Locals fought to keep open the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. (Dawne Shand)

The yellow "Save the Shipyard" signs that all summer surrounded the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, have been changed to "Saved the Shipyard."

In May, the Pentagon's threatened closure of a shipyard employing over 4,500—a base that had helped Kittery's traditional downtown survive as its outskirts grew into an extensive outlet center—brought local and state leaders out fighting.

Last month's surprise decision by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to retain Portsmouth, the Navy's oldest consecutively operating shipyard, will prevent a preservation dilemma: reusing 300 buildings located in the middle of the red-hot real estate market of coastal New England.

All summer, a strong grassroots effort worked to keep the base open. Thousands came in yellow school buses to the Base Realignment and Closure commission hearings in Boston this summer to argue for saving the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. The commission has publicly thanked local Kittery groups for their efforts to make everyone aware of the base's importance.

"When Maine people get organized and passionate about a project," says Roxanne Eflin, executive director of Portland-based Maine Preservation, "they make things happen."

Yesterday the commission submitted its list of recommended closures to President Bush. Still listed are other historic bases such as Fort Monroe in Hampton, Va., Fort Monmouth in Monmouth, N.J., and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., which likely will close over the next six years.

Located on 278-acre Seavey Island, the base's buildings represent every phase of American naval shipbuilding. Sixty-two of its structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and, according to base officials, 112 more are eligible.

"Even though it's a modern shipyard, it's a wonderful representation of a 19th-century shipyard," says Jim Dolph, the base's shipyard historian.

Established by Thomas Jefferson, Portsmouth Naval Yard started turning out wooden ships in 1815. Tall trees floated down the fast waters of the Piscataqua River to the mast house, known as Building 7. This granite structure still has its hoisting machinery for lifting 135-foot-long masts within its rafters. The building, like many on the yard, has been consistently utilized for the building of naval vessels, from sail-, steam-, and coal-powered vessels to nuclear-powered submarines. "The mast house is the only one of its kind, that we know of, in existence today," Dolph says.

During World War II, as other naval bases expanded to take on larger shipbuilding projects, Portsmouth began making submarines. Today the base refits and repairs the Navy's nuclear submarine fleet. (The Pentagon had argued that the submarine fleet will be diminishing, and repairs could be done at Virginia bases or in Pearl Harbor, which is closer to the fleet's main operating theater in Southeast Asia.)

The Squalis (DS)

Aside from those who work on the base, few locals have ever seen the island. Some, but not all, of the yard's buildings have obvious aesthetic charm and relevance. The original historic district includes the commandant's home, a Federal house built by the Portsmouth carpenter-joiner, John Locke; the brick houses of Officer's Row; and a green where the deck and tower of the famed submarine Squalis stands. The sub sank off the coast of Portsmouth in 1939, killing 22, but a dramatic rescue saved 33 men. The local tragedy became the first successful submarine rescue, an important event in naval history that nearby Portsmouth, N.H., commemorates every Sept. 5. The ship's deck still hosts ceremonies.

Also in this historic district is the shipyard's most politically important building, a three-story brick warehouse called Building 86. (All base structures are numbered sequentially as built.) Here the Japanese and Russians negotiated an end to what in 1905 had been the largest land and sea battle ever fought. President Theodore Roosevelt intervened diplomatically, bringing the two countries to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to begin peace negotiations—an act for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

"The treaty was a significant event on the world stage. Portsmouth was a known place in 1905, in Toyko, Berlin, Lisbon," says Captain Peter Bowman, who commanded the shipyard from 1987-90. Japanese and Russian tourists continue to make pilgrimages to the site, which now houses offices.

The industrial landscape of the base has a very different look. Featureless box-like structures stand caddy-corner to an Italianate firehouse with a delicately arced roofline. Meeting the needs of wartime production meant that buildings were often shoehorned in between others. Many temporary structures associated with the WWII boom in submarine construction took on permanent uses.

Commandant's house (DS)

The shipyard, however, has adapted with a marked sensitivity for its architectural legacy. Its newest structure, a parking garage, wraps around an unassuming brick building originally designed 150 years ago by Alexander Parris as an oxen stable. Known for his design of Boston's Quincy Market, Parris, who helped establish the Greek revival style in New England, ended his career as the base's engineer.

One of the best-known buildings visible from the coastline is the infamous, and vacant, 1908 Portsmouth Naval Prison, which locals call "the castle." A white medieval structure complete with towers, a castellated parapet, and Gothic windows, it housed 80,000 prisoners over five decades before the Navy boarded up its windows in 1974. Overlooking two marinas and an intimate beach at the convergence of the Atlantic and the Piscataqua River, the castle is an enviable waterfront property. While the Aug. 24 decision allows the rest of the base to continue its operations, the fate of the castle remains unclear.

Earle Shettleworth, director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, says his office was "elated to learn the shipyard was going to continue on its original mission." He hopes the Navy will find a new life for the castle.

"The Navy has already recognized its potential for private-sector reuse," Shettleworth says. "Now would be an appropriate time to renew those discussions on its reuse with the base leadership, who have always been sensible to finding a solution for it."

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