Maine Central Railroad Depot, Brooks Maine

Date added: January 23, 2025

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The Former Maine Central Railroad Passenger Depot in Brooks, Maine is an example of a type of railroad building that was once common in Maine. Erected in 1892 by the Maine Central Railroad (MEC), the Queen Anne style depot is located alongside the tracks of the Belfast and Moosehead Railroad, the rail line that the MEC leased between 1870 and 1925. This rail line was first conceived of by the City of Belfast in 1836 as part of a movement to develop a new open water port for Quebec, but it was not built until 1870, at which time it became the MEC's Belfast Branch linking central Maine with the coast between Bath and Bucksport. The management of the railroad reverted back to the City of Belfast in 1925 and for seven more decades it continued to play an important role in the economic and cultural life of the town of Brooks and the greater Waldo County region. The one-story frame Depot has a distinctive hipped roof with bracketed overhanging soffits and decorative eaves, original windows with art glass sash, and a three-part siding scheme featuring clapboards, angled v-match boarding and patterned shingles. The building also retains most of its original interior plan (waiting room, Agent's office and women's toilet), interior finishes including built-in Passenger seats in the waiting room, and an early 20th-century three-stage semaphore. The Passenger Depot handled ticketing and communications for the Brooks Station, which until the mid-20^th Century also contained a freight depot and section house.

After 1960 when passenger service ended on the line the Depot was used by the Station Agent for freight alone.

Over 30 years after first considering the benefits of a railroad to Belfast, the City in 1867 finally established a corporation to clear a route for the new Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad, lay the tracks, and negotiate with the principal railroads in the state to utilize the line. After the corporation completed the 33 mile route between the coast and Burnham Junction in 1870, they entered into what would be a 55 year lease agreement with the Maine Central Railroad to use the line. In order to integrate the B & ML rail with their other lines, the MEC had to immediately adjust the width of the tracks from Portland gauge (5' 6" between tracks) to Standard gauge of 4' 8½". The MEC also needed to build all the facilities for serving passengers and freight at each of the line's eight primary stops. The first depot at Brooks was built in 1881, and based on photographs reproduced in Downeast Depots, it appears similar to the Thorndike passenger depot/freight station that had been built up the line ten years earlier. It is likely that both the original Brooks depot and the Thorndike depot were the work of MEC architect/engineer Thomas Holt, who in the 1860s and 1870 was responsible for designing "a series of small stations with decorative trim that reflected current architectural fashions". The design for Thorndike, with its gable roof with broadly overhanging eaves supported on angle brackets, paired windows in the gable ends and stick-style details in the peak of the gable roof is very similar to Holt's plan for the passenger station at Wilton from 1873. After the first Brooks depot burned another passenger depot was erected, but the design was updated, adopting more Queen Anne-style details. The unsigned plans for this depot were drawn in 1892 and depict the current building, with the hip roof, decorative brackets and trim, tri-partite windows and siding, and a three-room interior. Within the title block for the Brooks plan is the notation "Stations built after this plan at Carmel & Unity - 1895" followed by "Carmel Station burned Oct. 1908" in a different hand.

It was not difficult for the MEC or other railroads to keep abreast of newer architectural styles. "By using inexpensive woodwork produced by commercial sawmills, it was not difficult to create a great variety of elaborately ornamented styles for small buildings. As the Italianate style gave way to the Queen Anne, these changes in fashion were quickly reflected in new railroad buildings." And although stylistic details may have varied based on when stations and depots along a single line were built, both the larger and smaller railways adopted motifs that helped to visually "brand" the railroad. Thus, travelers on the Canadian Pacific line in northwestern Maine would have encountered depots with half-timbering and stucco. Based on a comparison of MEC stations the line was characterized by the use of darker painted siding below window sill level and lighter siding with darker trim in the upper three-quarters of the side walls. (Even the tiny Winnecook Station, at the north end of the line, and which had a three-bay, gable roof building and no other depot characteristics, exhibited this paint scheme.) Several of the depots also made use of a filigree trim on the eaves, and diagonally laid narrow sheathing boards below window level. Only four of the Belfast and Moosehead Lake's eight depots still exist: Brooks and Unity (1895) and the earlier stations at Thorndike and City Point, both from c. 1871. The City Point Depot has been restored, as has the Unity station. However, a new "freight house" and restaurant constructed adjacent to the Unity Depot seriously impacts the property's setting and sense of feeling. Although extant, the Thorndike station was moved to the Railway Village in Boothbay, Maine.

