Brickwork becomes issue in new Lakeport building

LACONIA — At the corner of Elm Street and Union Avenue, a shiny, new glass-enclosed boat showroom has taken shape where once stood an abandoned, utilitarian brick fire station built in 1955.

It perhaps illustrates the area’s love for history that some are making an issue out of a particular design detail. 

At last week’s City Council meeting, Councilor Bruce Cheney noted that late-City Councilor Armand Bolduc was a lover of the old firehouse.

“Armand Bolduc was an old friend of mine,” Cheney said, “and Armand had one wish — and that was in the Lakeport Fire Station reconstruction, that the brick tower for drying hoses be kept.

“We allowed them to tear down the actual tower, but it was replaced with another one that appears to be a bluish tower on top of that building and it has now been over a year without adding brick work to it.”

At one time, Bolduc wanted to have the unassuming building added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Instead, the city sold it to Erica Blizzard, who knocked down most of the structure to create a boat showroom for her Lakeport Landing Marina.

In a nod to history, she preserved a section of the building, including where the fire engines entered. The fire hose tower would need to be knocked down. She built a replica, but it won’t be bricked.

Planning Director Dean Trefethen sent her an email saying he had received inquiries from City Council members and others about the mock fire hose tower. He said project renderings made it look like the tower would be done in brick.

“Everyone is expecting the fire tower to look like brick,” Trefethen said in the email to Blizzard. “I would strongly advise the material to look like brick from street level, to avoid any additional controversy. The ‘fire tower’ was represented to be a replication of the old one, which of course was brick.”

Trefethen said in an interview Tuesday that city officials may have thought the tower would be done in brick, but he has looked into it and there is actually nothing in the city approval documents to require that.

In an email to Trefethen, Blizzard said she was surprised at all the attention to the brick detail.

“While the renditions were drawn to convey the hose tower as having brick, it was done as a visual to people to convey it was a tower,” she wrote. “To be perfectly honest, I’m really taken back (shocked) that the City is so concerned about a ‘brick’ hose tower on a building they left abandoned since the mid-1980’s.

“By true definition, the building itself had very little historical value and while I respect Armand Bolduc’s wish to preserve the building, it’s very disappointing to learn that the items he was saving for me including the original letters ‘Lakeport Fire Station,’ may have been sold at a yard sale his family had after his passing. I feel like the interest of the building comes in waves and only comes up when there is something to criticize.

“At this time, my plan is to install a dark grey corrugated metal on the tower which will correlate with the color scheme and complete the industrial look of how the building was designed.”

She has also said the new tower wasn’t designed to hold the weight of bricks.

It’s not clear what happened to the “Laconia Fire Station” letters, but a bronze plaque that was on the wall of the firehouse and bore the names of city officials when it was built was sold at the yard sale. It was later recovered and donated to the Lakeport Community Association at no cost to the city.

Jane Whitehead, chairwoman of the Laconia Heritage Commission, said the old building was not very interesting architecturally.

“But it was important as a historic document for the area and the use of the site,” she said. “I don’t think people cared so much about the building, but what it meant to the neighborhood.”