Part 26 Storm Clouds Around the World Reach Home
In the 1930’s the growing clouds of war in Europe and the Far East was to upset the hearts and minds of many people living in the United States as well as locally in South Portland and the Greater Portland area. Many folks ancestry traced back to those overseas countries that may not so long ago been called home. Still recalling the devastating nature of the “Great War” of 20 years ago, local folk believed that type of devastation would never again be visited upon this world. As the rise of Hitlerian Germany, Stalinist Russia and Mussolinian Italy loomed through their use of military weaponry, people here at home looked at their incursions among innocent people with mixed emotions. Some wanted the United States to “stay clear” of what was going on and yet it became increasingly difficult for an American Economy to survive when boycotting goods from those countries and for that matter, Japanese controlled areas on the face of the globe as well. There was the notion that perhaps they would fight it out among themselves, but when they began invading the domains that were homes for other nations, political, social, economic and humanitarian ideas and initiatives helped develop mixed messages at home.
The American government finding that it was increasingly difficult in this age to be isolationist began involving itself on the fringe of what became open conflict especially after the Germans invaded Poland on September 2, 1939. Even before then the United States government authorized the gift of 50 old destroyers to England for the purposes of guarding the merchant convoys that were guided from American and Canadian ports to England. The United States Congress passed the Lend Lease Act in 1940 to provide all types of military and humanitarian aid to the peoples of England and Russia in particular.
Eventually some of the ships guarding the convoys across the Atlantic were American and manned by American sailors.
On the sixteenth of September 1940 Congress passed the Burke-Wadsworth Bill better known as the Selective Service Act of 1940. While we had not declared war as a nation we certainly were committed to a side and it wasn’t Germany or Italy! All men between the ages of 21 and 35 needed to register for the draft. Over the course of the next year 1.2 million men were added to the ranks of the American military forces under this bill and all this before a declaration of war. While most of the war buildup was toward European aggression there were warning signs that the Japanese threat was looming in the east. In October of 1940, President Roosevelt proclaimed an embargo on the sale of scrap metal to any country other than Great Britain. This was especially directed at Japan, which paradoxically was still negotiating for scrap metal in Washington on the day that Admirals Yamamoto and Nagumo were launching their infamous attack on Pearl Harbor over a year later on December 7, 1941, a day proclaimed by Roosevelt to “live in infamy”.
Here in South Portland, Ferry Village was to witness a transformation that would radically change the landscape. During World War I, a stretch of Front Street had been converted to a shipyard to build “Ocean class” cargo vessels. The size of that yard was miniscule in comparison to what was about to happen. In December 1940, ground was broken at Spring Point on a shipyard that was authorized to build thirty vessels for the British much like what had been built in World War I. The East Yard as it was referred to was known as the Todd-Bath Shipbuilding Corporation. Later in 1941 another shipyard was developed by the South Portland Shipbuilding Corporation and was often referred to as the West Yard. Eventually both were combined and known as the New England Shipbuilding Corporation. Over the course of the next five years the combined output of the two yards was 266 Liberty ships for American use and the thirty that were originally built for the British. At the peak of production 30,000 workers were employed on three shifts. Most of the folks who worked there had had no previous training (85%) and their total amount of preparation before going on line amounted to about 30 hours. The first ship built in 1941 took 279 days to build, but two years later the Liberty Ships were ready to go in about 52 days.
As an aside many of these new vessels were captained and crewed by graduates of the Maine Maritime Academy that was founded in 1941.
The effect of the shipyards is many fold. An increase in population as a result of shipyard needs led to the building of Stanwood Park, temporary housing on outer Highland Avenue, a development where the High School and its facilities stand today, Sunset Park in Thornton Heights, Redbank and Cape Elizabeth Park. A few apartment homes that were built in the vicinity of Margaret and Mussey Streets were the total amount of building that took place in the eastern part of the city.
