10 Spencer Street. Photo © Sarah Copps.
If you turn left off Parkhurst Street onto Spencer in downtown Lebanon and continue along past the rail trail and the CCBA, you immediately come across an anonymous, single-story brick building on your right that looks like it might once have been an auto repair shop. I first drove past on a Sunday: The street was quiet, the parking lot empty. The following day the place was alive with workers and the lot full of vans and pickup trucks.
Ten Spencer is currently being renovated to become artists’ studios. Jennifer Caine, one of the building’s owners, says she fell in love with it when she saw the “For Sale” sign. She will relocate her own studio there.
Ten Spencer has always been a commercial building, though never an auto repair shop, and has had a succession of disparate owners. Built in 1910 by the Boston & Maine Railroad and backed up to the tracks (the street was once known as Railroad Row), it started out as a train depot, with a loading dock on the same level as a railroad car so that goods could be loaded on and off the train. By the late 1920s, the building was serving as a warehouse for the National Biscuit Company, forerunner of Nabisco.
NBC, as it was known then, used the building as a warehouse for decades, much longer than any later occupant. Adolphus Green, who had started the company in 1898, revolutionized the snack industry when he standardized packaging to keep its crackers fresh. Before then, shoppers bought them at general stores—where they sat in barrels, available to insects, vermin, and dust, and where they absorbed odors, including from kerosene, which was sold for lighting, heating, and cleaning.
An aerial view of Spencer Street in 1927. Thanks to Jennifer Caine and to Nicole Ford Burley.
In 1971, the year NBC officially changed its name to Nabisco, it sold 10 Spencer, which continued to be used as a warehouse until 1979, when the New England Diesel Injection Company bought it. After that, it returned to edibles when it was bought by in 1987 by Fassett’s Bakery (later Bouyea Fassetts), which produced and distributed baked goods and was known throughout northern Vermont, eventually moving to a 50,000 square foot space in Burlington. Local businessman Keith Beardslee purchased the building in 1996, after which it housed upholstery and carpet cleaning businesses. If 10 Spencer could speak, it would have a lot to say.
The building’s history can be charted—though not without gaps, due to missing issues—by perusing the often delightful and very reliable H. A. Manning’s Directories, held in a locked glass-front case at the downtown Lebanon library. Each booklet is about an inch thick and is packed with history.
A student of the evolution of American advertising would have a field day reading the ads at the front of each volume. In the 1924 edition, the Park Hotel (on West Park Street) bragged that it had “hot and cold water,” and “electricity.” A diner advertises a “special dinner daily” for 25 cents! In a later edition of the directory, some lawyer named Norris Cotton advertises his services. And then there’s the purveyor of wallpaper who is also a licensed undertaker. Well, wallpaper historically goes in and out of style, so … good to have a backup gig that doesn’t.
Happily, the world is filled with people who love—and love to preserve—historic buildings, including 10 Spencer’s current and former owners. When discussing the building, Keith Beardslee mentions the extremely durable rock maple floors (“harder than oak”) and the elegant brick arch which sits above the front door. “How many commercial buildings built today have decorative features?” he asks. And current owner Jennifer Caine assures us all that “we have prioritized preserving” the building’s character. “It’s built with Densmore bricks,” she adds, a reference to the renowned Lebanon company that operated from 1800 to 1974 making hand-struck bricks for buildings at Dartmouth and elsewhere, until mass-produced bricks put them out of business. You can still see their kilns behind Lebanon High School.
As an illustration of how speedily and thoroughly things change, I spoke to a friendly young woman at Mendelez International, which is the Chicago-based multinational that acquired Nabisco in 2012, to see if there was a record of National Biscuit’s New Hampshire outlet. There was not. But we talked about Nabisco’s history and about things of the past in general, and she mentioned her fascination with rotary phones (“You put your finger in and then you let it go!),” she said, amazed that people would go to all that trouble just to talk to one another!
Ten Spencer is the poster child for change in a building’s use, thanks to the number and variety of its tenants. From railcars to crackers, diesel engines and baked goods, all the way to rug cleaning and, soon, the fine arts, it has stood its ground for 116 years. Still, a building isn’t alive and no matter how resolute it looks or how much it reflects the past, its true value resides in the people who recognize its worth and help it to grow old with grace and dignity.
We welcome your additions! If you have fond memories to share about 10 Spencer or historical facts not included above, please feel free to send them along to: [email protected], either for eventual addition here or in a future article. Thanks!
Sarah Copps lives in Enfield with her husband, cat, and dog. Her writing includes newspaper reporting, freelance writing, and literary fiction.
