The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1872-04-02
THE CUSTOM HOUSE.
Great Gathering Of Business Men, City
Officials and Distinguished Strangers.
FORMAL OPENING OF THE BUILD
ING.

Although the new Custom House in this cit
was taken possession of by the Customs official
in October last the building was not entirel
finished and furnished until recently; and las
evening, by the politeness of Collector Wash
burn, the members of the City Government
| and the Board of Trade, and the leading repre-
sentatives of the chief business interests of tn
city assembled there Among the distinguish,
guests from abroad were Gov. Perham, the cap
tains of the English steamships in port and tn,
various foreign consuls. The company mum
bered nearly four hundred. Every part of thu
building was thrown open to inspection, ant
the whole edifce was brilliantly illuminated
from top to bottom. After an hour spent il
the examination of the building and all its con
veniences, Collector Washburn called the com
pany to order in the main business room, and
after brief welcome, spoke as follows:
This building having been finished and fur
nished in all its parts for the uses of Custom
House, he had thought it well to open it this
evening for the inspection of the merchants
and business men of the city, that they might
see for themselves what accommodations the
government had given them They would
see here building for whose construction
S4S5,000 had been paid-one of the most
substantial, convenient and elegant buildings
in the whole country and when it was consid.
cred that it had been erected at a time when
labor and materials were SO dear as they were
between 1866 and 1871, he thought everybody
would acknowledge that the cost was SO rea-
sonable as to reflect credit upon the parties I'M
der whose direction it had been put up. That
it did great honor to the supervising architect,
all who saw it would acknowledge. 1t was
a building in which the business OF Boston
could be transacted with more ease and COM
fort than it could in the Custom House at that
port, and yet its cost was not more than half
of that of the Boston Custom House.
Owing to the increase of traffic ct this port
necessity was felt some years ago for more
room for customs business. The Judges of the
United States Courts desired for their use the
rooms then occupied for Custom House. Upon
representation of the situation to Mr.. Chase,
Secretary of the Treasury, by Judge Clifford and
himself in 1864 he recommended the erection
of new Custom House upon that part of
the present site then owned by the United
States, and Congress made an appropriation to-
wards it. Afterwards the plan of the building
was changed, and that upon which it was final
ly erected was adopted-additional land having
been purchased therefor at a cost of So, 600. 1t
is perhaps not improbable that the fact of the
great fire in 1866 had something to do with the
readiness with which the appropriations were
made by Congress. There was a deep and per-
vading sympathy for Portland, and the thought
that the appropriations for the Custom House
and destitute men, and would help the city to
tide over the shoal of its affection no doubt had
its influence with members of Congress, as
similar thought has recently had in the case of
dismantled Chicago. 1t became the people of
Portland, he thought, to recognize this fact
and acknowledge the practical friendship and
sympathy that had been extended by the gov
eminent. Then, there was no doubt that it
was to the credit and for the true interest of
the government itself, when it became neces-
nru tn hII lAr a,,1r -.
cities, to put up good ones, such as would stand
for ages and render further expenditures in the
same line unnecessary; such as would be an or
nament to the place, and would transmit to fu-
ture times an idea of the architecture of our
own. etNA t7ta Aht -A th
MIR. Washburn said it was something more
than 40 years since the first Custom House
was established at this port, then called Fall
mouth. The first officer connected with the
collection of duties from imports here was
son, and he was appointed in 1870. The col
lection OF customs in the colonies as in the old
country was connected with the navy and
hence this title. The title was retained to the
present day in some of the ports. Mr.. Pearson
was succeeded by Enoch Freeman in 1888 Ja-
bez Fox followed Mr. Freeman, and was sue
ceeded by Stephen Longfellow in 1865. The
District, until 1853, seems to have been connect
ed with that of Boston. In this year new
District was formed embracing the entire coast
HUH IOItsulOubu W bilt Ob. SfOlX, anu IallClS
Waldo was appointed Collector. George Lyde,
appointed in ITO, was the next Collector, but
he and all his subordinates except Thomas
Childs, Deputy Collector, joined the loyalists
at the breaking out of the war, and left the
of Mr.. Lyde and held the Office till his death in
1857. Nathaniel Fadre Fosdick succeeded Mr..
Childs and remained in Office until December
1902, when he gave place to Isaac ulsley who
was Collector until 1929. Mr.. nlsley's success
hoxr hn,v Eo,, III, A.
Senator from Maine-John Anderson, Nathan
Cummings, Robert P. Dunlap, Luther Jewett,
Ezra Carter, Jr., Moses Macdonald, Jedediah
Jewett, and the present incumbent.
Before the Revolution the Custom House was
kept in dwelling house at the corner of Mid
die and India streets. It was next kept in
one story wooden building ON Middle street
near the site, if not on it, of the Casco Bank
Block. The old Custom House on Fore street
was built in 1925 In 1S49 the United States
purchased of the city of Portland for about
$4,000, the noble structure known as the Mer-
chants Exchange, standing on the site of the
present Post Office, on the corner Of Middle
and Exchange streets, and it was occupied for
a Custom House, Post Office, and rooms for
the United States Courts until its destruction
by fire in 1854 and the old Custom House was
reoccupied by the Collector until the new one
erected upon the site of the Exchange, was
completed in 1857 That building was so bad
ly damaged in the great fire of July 4, 1866
May, 1867, the customs officers were in the COM
modious rooms in the second story of the Port
land Savings Bank block on Exchange street,
until the last of October 1871, when they're
moved to this building. And here, he said, you
see us, gentlemen, and here we are glad to see
you, and to show you rooms which for conven-
fence of arrangement and facilities for doing
business, as well as for beauty of proportion
and style and for finish can hardly be surpassed
in the country. They speak for themselves
And it was just such building as the COM
merce of the city required. The average an
nual amount of duties collected here the last
seven or eight years had been not far from
$780, 00.. But these figures give no adequate
idea of the amount of the business of this
office. Situated, as the late Mr.. Poor would
have said, on this point of the Acadian penin-
sula, halfway from the maritime to the inte-
rior provinces of the Dominion the winter out
let and inlet of the exports and imports of the
two largest of them, during nearly half the
year, the base of the Grand Trunk Railway,
and of several lines of steamers connected with
the foreign trade-some of them with that of
Great Britain during the winter, and others
with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia through
out the year, the customs business outside of
importations for consumption in the United
States, was very large indeed. Few even of
our own people had, he believed, any good idea
of the amount of this trade. He then gave
the following statistics of the commerce of the
port in the last two years, comparing them with
those of 1861, so far as the records enabled him
to do so: