Demolition nears completion

    HOULTON — The final pieces of the former JCPenney building were flattened last week as demolition neared its final stages.
Pioneer Times File Photo
SHOPPING HUB — This undated photo shows the now demolished store during Houlton’s Potato Feast celebration.

Pioneer Times Photo/Sarah Berthiaume
BLANK SPOT — Last week, wood and brick rubble replaced the former JCPenney building in Market Square. The now vacant space may eventually make room for a new bank.

    As of press time, assorted wood, brick and metal scraps were all that remained of the two-story department store purchased this fall by the Savings Bank of Maine. Demolition started over a week ago and was completed by Dickison & London.
    During the demolition, spectators gathered in bunches at times, watching the brick and lumber come down. Those interviewed had mixed feelings about the change in Market Square.
    “I really hated to see that building go,” admits Kay Bell, curator of the Aroostook Historical and Art Museum.
    Bell added that Penney’s wasn’t all the building housed during its lifetime. Before Penney’s, it was home to Green’s, a “good men’s clothing store,” she said.
    Definite records about when the building was erected weren’t immediately available, but most believe it was built in the early 1930s by the Green family. Documents at the Registry of Deeds indicate that Benjamin Green bought the property in the 1920s. The consensus of those interviewed was that Penney’s may have had its initial Houlton opening in another location, but that it moved to the Market Square storefront in the late 1940s or early 1950s.
    Gerald Jackins of Houlton started working at Penney’s in 1955 and finished a 35-year career at the local retailer in 1990.
    “I started out as a clerk, pulling in freight, doing a little bit of everything,” he said.
    Jackins was assistant manager of the store when he retired, and worked most of his years in the men’s and shoe departments. He said he remembers working under six different managers including: Carlyle Stieler, John Janson, Roger Cline, Norman Hatin, as well as, a Mr. Charnock and Mrs. Lody.
    Clifford Barker, also of Houlton, worked at the store in various capacities from 1960 to 1969.
    “During potato harvest that store would be so busy it was standing room only,” recalled Barker. “If you worked there five years, you would have met everybody in southern Aroostook and half the Maritime provinces. It was one of the busiest stores in Houlton.”
    Penney’s, which also operated stores in Caribou and Fort Kent, closed in Houlton in the early 1900s, around the same time JCPenney opened at the Aroostook Centre Mall.
    As far as the lot’s future goes, bank representatives said at a Sept. 24 council meeting that it may eventually be home to a new Houlton Savings Bank building — if the branch’s current North Street site sells. The bank has also expressed some possibility of an ATM being placed there in the interim.