When the city officials in Belfast first considered establishing a railroad that would link their port to inland Maine (and beyond) they were primarily concerned with promoting the economic development of Belfast. However, after the line was established it had a profound effect on the economic development of many of the towns along the line. As reported in the 1895 Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics for Maine, "the railroad has played a conspicuous part in the development of Maine. The cities and towns along the leading rivers, as well as those on the coast, have water transportation to the outside markets open to them, but the inland communities are almost entirely dependent upon the railroads for the transportation facilities, for both passengers and freight." Brooks, like many other railroad towns in Maine, prospered in part due to the presence of the railroad. In 1871, the year the railroad opened, the Maine Register lists in Brooks a boot and shoe manufacturer, a lumber mill, a stave and spool mill, and several wheelwrights. By 1880 the list of enterprises in the town of 877 residents had more than doubled, and included two shoe manufacturers, a carriage maker and a carriage ironer, three wheelwrights and three millwrights, three assorted wood products mills, three smiths, one grist mill, five people manufacturing clothing, three butchers and the Brooks Cheese Factory. According to the Gazetteer of Maine, 1882, "the Brooks cheese factory is well supplied by the farmers, and sends out large quantities of excellent cheese." While the cheese-producing industry in Maine was relatively short-lived (it was gone in Brooks by 1884), after the Maine Central Railroad started running refrigerated cars between Bangor, Portland and Boston in 1881 farmers throughout the state started shipping meat, eggs, fruit, and other perishable products by rail, followed shortly thereafter with sweat cream, butter, milk and other dairy products.

The railroad also helped to facilitate the growth of the home-based clothing manufactories that developed throughout the region after the Civil War, and was responsible for the five clothing manufacturers noted above (and later a 'pants factory') As described by Bill Bunting in A Days Work, Part 1:

Boston was second only to New York as a center of the clothing business: in 1884, with 311 firms clothing was said to be the city's chief industry. Rural Maine did the largest share of the actual manufacturing. The industry was an outgrowth of railroads, the sewing machine, and of course, the mass production of fabrics. Clothing parts were precut at Boston shops and sent out to rural contractors … by express. Contractors typically set up in two-story frame buildings and distributed the parts to farm households for assembly. Factory employees sorted, counted, cut button holes, sewed buttons, and pressed and packed the assembled garments for shipment back to Boston … Piece work rates were miserly, but in scores of Maine towns, from Swan's Island to Brooks to Cornish to Sangerville, the ready-made clothing industry provided vital cash for a great many households. In 1888 in Waldo County it was said to be impossible to hire a woman to clean house, so widespread was the clothing business. The Reverend David Brackett, of Brooks, who in 1885 had been five years in the pants and vest business, claimed that two girls in his employ had made $600 a year on piecework.

In addition to the generic "store houses" seen on the 1898 Brooks Station site plan other common trackside enterprises included ice houses (City Point, Burnham and Unity), a steam mill (Unity), hay barns (Unity and Thorndike), cattle pens (Burnham) and potato houses (Brooks and Unity). For at least three decades starting in 1903 Brooks also had a corn canning facility, which again utilized the railroad to distribute its product.

After the MEC gave up their lease for the B&ML line in 1925, the City of Belfast took over the management of the railroad, which then became known as the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad. They continued to run both freight and passenger trains, although one of their initial challenges was to procure rolling stock, which initially they leased from the MEC. After World War II the City purchased two new diesel engines, which had the effect of increasing the line's efficiency and revenue. Two solid contracts, from the US Postal Service and with HP Hood to ship bulk milk, provided a base for commercial use of the line, but both of these agreements ended at about the same time as passenger service, which last ran on March 9^th, 1960. Starting after the second World War the hill towns of Waldo County turned towards commercial poultry production on a grand scale, and the B&ML provided the method for distributing feed throughout the county. In 1961 the B&ML built its own feed mill where the old Belfast passenger station had once stood, the first such facility built by a railroad company in the United States, and leased it to Maplewood Poultry. While the poultry business shifted to the southern states after the 1980s other localized enterprises utilized the rail line on a more limited basis.

