Think about how many aspects of town life are, or can be, represented on its main street. Retail, restaurants, services, banks, businesses. Parades, processions, and protests. Social, cultural, civic, and religious activities. Landscapes and land development.

Essentially, contained within a town’s main street is a community’s creation, evolution, and identity — and even its hopes for the future.

At Pejepscot Historical Society last winter and spring we had to sift through hundreds and hundreds of photographs, documents, and objects related to all these aspects to develop our new exhibit, “Maine to Main: Downtown in Brunswick and Topsham.”

The exhibit opened in late June at our museum and research center at 159 Park Row and remains up through the end of the year. It’s free, and open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Focusing our 2016 exhibit on the connected main streets of our neighboring towns has served multiple purposes. It complements the Brunswick downtown district’s recent listing on the National Register of Historic Places. It serves our out-of-town visitors who want an orientation to local history when they step through our door.

It also reminds residents and visitors alike that Brunswick and Topsham have been connected in myriad ways for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. After all, before there were formal towns and main streets, and before there were European settlers, there were indigenous people living on both sides of the river and traveling back and forth by boat.

Finally, as a native of central Maine but only an eight-year resident of the southern Midcoast, it allowed me, as a brand new director, to immerse myself in regional history and in the breadth and depth of the PHS collection.

Of course, I had substantial help from many people. Foremost among them, PHS staff, volunteers, and local historian Dick Snow. He set me off on the right foot, literally. After nearly a three-hour walking tour along Maine Street, I had more than a dozen pages of notes and a real sense of the change over time in the downtown area.

Those notes, along with further research, led to the configuration and content of the exhibit. Starting at the First Parish Church, visitors literally follow footsteps on the floor to wend their way along Maine Street in Brunswick, over the Green Bridge, and up through Topsham’s Lower Village, ending at the corner of Main and Elm.

Two centuries of history are represented by numerous collection items within five major segments of the exhibit. Well more than 100 photographs bring the streets to life over time, but there are plenty of objects, too. These include the very large (a sleigh or carriage body from Topsham dated to around 1800), the very small (a two-inch metal whistle distributed by Pennell’s clothing store as an advertising gimmick in the early 20th century), and much in between (a pair of bowling shoes from Bowling Bowl in Brunswick).

Maps and other documents provide context, and two activities offer visitors an opportunity to interact with the exhibit in simple, yet engaging, ways.

I hope you’ll come see for yourself how these historical artifacts bring our connected streets to life. Both Maine and Main have seen plenty of change over time—some good, some indifferent, some unfortunate. But without question, all part of the historical record and all worth preserving and remembering.

Head over to Topsham as well—there are supplemental exhibits in the town office and public safety buildings with even more Main Street items on display! These will be up at least through the summer months.

———

Larissa Vigue Picard is the executive director of the Pejepscot Historical Society. She would like to thank “Maine to Main: Downtown in Brunswick and Topsham” sponsors Bangor Savings Bank, Eaton Peabody Attorneys at Law, Goodwin Motor Group, Moore Painting, Richard Nemrow and Priority Real Estate Group.