Jeffrey A. Scully - The Old Orchard

For years the dreams of an average Old Orchardite had been a pier, wrote the Biddeford Journal in 1898. In vision he had feasted on the untold benefits which might accrue from a genuine substantial connection between land and water somewhere on the line of our splendid beach. Fleets of sailing and steam craft in the bay were pictured. Boating in all its vast variety: freight luggers and ocean steamers arriving and departing. Great crowds of promenaders taking in the sights and scenes from the pier deck while enterprising promoters of the scheme were coining a mint of hard dollars. (Ralph and Lois Duquette)

This photograph was taken in the spring of 1898, just prior to construction of the pier and shortly before the Cleaves Hotel (part of which can be seen in the background) was moved to the beach front to become Herbert L. Hildreths Hotel Velvet. Nearly twenty years before the pier came into fruition, Winfield Dennett had proposed the construction of such a grand facility to enhance the towns tourist appeal and provide adequate docking for excursion boats and oceangoing vessels. However, it wasnt until the summer of 1895 that J.M. Ryan, a promoter from Detroit, arrived in Old Orchard and managed to persuade the towns fathers to form a corporation to lay plans for the first of many incarnations of the pier. A group of seven men, including Ryan, were initially responsible for the construction of the 1,823-foot-long structure. Stocks in the pier were sold and the Berlin Bridge Company of Berlin, New Hampshire, won the bid to build the landmark for a price of $38,000. (Ralph and Lois Duquette)

It took nearly two years to get the project off the ground and out into Saco Bay. Details were hammered out while public enthusiasm was gathered. But in 1897 a sudden shift in control over the project occurred. The Velvet Molasses King, Herbert L. Hildreth, who was generally considered to be the driving force behind Old Orchards acceptance as the Coney Island of the North, stepped in and offered the Old Orchard Pier Corporation his hotel lot as the shore side location of the pier. The corporation was all too happy to accept. Shortly thereafter, Hildreth proposed to buy a controlling interest in the companys stock. Hildreth not only knew the corporation was in desperate need of fundingthey were unable to make a $10,000 payment on the first delivery of steelbut he felt the pier could be the premier attraction in all of Old Orchard. (Ralph and Lois Duquette)

Herbert L. Hildreth, the Velvet Molasses King, started out as a plumbers helper as a child in Boston. Hildreth also worked as a photography salesman before entering the candy business. With limited success in Haverhill and Salem, Massachusetts, and Lewiston, Maine, he moved his confectionery business to Old Orchard where his peculiar combination of candy and photography was an instant success. In a short period of time he was able to purchase the Sears Bath Houses and again struck it rich with yet another odd combination, candy and public baths: records show he served thousands on weekend days during the summer. (Steve Fregeau)

Hildreth, entrepreneur, promoter, and the driving force behind the construction of the pier, bought the five-story gingerbread Cleaves Hotel and promptly moved it about one block to a location next to his bath houses. He then married all the buildings together to create the Hotel Velvet, named after one of his confectionery delights, the Velvet Molasses treat. The grandest hotel on the coast of New England, the Hotel Velvet (eventually re-named the Hotel Emerson) was complete with an elevator, electric lights, gigantic sun rooms, and a grand ballroom. It attracted the hoi-pol loi of the resorting society. Anyone who was anyone stayed at the Hotel Velvet. (Steve Fregeau)