In 1988 passenger excursions were conducted on the line, which the City continued to own until selling the property to private investors in 1991. In 2005 all of the rails were removed from the Belfast yard, and the line was truncated at City Point. Presently, the B&ML rail line is owned by the Maine Department of Transportation. The Brooks Preservation Society owns the stations at Brooks and Unity, as well as the historic rolling stock in Unity, and are in negotiations with the MDOT to run passenger excursions on the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad.

The first developments in railroading in the U.S. took place during the 1820s, but it was several years before Maine entered the arena. In 1833 the short Bangor and Piscataquis Railroad and Canal Company received the first charter in Maine and opened the first steam railroad in the state following year. Also in 1837 the Portland, Saco, and Portsmouth was chartered. This became the first major railroad line in the state and provided service from Portland to Boston, through connections with the Eastern Railroad at the state line with New Hampshire.

Although the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad wasn't chartered until 1853 (and not built until 1870), an earlier charter, given in 1836, was one of four other efforts to develop rail in Belfast. This happened during a period when several Maine ports were competing to establish rail lines between Maine's open water winter ports and inland Canada, especially Quebec. This effort was summarized in 1953 by railroad historian and author Carlton J. Corliss, and reprinted in Along the Rails:

During the "Battle of the Gauges," several important railway lines had been built or were under way. Notable among them was the thirty-four mile Belfast owned Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad, one of the very few city owned railroads in the United States. If Belfast had realized its ambitions of a century or more ago, it would today be the seaport terminus for several railroad lines. The first company in Maine, and probably the first in the United States to receive a charter for what was planned as an international railroad was the Belfast & Quebec Railroad, organized by Belfast citizens and chartered in 1836 for the purpose of building a railroad to the St. Lawrence River and diverting the traffic of that river to Penobscot Bay … Belfast also had plans for railroads to Bangor, Newport, Moosehead Lake, Waterville, and Hallowell, The only one of these projects that materialized, however, was the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad which had been chartered in 1853, and completed to Burnham Junction on the Maine Central in 1870 …

A very detailed and complete account of the founding of the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad, as well as its history through the end of the twentieth century is developed by the historian Bruce C. Cooper and published on his website.

Building Description

The (former) Maine Central Railroad Passenger Depot in Brooks, Maine is a late-19^th Century wood frame structure that was built to serve as the passenger station and Agent's office for Brooks. Designed in the Stick Style, a variation of the Queen Anne, the building features a broad, overhanging roof, decorative supporting roof brackets, and three types of exterior wall cladding. The large, three-part windows contain decorative sash filled with etched and colored glass. The interior of the building retains its varnished wood walls and ceilings, original wall mounted benches, ticket window, Agent's office, privy and sink. A rare, early 20^th Century semaphore, with working mechanical arms, is mounted on the roof of the Depot and can still be controlled from the Agent's office. Built by the Maine Central Railroad in 1892 as one component of the Brooks Railroad Station.

The (Former) Maine Central Railroad Passenger Depot, Brooks is a Stick-style, wood frame, one-story building, located along the former Maine Central Railroad tracks in the Waldo County town of Brooks. Brooks is a small rural community (population approximately 1,000) in the north central portion of Waldo County. The main commercial and civic center of the town is located at the intersection of the north-to-south oriented State Route 7 and the east-to-west oriented Route 139. One block south of this intersection is Marsh Stream, which roughly parallels Route 139 as it flows to the west. Almost immediately south of the stream is the east-to-west oriented former Maine Central Railroad, also known as the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad. One vernacular, mid-19^th Century south-facing residence is positioned north of the tracks and south of the stream. The Passenger Depot (or Depot) was once part of a small complex that contained a freight house and section house both of which were located south of the line and west of the Depot. Built in 1892 to replace an earlier structure that burned, the Depot is the only remaining historic structure on the property. It is sandwiched between the main tracks to the north and a siding to the south. East of the station, Route 7 has a level crossing over the main line and siding tracks. Directly south of the siding, but not on the former station property, are two wood frame buildings, one of which was historically associated with shipping creamery products. Southeast of the siding is a large barn which was built to store potatoes for shipping. Historic topographic and cadastral maps indicate that additional freight houses lined the siding between the creamery and the potato barn, as well as on the other side of Route 7, but currently these areas are undeveloped. The Depot is surrounded by a grassy lawn, portions of which are overgrown with weeds.

