Elmbank - one house, more stories

Photo: Bangor Public Library via Bangor in Focus

  In 1868 Henry E. Prentiss, a lawyer and lumber baron built Elmbank.  It is a very large white building on the corner of Kenduskeag Avenue and Division Street in Bangor, Maine.  It had many rooms, one room was a ball room that could accommodate 400 people, parties were well attended by the wealthy and often included Hannibal Hamlin who was Abraham Lincolns first Vice President.
  It was sold at the death of the Prentiss family and soon became a hospital for people with "nervous conditions" run by Maurice Gay, it had 17 rooms and shock treatment.  It was sold to James G. Utterback, a Brewer car dealer and renamed the Utterback Hospital.
  The building today is an apartment building with 13 apartments, and 2 apartments in the Carriage House.  There are still traces of the "hospitals" in some rooms, the grounds are in good shape and one of the two copper beech trees in Maine (that I know of) is on the property.
  Just a couple of weeks ago a female Eagle fell from a nest in a pine tree on the property and has been treated for toxins and release, two Eaglets are still in rehabilitation, the male Eagle fell from his perch and was electrocuted by landing on a live wire.
  For more: http://bangorinfo.com/Focus/focus_elmbank.html