This article continues last time's topic of Boothbay innovations in the mid-1900s: the town manager system; the East Boothbay Water District; and the “new” town office and garage. Read the first part here.

In the 1960-1961 town report, Boothbay Town Manager Claude “Bud” Bransford wrote “Thoughts for the Future.” He argued the 1885 town office, a 10-foot by 16-foot room built onto the 1848 town hall, was insufficient and that the highway equipment should be kept under cover to slow its depreciation.

The new building

Bransford proposed a 67-foot by 40-foot garage below, with a 40-foot by 40-foot town office above. He explained the town would be debt-free in the coming year, so it was the ideal time to borrow $15,000 for the project, which would be repaid over five years' time.

At the March 6, 1961 town meeting, moderated by Town Clerk Clayton Dodge and presided over by Selectmen Alfred Lewis, Stan Hodgdon, Ken Walbridge, Bill Tompkins and Clint Barlow, the article passed. The town's valuation, more than double 1947's, was $2,500,000 with a tax rate of 0.076.

The planning process was done by fall. Bransford particularly thanked contractor Ed Harding and his employee Larry Oakes, as well as out-of-town steel and cement companies for help with the preliminaries.

Swing Lewis explained to me that Bud grew to rely on Ed's expertise in building practices and solving structure problems. Bud also acknowledged Sonny Hodgdon for Hodgdon Bros. shipyard's donation of a heating unit.

The Giles boys

During the week of October 5, 1961, the town manager, secretary Grace (Mrs. Alfred) Lewis, and part-timer Bernice Spinney moved out of the little town office into the town hall, where they conducted business while work proceeded.

Grace had worked for the town for many years, Bernice for five. Contractors Don Leavitt and Milton Giles & Sons (known to all as “the Giles boys”) were hired for the project.

The old office was quickly demolished, while the old garage behind (pictured last time) was moved near the dump to be used as cover for town salt.

The Giles boys were soon laying cement block for the first story garage.

Evidently it was slow going, according to the town manager, with “numerous, unavoidable delays” occasioned by shortages of building supplies.

Swing Lewis also mentioned the difficulty in conveying block to such a height and laying it. Long before the age of labor-saving everything, the block was carried up by hand, and it looks like 22 courses to me.

In the new building

In the 1961-1962 town report, Alfred Lewis, head selectman, thanked the town manager for the “time, effort and worry” he devoted to the project. Also in that report, Bransford stated business started in the still unfinished new town office January 16, 1962, with Bernice Spinney the full time secretary. Bud thanked “Milton Giles and his able crew,” who had been “most helpful in making suggestions which saved time and money.” That was true too when they worked for me and my husband in the 1970s and 1980s. They always came in ahead of schedule and under estimate, to our benefit, not theirs, a rarity today.

The first selectmen's meeting took place in the new office in mid-July 1962, also the first time the men could all see each other at once. The prior cramped office placed them behind doors and desks that didn't allow face-to-face conversation. For a couple of years, Bransford remarked on the money saved by garaging and repairing its trucks under cover. Then it was old news, accepted as the norm.

Thanks to all

I thank Bernice Spinney for her sharp memories of working for the town, 1956 to 1989, and Tracey Hodgdon for telling me to call her.

I also thank Swing Lewis for his memories of the building project and the conditions at that time, and I thank Stan Hodgdon, Larry Oakes, and Evelyn Giles, sister of the Giles boys, for their comments. Lastly I thank George McEvoy for his 50 years of being the region's consistent, quiet benefactor. We owe him, in this case, our thanks that the 1848 town hall still exists at its current Railway Village site – and that the old town garage and office still stands in good shape on its site of 50 years.