The effect on life in Ferry Village, however, was markedly different. In order to make way for the shipyard and its sprawl all of the homes on streets between Preble and Cushing’s Point were razed or moved to locations away from the area. Between 170 and 180 homes fell into these categories. When the shipyards were built it was necessary to run a railroad line to the yards from Rigby. That line would be used for not only the shipyard, but also oil shipments. The land was taken by eminent domain. Once the rail cars arrived in the shipyard it was necessary to have several rails for sidings. The impact of this “rail yard” was that it caused Preble Street to be reconfigured. No longer would Preble cross Broadway and head for High Street directly, but instead would merge with Broadway and head South where it would them loop around the southern end of the yard and continue passed the new end of High Street and merge with Front Street.
Membership at Peoples Church located at the long-held corner of School and High Streets began to seriously decline as many people moved away from their traditional family locations. The whole of Ferry Village was changed forever. The theater closed as did the hardware store. Auto sales were gone from the Village and the schools in the area also closed. Coles’ Market came to an end and the remaining homes began to lose their luster. The Village was home originally to three schools, two of which were closed and either torn down or boarded up before the end of the war. The Pleasant Street school, later named the Hutchins school, would remain open until the late 1950’s, but eventually all of the students from the Village would find the Henley school, that once served as a high school serving all of the children in the area as an elementary school.
By the time World War II was over and the shipyards were closed only a few businesses of significance remained at the center of the Village. Campbell’s Market, Louis Rich and Sons, Dow Drugstore and Anderson’s Market served as the center focus of economic activity. The trolly system that connected South Portland with Portland came to an end in the 1930’s and was replaced by the Portland Transportation System. Even more transportation became more personal with the advent of automobiles. The small stores of the village would have difficulty competing with larger supermarkets and the first of the strip malls and as the owners died so did their businesses. Today, the Village houses none of those businesses and is for the most part strictly residential.
With all of the aforementioned changes it was felt that Peoples Church could not survive in the village. The walls of the structure had stood the ravages of time, but the trustees and members in general realized that it would cost more to repair the building than to build anew. They realized that the base of population had shifted and it would be difficult to continue with the small base that the Village provided.
In the 1930’s the growing clouds of war in Europe and the Far East was to upset the hearts and minds of many people living in the United States as well as locally in South Portland and the Greater Portland area. Many folks ancestry traced back to those overseas countries that may not so long ago been called home. Still recalling the devastating nature of the “Great War” of 20 years ago, local folk believed that type of devastation would never again be visited upon this world. As the rise of Hitlerian Germany, Stalinist Russia and Mussolinian Italy loomed through their use of military weaponry, people here at home looked at their incursions among innocent people with mixed emotions. Some wanted the United States to “stay clear” of what was going on and yet it became increasingly difficult for an American Economy to survive when boycotting goods from those countries and for that matter, Japanese controlled areas on the face of the globe as well. There was the notion that perhaps they would fight it out among themselves, but when they began invading the domains that were homes for other nations, political, social, economic and humanitarian ideas and initiatives helped develop mixed messages at home.
The American government finding that it was increasingly difficult in this age to be isolationist began involving itself on the fringe of what became open conflict especially after the Germans invaded Poland on September 2, 1939. Even before then the United States government authorized the gift of 50 old destroyers to England for the purposes of guarding the merchant convoys that were guided from American and Canadian ports to England. The United States Congress passed the Lend Lease Act in 1940 to provide all types of military and humanitarian aid to the peoples of England and Russia in particular.
Eventually some of the ships guarding the convoys across the Atlantic were American and manned by American sailors.
On the sixteenth of September 1940 Congress passed the Burke-Wadsworth Bill better known as the Selective Service Act of 1940. While we had not declared war as a nation we certainly were committed to a side and it wasn’t Germany or Italy! All men between the ages of 21 and 35 needed to register for the draft. Over the course of the next year 1.2 million men were added to the ranks of the American military forces under this bill and all this before a declaration of war. While most of the war buildup was toward European aggression there were warning signs that the Japanese threat was looming in the east. In October of 1940, President Roosevelt proclaimed an embargo on the sale of scrap metal to any country other than Great Britain. This was especially directed at Japan, which paradoxically was still negotiating for scrap metal in Washington on the day that Admirals Yamamoto and Nagumo were launching their infamous attack on Pearl Harbor over a year later on December 7, 1941, a day proclaimed by Roosevelt to “live in infamy”.
