This marker has two plaques mounted on the same base
Family traditions built this city with blocks of charity.
The old city hall shortcomings had been obvious for years, but it took bequest of land and money by George Patten Davenport to spark construction of the new City Hall in 1928 on the site of the Davenport home from the early 1800s. Davenport, sole survivor of a family that had shown their livelong commitment to charitable giving throughout the nineteenth century, left monies to numerous organizations, including the city. But about 94% of the nearly two-million dollar estate went to form the Davenport Trust Fund, established primarily "for the benefit of young and needy children, especially those of Bath," and also for organizations that seek to improve the human condition. By this act and, also, the condition that the new city hall be designated the Davenport Memorial City Hall, a son sought recognition for his respected father and fulfillment of the family dream for a better City of Bath.
Family traditions built this city with brick and commercial activity.
Oliver Moses, his brother William, and their descendants made an indelible mark on the character of Bath downtown. Business blocks on Front Street,raised over a 70-year period, have been associated with the Moses family. These buildings illustrated their time of construction: the simplicity of Greek Revival from the 1830s and 1840s; the embellished convinces and arched windows of the Italianate from the 1860s; and the varied ornaments from the classical revivals of the late nineteenth century.
Those earliest structures housed the family tin and stove shop, the work the Moses foundry, a business bought by Thomas W. Hyde, which evolved into Bath Iron Works. The Italianate storefront housed a variety of businesses in structure designed by a Bath boy, Francis Fassett, who became the most important Maine architects during the nineteenth century third quarter, The large structures, which bookended Front Street at Centre and Summer Streets, replaced buildings destroyed by fire. John Calvin Stevens, the leading architect in Maine during the late nineteenth century, created these later buildings.
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