of preserving as much
of the material heritage
of our region as he can. Houston, the son of a local bank president and
high muck-a-muck,
 showed from an early age a decided inclination to hang out with the few
remaining traditional craftspeople in the area rather than the professional
class that his family expected him to grow up into.
As a teen he learned carving from Elbury Hatch, for instance, and inherited
his tools; spent summers on crews constructing barns, the last post and
beam structures produced before the recent self-conscious
revival of the craft; served as Wallace Nutting's last apprentice before
Nutting was forced by the depression to close down his workshops; and began
his never-ending task of saving old structures by dismantling frames,
storing parts, moving buildings and engaging in restoration: All this at a
time when interest in preservation and learning the old crafts was almost
non-existent in this part of the country, at least. As a result Houston was
viewed until quite recently as a near-mad eccentric and wildman. He can
still be found crawling along in the breakdown lane on Route 1 in his
ancient jeep, a 30 foot sill or plate precariously perched on the roof, as
he removes an unwanted 200 year old structure, stick by stick, from its
site, to his dreamscape of a property where uncountable reconstructed sheds
and barns perch along lanes that are also home to an even greater number of
carefully piled, salvaged frames. In the barns can be found the interior
and exterior elements of those and other buildings as well as museums worth
of artifacts of all descriptions including the tools of every imaginable
trade.

For 40 years, until the beginning of  preservationist consciousness in the
early 1970s Houston was the only game in town, learning what he could,
saving as much as he humanly could and teaching the few others who
developed any interest in what he was up to. If, since then, the craft has
become more scholarly and scientific, and his knowledge-base is shown to be
too cluttered with ill-conceived assumptions passed to him through anecdote
and the once prevailing wisdom, he still serves as an important teacher to
many and an inspiration to many, many more.

Bruce