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Castonguay Square
Castonguay Square: A Civic Pause in Waterville
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Castonguay Square gives a downtown Waterville visit a place to pause beside public monuments and open space. The city lists it at Common Street, with benches and a memorial rather than an extensive recreation programme. Approach it as a small civic landscape: a setting where a short rest can become a closer look at the people and occasions a community chooses to remember.
Waterville Creates traces the space to land deeded to the city in 1840 and records its renaming in 1921 for Arthur L. Castonguay, the first Waterville soldier killed in action in the First World War. That history gives the name a human meaning. A place used in ordinary conversation as a meeting point also carries a particular story of loss and public remembrance.
The University of Southern Maine's memorial inventory documents a small granite boulder and bronze plaque dedicated on November 11, 1921. It identifies the American Legion and local citizens as the sponsors. The modest materials make this a monument that rewards reading at close range. Notice how a personal name, a military association, and a dedication date compress a much larger history into a small public marker.
The city's account of the cannon supplies a different kind of detective story. A visiting artillery curator, James Schoenung, stopped to examine it in 2014 and provided information about its identity as a German howitzer designed in the early 1890s. The city then asked for more information through its newsletter. Local historian Bill Arnold supplied an old newspaper report that helped explain the cannon's arrival.
According to that municipal history, the local American Legion post arranged for the captured gun to come to Waterville and paid its freight. It was presented to the city during the Armistice Day celebration in 1925 and placed on a concrete base in the square. The object therefore connects international conflict with local decisions about commemoration. Looking closely can begin with its form, then continue into the question of how it came to be here.
The space has also been reconsidered by the people who use it. A Waterville Creates exhibition brought together historic photographs and three-dimensional concepts made by citizen teams at a November 2018 design gathering. Those were proposals in a public process, not a list of completed features to expect today. Their value for a visitor is the reminder that civic spaces are continually discussed, interpreted, and cared for.
The organizers of Kringleville trace a seasonal tradition to volunteers bringing a small unheated log cabin to the square in 1969 and lighting a young spruce. Later versions involved school students, local organizations, and other volunteers. That account adds a festive thread to the memorial history. It does not mean that a holiday installation or a visit with Santa is available outside a separately announced seasonal programme.
For a photographic record, make one wider image that places a memorial in its civic setting, then a detail that preserves the feature you wanted to understand. Leave room for others to sit, read, or pass through. A short note about the distinction between a memorial, a historical object, and a community event can give a small square a surprisingly clear place in the memory of the day.
Fun facts
- The memorial inventory records a bronze plaque on a granite boulder dedicated in November 1921.
Before you go
- Read the monument from public space and leave room for other visitors.
- Check a separate current programme before planning around a holiday event.
Capture
- Pair a wider civic view with a close detail of the memorial you are studying.
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Gardiner Common
Benton Riverside Park
Social
The square’s name remembers Arthur L. Castonguay.
A granite boulder and bronze plaque make remembrance tangible.
A curator’s interest helped the city investigate its cannon’s story.
Citizen design ideas became part of an exhibition about the square’s future.
A volunteer holiday tradition began here with a small cabin in 1969.
A familiar meeting place can hold an unfamiliar history.
Read one object closely before moving on.
Let a brief pause become part of understanding the city.
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