Your story (American Journal, July 9) that Westbrook Housing is negotiating to buy and demolish the building at 917 Main St., then build apartments there, is bittersweet.

It had long been my hope that someone, seeing the undeniable class of this antique building and recognizing the value that lies in reuse of the old, would save it and put it to rights and a good use, at the same time helping distinguish this city with a little more style and flare. I haven’t yet quite given up that hope.

The building is one of Westbrook’s very few truly old buildings. Even through its decrepitude, it shines with the strongest architectural charm.

The lot was bought in 1840 by the Second Universalist Meeting Society (Westbrook already had one Universalist Church). The building was built soon after, meant from the start for business use on the ground floor with hall worship on the second floor.

At the time and for many decades after, Saccarappa Falls was the center of Westbrook industry, with saw mills, grist mills, cloth fulling and dyeing works, and small paper mills and a mill making “leatherboard” (tough cardboard), as well as cotton spinning on a large scale.

It was very much a workingman’s church.

An old photograph in the Walker Library collection shows the church in its early prime. It never had a steeple, and originally had the look of a Greek temple – massive Doric columns ran along its front from above the first floor to the roof. A broad stairway was the entrance, rising from the edge of a then narrower dirt Main Street to enter between the two center columns.

At the time of the photograph, the lower floor was a foundry and signs advertised stoves for sale. (Country homes all over were being converted from massive central fireplace heating and open-hearth cooking to parlor and cook stoves, and several nearby buildings in the same photo also advertised stoves.)

Throughout much of the building’s active life it housed rugged enterprise, first the foundry, then a machine shop. Later uses included the “Westbrook Tire Exchange,” selling used and new automobile tires from there and at the same time from the building across the street, now a Chinese restaurant. In more recent years it housed Pyrofax Gas, then a Montgomery Ward store, and most recently two consignment shops.

The late John Hay, longtime Westbrook funeral director, recollected to me once having been on the building’s second floor when it housed machine shop operations. Its walls, he said, were still hung with red wool flannel bunting from some long-before church celebration, then piled heavy with black soot. Around the unpainted plaster walls were inscribed Bible verses, in gold paint.

It has suffered much from long neglect, roof leaks in the rear, vandalism to the windows, etc… But I’m somewhat hopeful still that enough good remains, and that someone with vision will see that, and make a competing proposal for its structural improvement and a good re-use.

The idea of Westbrook Housing using tax money, or what is in its ultimate source tax money, to demolish this, and to erect something new that will not pay taxes and that will be occupied by people whose rent will be forever subsidized by tax dollars, doesn’t ring quite right to my mind, especially not calling that economic development.

Also, the building sits on very little land beyond its own footprint and a small pie-shaped piece between it and a dirt right-of-way back to the power station. A five-unit building in its place would probably result in between a five and 10-car permanent parking demand, in a somewhat strained environment already.

Raymond M. Foote

Portland