Former First National Store in Augusta, ME being torn down

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Badgerinmaine

Former First National Store in Augusta, ME being torn down

Post by Badgerinmaine »

Hello, from Augusta, Maine--
Today's Kennebec Journal has an article about the demolition of what was once a First National Stores supermarket in the 1940s:
http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/n ... 5934.shtml

The article includes a picture of the demolition, which shows that all but the far western wall has now come down (that was the area of the store furthest from the door, where prescriptions were dispensed in its last incarnation as a drug store). It's going on across the street from my church (St. Mark's Episcopal, which lies just beyond the right side of the photo, to the west) so I've seen quite a bit of it. For all of the time I have been in Augusta, it had been a RiteAid pharmacy, and by far the oldest, smallest and least attractive of the ones in the area. Rite Aid decided to close the store about two years ago and it has been vacant since then, with the parking lot still being used by the public.

As the story notes, our local library hopes to expand into this space (it lies directly to the north of the library). It was a pretty plain, rectangular shoebox-shaped brick structure. I spoke with a man I know with the Friends of the Library some months ago about the building, who told me that they inspected it to see if it might be usable for Library purposes but reported that the building was in such poor condition that it would not have been practical to do so.
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