{"id":165456,"date":"2024-09-27T13:12:05","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T17:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=165456"},"modified":"2024-09-27T17:27:27","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T21:27:27","slug":"whats-in-a-lewiston-name-skinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2024\/09\/27\/whats-in-a-lewiston-name-skinner\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a Lewiston Name: Skinner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This 19th-century Lewiston place name belongs to Francis Skinner, a Boston businessman who, with Benjamin Bates, was among the early investors in Lewiston\u2019s cotton mills. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, the name \u201cSkinner,\u201d however, is perhaps better known for not<\/em> being affixed to any Lewiston place, whether building, lake, river \u2014 or, in this case, street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Street<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The street once known as Skinner Street, but now Campus Avenue, begins at the President\u2019s House and runs east, past Lewiston Middle School, St. Mary\u2019s Hospital, and Dairy Joy, all the way to East Avenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"crooked
This view of the bygone trolley tracks on Campus Avenue, formerly Skinner Street, is from around 1935, some 20 years after the street’s name change. This trolley section was part of the Figure Eight, named for the shape of its route around Lewiston and Auburn. The President\u2019s House is in the background. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
The Skinners<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

There were actually two Francis Skinners, father and son, associated with Bates. The elder Francis was among the core group of investors who, with Benjamin Bates, supported and invested in the first manufacturing mills in Lewiston starting around 1850.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He founded Francis Skinner and Co., a \u201ccommission house” in Boston that bought cotton goods like bedspreads and sheets from New England textile mills, including Lewiston\u2019s, and sold them to retailers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Skinner’s death in 1865, his son took over the family business, serving as a Bates trustee from 1868 to 1873, alongside Benjamin Bates and other industrialists who were on the Bates board in those days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"well
This image, circa 1895, shows the well-appointed sitting room in Francis Skinner Sr.\u2019s home at 266 Beacon St. in Boston. (William T. Clark \/ Historic New England)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the 1880s, he built what is today known as the Skinner Mansion, located on Beacon Street in Boston. His wife, Eliza Gardner Skinner, was the sister-in-law of Isabella Stewart Gardner, founder of the eponymous Boston museum. Skinner died on Nov. 24, 1905, at age 66. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1945, a Lewiston mill, Pepperell, took out a nearly full page ad in local newspapers to tout its cotton products. The ad invoked the elder Skinner as an icon of quality and quoted from an old Pepperell letter, \u201cThis Cotton is to be worked under the inspection of Mr. Skinner, and he complains of Quality easily.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Street Name Change<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

A few streets in Lewiston and at least two near campus were named for early investors in Lewiston and early supporters of Bates. Nichols Street is named for Lyman Nichols, Bardwell Street for Josiah Bardwell, and Wood Street for William Barry Wood, all investors in Lewiston mills.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Called \u201cone of the best streets in the city\u201d by the Lewiston Evening Journal<\/em>, Skinner Street was completed in 1868. Given that timing \u2014 three years after the elder Skinner’s death \u2014 the naming was perhaps a memorial gesture by the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early 1915, the Lewiston Daily Sun<\/em> reported that \u201ca petition asking that the name of Skinner Street be changed to Campus Avenue is being circulated in this city.\u201d It\u2019s unclear who circulated the petition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around that time the city was doing work to improve the street, including creating a new city athletic field across from John Bertram Hall, near where the middle school now is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bates Student<\/em> applauded the name change in its Jan. 28, 1915, issue: \u201cStudents, faculty, alumni take note: by a decree of the Lewiston City Government, Skinner Street is henceforth to be known as Campus Avenue. We appreciate the change. Not let us all remember to make it a real change in fact as well as in theory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Reunion that year, the Lewiston Evening Journal<\/em> noted that returning alumni \u201crather like the improvement in terminology.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This 19th-century name belongs to an early investor in Lewiston\u2019s cotton mills, but today it’s no longer affixed to any Lewiston place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":165458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[31,224],"tags":[12192],"class_list":["post-165456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lewiston-auburn","category-society-culture","tag-say-what"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165456"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165560,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165456\/revisions\/165560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}