While visiting my
dentist recently, I was thinking back to when I attended school in that
building as a young child in 1943 – 1947.
Today it is the Ossipee River Dental office recently purchased by Dr. Christopher
Parent at 38 Main St., Porter. Although
it looks pretty much the same outside, it looks very different inside due to
the reconfiguration of the space as a dental office. Jan Iler,
PPHS Secretary
The
new Village School 30 Main Street, Porter c. 1889
This
building was built in 1889 as the Village School, replacing the original
Village School building on School Street.
It cost nearly $3,000 to build and the Porter Town Report boasted it was
the best in Oxford County. It housed
grades K (called Sub-primary) – 12 and continued as such until 1919 when
overcrowding led to the building of Porter High School further down on Main
Street. In 1946 an arrangement was made
so that the Parsonsfield students who lived in Kezar Falls Village and the
students from Porter shared schools. Grades K – 3 were housed in the Village
School Building, then called “Porter Primary”, and 4 – 7 went to the Milliken
School on Federal Road on the Parsonsfield side of Kezar Falls Village. Grade 8 students from Porter and Parsonsfield
students that resided in the village went to Porter High School. By 1948 all
the outlying schools in Porter were closed and students were transported to the
village.
The
Village School c. 1905
The
Village School/Porter Primary c. 1940’s
The
Porter Primary school continued to be used until 1967 when the new Sacopee
Valley High School was built. At that
time the grammar school students were split up and relocated between the red
school house in So. Hiram, the old Porter High building and Milliken School
until 1986 when the South Hiram Elementary (now Sacopee Elementary) was built.
Porter
Primary School – c. 1950’s & 1960’s
For
a while the old village school building was used as a warehouse/research lab
for ITT, Vulcan Electric. It was
purchased by Dr. J. Cons in 1985. He renovated it and established his dental
office there. When Dr. Cons gave up his
practice it became the Sacopee Valley Family Dentistry office which continued
until 2023 when Dr. Parent purchased the practice and renamed it “Ossipee
Valley Dental.
Dr.
Con’s Dental Office - 2001.
This
is a great example of repurposing old historic buildings to better meet the
needs in the community today.
In
the next few months, we will continue to look at other historic buildings that
were an important part of our community’s past development. Some have been repurposed while some have
been demolished and have disappeared from the village scene.