Bangor city councilor admired historic building since he was a kid
Courtesy / F.O. Bailey Real Estate
The 19th century Crosby House, at 277 State St. in Bangor, is of a type known as the “Bangor style,” according to one source.
A Bangor city councilor had long admired the architecture of a historic home-turned-office building near the city’s riverfront.
Knowing that the owner might be willing to sell, Dan Tremble leapt at the chance to buy the property, known as the Crosby House and located at 277 State St.
“I’ve always lived in Bangor and I’ve always admired that property,” said Tremble.
Tremble bought the property through a limited liability corporation, Crosby House Bangor LLC, for an unspecified sum.
The list price was $1.05 million, said the seller's representative, Robert Baldacci of F.O. Bailey Real Estate. Baldacci brokered the deal with John Bonadio of Maine Commercial Properties. The structure is in excellent condition, Bonadio noted.
The 16,000-square-foot Class A office building, located on the corner of State and Birch streets is east of Bangor's central business district and near Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center.
Features include high visibility, Americans with Disabilities Act access and 54 units of on-site parking. It contains eight office suites, two on the ground floor, three on the first floor, two on the second floor and one large suite on the third floor. All levels are served by a four-stop elevator.
The 'Bangor style'
The house was built about 1866-67 for Edward Connors, one of Bangor's leading lumber merchants. It was designed by Bangor architect Benjamin S. Deane. The State Street property is of eight mansions in the so-called "Bangor style" that date from 1866-67, during the city's lumber boom, according to the 1983 nomination form for National Register of Historic Places designation.
The house was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1983 and underwent a renovation in 1985.
Features include a mansard roof, four chimneys, dormer windows and a portico with “an elegant low balustrade on its roof and at its side,” according to a plaque inside the building. The plaque characterizes the house as having a “conservative grandeur and simplicity.”
The Connors family sold the property to John Crosby for $11,000 in 1873.
“The John Crosby who purchased the house was of the Hampden Crosbys and a Hampden manufacturer of paper,” the plaque says.
Crosby sold it in 1876 for $8,000 to the Home for Aged Women.
It was later developed as a restaurant, office and apartment building.
Bonadio represented the seller when the building sold two decades ago.
“I’ve been the leasing agent ever since,” he said. “It’s always been full, it’s always had professional tenants in it. Very little turnover.”
The off-market deal came about when Bonadio was contacted by Baldacci, who represented Tremble.
“It’s a beautiful property,” noted Baldacci,
The building is fully tenanted, he said.
“It’s in great condition for a property that was built 160 years ago,” said Tremble.
Since 1996, Tremble has owned and operated Fairmount Market on Hammond Street and has been a partner in the Bangor Ground Round since 2008.
He previously served two terms on the city council from 1999 to 2005 and was council chair in 2004, and elected to again serve as chair of the Bangor City Council in November 2020. He was the treasurer for Penobscot County from 2006 to 2018, previously served as board chair for the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce, and is the current board chair for Penquis. He served as the city’s mayor in 2021.
The deal was part of his interest in local commercial real estate investment, at a time when Bangor has been seeing an uptick in general, especially in the downtown area, where investors have performed a number of renovations and conversions for upper-story residential and ground-floor retail.
“I was looking around for commercial property and this fit in well,” he said. “Being from Bangor, it just made it a nicer deal that it’s a nice historical property.”
The property doesn’t require any further investment other than basic upkeep and an exterior paint job this summer, he said.
First National Bank was the primary lender on the deal.
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