Bath resident seeks historic designation for Washington Park neighborhood

The south side of Park Street, looking west, part of the Washington Park neighborhood. Contributed / Ned Baxter

Bath resident Ned Baxter wants his Washington Park neighborhood that once housed defense workers during World War I to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

After presenting his proposal to the city, Baxter has filed an application for the “Washington Park Historic District” with the State Historic Preservation Office, which evaluates requests for the national organization.

Designating the compact neighborhood in the city’s northern end as a historic district will help to preserve its significance and encourage “a pride of place attitude,” said Baxter, a member of Sagadahoc Preservation Inc.

The houses were built to accommodate the large number of workers and their families who flocked to the city during the war to work at the shipyard and in related industries. Housing construction in the area prior to WWI had been minimal, according to Baxter, and the city was unprepared for the employment and population growth the war generated. The development of Washington Park filled that need during a time of rapid change, he said.

“The area was originally laid out as an 87-lot development bounded by Washington, Prospect, High and Winship streets,” Baxter said, but only 24 homes were constructed before the armistice. Many who had moved to Bath for work left after that, but the two dozen new houses that remained have been occupied ever since, he said.

Designating the neighborhood as a historic district would put no legal requirements on those residents, he said, but would provide “an added incentive to homeowners to value their homes and encourage them to not make radical changes … (and) to try to maintain the appearance that makes them historic.”

“The city has a historic district in downtown and in the south end there’s another, so this adds another point of interest to the town from a historical aspect,” Baxter said.

Meg Barker, owner of Embark Maine Tours, which offers walking tours of historic Bath, said a historic designation is important to preserve and celebrate a place and its role throughout time. Her tours often focus on the Washington Street area, which is federally protected as a historic district. That designation, she said, gives homeowners there a greater pride in their role in history.

“The residents of Washington Street are some of my best resources” for historical information, Barker said.

“Anybody visiting who takes my tour has a sense of the way homeowners embrace their role as stewards,” she said. “Having an owner learn the history of their house and information about the first or most prominent person in the house heightens the sense of being a steward to something that’s been around for a hundred years or fifty years.”

“Officially recognizing historic districts is a way to ensure no one bulldozes any part of that area,” said Amanda Pleau, communications director for the Maine Maritime Museum.

“As long as the residents of that district are OK with it, it sounds like a great way to make sure that what we love about Bath is there for a long time,” she said.

The application is currently being reviewed by the State Historic Preservation Office.