The Depot has a rectangular footprint and a broadly overhanging hipped roof with the ridge of the roof oriented east to west. The building sits on a low foundation primarily constructed of granite blocks occasionally supplemented with fieldstones and concrete patches. On the north side of the building is a new wooden platform at grade level. The roof is covered with asphalt shingles (green on the north, west and south planes; black on the east plane), and a thin brick chimney rises through the roof at the east end of the ridge. Near the northeast corner of the building is a vertical cased shaft that rises against the outside wall of the building, pierces the edge of the roof and rises approximately eight feet above the eaves. Attached to the top of this shaft is the Station's semaphore. This three-stage, lower quadrant semaphore has two steel arms, one rotating to the north of the shaft (for west bound trains) and one rotating to the south of the shaft (for east bound trains). Each arm also has three spectacles (clear, red and blue/green) which would be positioned in front of the lantern at the top of the shaft. The arms retain traces of the traditional red field and white band paint design. The semaphore arms are raised into position by manipulating a pair of mechanical levers located in the Agent's office.

The eaves of the building overhang the side walls by approximately five feet and provide a measure of shelter around the building, especially over the platform. Decorative and functional wooden braces support the ends of the eaves. Each brace consists of a vertical post attached to the wall, a rafter extension, an upper horizontal element and a long, diagonal brace connecting the base of the post to the eaves. The bottom of the post has a decorative, ogee-shaped notch against which the end of the diagonal member is seated. With the exception of the rafter extensions the remaining elements of the braces are marked with an edge bevel that terminates at a lamb's tongue. There are three brace units on the east and west ends of the building, four on the south elevation and three full size and one partial unit on the north elevation.

Through the use of different siding materials the exterior walls of the Depot are divided into three horizontal sections. Just above the foundation the building is clad in a tongue and groove wooden siding, installed on a diagonal. This siding is topped with a wooden, molded belt course, (resembling an exterior chair rail) above which the walls are covered with clapboards. Another molded beltcourse separates the clapboards from the uppermost section of wall which features patterned wooden shingles which flare slightly to meet the belt course. The two parallel belt courses also form the upper and lower frames of all of the building's windows, with the exception of a small replacement window on the east elevation. Corner boards also mark each of the corners, and a pierced rake trim with a dropped, half-moon motif rings the building.

The primary elevation faces north and is divided into five unequal bays. At the east end of the elevation the otherwise-rectangular footprint of the building expands under the eaves northward for the width of two bays, to create a Projecting Agent's office on the interior. West of this anomaly, the wall is equally divided into three bays, with the Depot's only exterior door located at the center. To either side are large, three-part wooden windows. The lowest section of these windows have two-light single-hung sash. Above this is a fixed sash divided between two clear, lower panes, and a Queen-Anne style unit containing a large middle pane surrounded by small, square lights. The larger center panes of this upper unit contain colored glass etched in floral patterns while the smaller panes are solid colors executed in art glass, Another example of these decorative upper sash is placed above the wide five-panel door. The two easternmost bays on this elevation are filled with similar window components, although these examples, as well as a third window on the west side of the Agent's office, are narrower than the window and door bays on the main wall. The western elevation of the Depot has two three-part window bays, and the southern elevation has three evenly spaced bays. Two of the three bays on this side of the building have three-part windows; the easternmost bay contains a smaller, fixed sash that was added when a bathroom was installed in the building. The east side of the building contains two window bays, both examples of the narrower windows that characterize the Agent's office.

