Historic tablets listing the names of Brunswick’s Civil War dead, displayed in the old Town Hall from 1883 to 1961, may return in a new town hall.

Demolition in 1961 of the old town hall — an elegant red brick and fortress-looking structure that stood at the current Maine Street site of Town Hall Place — marked one of Brunswick’s singularly bad decisions, according to at-large Town Councilor Benet Pols.

To atone, Pols — with the help of Pejepscot Historical Society curator and director Jennifer Blanchard — convinced the Town Council to display the series of stone tablets “in a prominent place,” which could include inside the eventual “new” town office on Union Street.

“With us having a new town hall, it’s an opportunity for us to take them back and do something with them that is appropriate,” Pols said. “My own thought is that because they came from Town Hall, they should return to Town Hall.”

It was not a hard sell: All nine councilors voted in favor of retaking possession of the tablets, which have been stored at Pejepscot Historical Society.

The tablets are part of the town’s chronology.

They were displayed in the Old Town Hall’s lobby from its dedication in 1883 until its demise 78 years later. They list the names of Brunswick’s casualties from the four-year War Between the States, fought 150 years ago.

In 1883, the tablets cost $1,300 to quarry and carve — the equivalent of $30,200 today, according to one web-based inflation calculator.

Like the elegant stone-and-turret Union Station train depot in Port- land that also was razed in 1961 and subsequently replaced with a low-roofed, sheetmetal strip mall monstrosity, Pols said the demise of Brunswick’s Old Town Hall marked an architectural low point in the town’s history.

“I don’t remember it, but many people do,” Pols said. “Many people also remember that town hall fondly and when they talk about bad decisions that the town of Brunswick makes, they always point to that one, even though it was 52 years ago.

“Surely we’ve done something worse in the intervening time,” Pols added, “but that is looked upon as ‘the biggie,’ and this is a way to take a little piece of that back, get it out of the basement, and get it somewhere it can be seen.”

The current municipal building on Federal Street already has been promised to Brunswick Development Corporation when town staff vacates it in 2014 and moves to the McLellan Building on Union Street.

jtleonard@timesrecord.com

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