Here in South Portland, Ferry Village was to witness a transformation that would radically change the landscape. During World War I, a stretch of Front Street had been converted to a shipyard to build “Ocean class” cargo vessels. The size of that yard was miniscule in comparison to what was about to happen. In December 1940, ground was broken at Spring Point on a shipyard that was authorized to build thirty vessels for the British much like what had been built in World War I. The East Yard as it was referred to was known as the Todd-Bath Shipbuilding Corporation. Later in 1941 another shipyard was developed by the South Portland Shipbuilding Corporation and was often referred to as the West Yard. Eventually both were combined and known as the New England Shipbuilding Corporation. Over the course of the next five years the combined output of the two yards was 266 Liberty ships for American use and the thirty that were originally built for the British. At the peak of production 30,000 workers were employed on three shifts. Most of the folks who worked there had had no previous training (85%) and their total amount of preparation before going on line amounted to about 30 hours. The first ship built in 1941 took 279 days to build, but two years later the Liberty Ships were ready to go in about 52 days.
As an aside many of these new vessels were captained and crewed by graduates of the Maine Maritime Academy that was founded in 1941.
The effect of the shipyards is many fold. An increase in population as a result of shipyard needs led to the building of Stanwood Park, temporary housing on outer Highland Avenue, a development where the High School and its facilities stand today, Sunset Park in Thornton Heights, Redbank and Cape Elizabeth Park. A few apartment homes that were built in the vicinity of Margaret and Mussey Streets were the total amount of building that took place in the eastern part of the city.
The effect on life in Ferry Village, however, was markedly different. In order to make way for the shipyard and its sprawl all of the homes on streets between Preble and Cushing’s Point were razed or moved to locations away from the area. Between 170 and 180 homes fell into these categories. When the shipyards were built it was necessary to run a railroad line to the yards from Rigby. That line would be used for not only the shipyard, but also oil shipments. The land was taken by eminent domain. Once the rail cars arrived in the shipyard it was necessary to have several rails for sidings. The impact of this “rail yard” was that it caused Preble Street to be reconfigured. No longer would Preble cross Broadway and head for High Street directly, but instead would merge with Broadway and head South where it would them loop around the southern end of the yard and continue passed the new end of High Street and merge with Front Street.
Membership at Peoples Church located at the long-held corner of School and High Streets began to seriously decline as many people moved away from their traditional family locations. The whole of Ferry Village was changed forever. The theater closed as did the hardware store. Auto sales were gone from the Village and the schools in the area also closed. Coles’ Market came to an end and the remaining homes began to lose their luster. The Village was home originally to three schools, two of which were closed and either torn down or boarded up before the end of the war. The Pleasant Street school, later named the Hutchins school, would remain open until the late 1950’s, but eventually all of the students from the Village would find the Henley school, that once served as a high school serving all of the children in the area as an elementary school.
By the time World War II was over and the shipyards were closed only a few businesses of significance remained at the center of the Village. Campbell’s Market, Louis Rich and Sons, Dow Drugstore and Anderson’s Market served as the center focus of economic activity. The trolly system that connected South Portland with Portland came to an end in the 1930’s and was replaced by the Portland Transportation System. Even more transportation became more personal with the advent of automobiles. The small stores of the village would have difficulty competing with larger supermarkets and the first of the strip malls and as the owners died so did their businesses. Today, the Village houses none of those businesses and is for the most part strictly residential.
With all of the aforementioned changes it was felt that Peoples Church could not survive in the village. The walls of the structure had stood the ravages of time, but the trustees and members in general realized that it would cost more to repair the building than to build anew. They realized that the base of population had shifted and it would be difficult to continue with the small base that the Village provided.
posted by Arthur Tordoff | 7:18 AM
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