The interior of the Depot features the Agent's office in the northeast corner, a bathroom in the southeast corner, and a waiting room that occupies the remainder of the building. The ceilings throughout are approximately 12 feet high. Each of these rooms have similar finishes. The ceilings and walls are clad in varnished, tongue and groove bead board, and the floors are laid in 3½" wood, possibly fir or southern yellow pine. The walls have molded base boards, wide chair rail, picture rail above the windows and crown molding at ceiling level. Stock moldings with bulls-eye corner blocks trim the windows and the two doors that lead into the eastern rooms. A ticket window is installed on the wall between the Agent's office and the waiting room, and the door into the office is comprised of two, mis-matched half-door segments joined as a Dutch Door. There is a thick wooden shelf or counter attached to the lower half of this door, and another similar shelf is positioned on either side of the ticket window - this latter shelf has a floral pattern incised the edge that faces the waiting room. The chimney is positioned against the wall between the ticket window and the bathroom door. Attached to the chimney via a high stove pipe is a cast iron stove made by the Union Stove Works in New York, New York. Stamped "Station Agent #24" this standard railroad depot stove is not the example that had been used in this building, but was assembled from a top unit from the Bangor station, a middle section from the Waterville station, and a base from the Calais station, all of which were stations owned and erected by the Maine Central Railroad.

Lining the west and south walls of the depot are the original wooden, wall-mounted wood slat benches divided into seats by regularly spaced S curved metal arms. A large wooden bulletin board is mounted on the southern wall between the two windows. In the Agent's office all of the original built-in furniture, including desks and shelves have been removed, although scars in the floor and shadows on the walls indicate their location. The large steel levers for the semaphore are mounted on the north wall of the Agent's office, next to which are wall mounted components thought to be associated with a telegraph system. The bathroom has an interior partition which separates a wash room to the north from the toilet room to the south. As originally constructed the bathroom had a one-hole privy in the southeast comer of the building. The privy was discontinued and a flush toilet installed in the mid-twentieth century. While the toilet has been removed, the original wash basin, a small porcelain bowl set into a wooden counter, is extant. The building was electrified in 1928, and several of the original ceiling lamps (or single bulb fixtures) are still in place.

As extant today, the Depot varies slightly from how it was depicted on the plan for the "Passenger Station at Brooks" located in the collections of the Maine Historical Society. The plans depict a decorative chimney pot on the chimney and cresting or decorative trim along the ridge. On the plan the "Women's Toilet" occupied the entire southeast corner of the building (with windows on both the east and south exterior walls) and small closet was located in the southeast corner of the Agent's office. In contrast to the plan, a six foot long segment of the east wall of the bathroom is inset from the exterior wall of the building, thus creating a shorth niche or hall off the Agent's office. Whether this was done when the Depot was constructed or represents a subsequent alteration is unknown. After 1960, when passenger service ended, the station was staffed only by a single station agent. During this time two new thimbles were installed in the chimney so that a smaller stove could be used to heat the Agent's office and at some point a suspended ceiling was also installed in the office. (This has since been removed.) For a brief period in the 1990s the depot was utilized as a restaurant, and during this period the built-in furniture in the office was removed. While the building had been plumbed, both historically and when it functioned as a restaurant, currently there are no provisions for running water.

As originally configured, the Depot was situated at the center of a long wooden platform that stretched east towards Route 7 and west towards the freight house, and wrapped around the east side of both buildings. Portions of that platform were removed when the freight house was demolished, and the remainder of the platform deteriorated to the extent that it had to be replaced in 2008. However, due to insurance requirements, the current platform is both shorter and lower than the original feature.

Historic plans and photographs indicate that the freight house was slightly longer than the Passenger Depot, with a flat roof, and at least four, wide doors that opened onto a high platform (roughly equivalent to the height of a box car floor) over the platform. Based on a photograph in possession of the Brooks Historical Society, the first Passenger Depot had been erected somewhat further to the south, and the siding was positioned between that building and the main tracks. Extant station site plans drawn by the Chief Engineer's Office of the Maine Central Railroad, and located in the collection of Bruce C. Cooper, show that the present building, freight house and long platform were either in place, or planned for, in 1898. The freight house and section house (an equipment shed) were demolished by the 1980s.