Even the tiniest buildings in Dock square have fascinating history. Taking a walk in the neighborhood the other day I noticed that Dock Square Coffee Shop on Perkins Wharf is for sale. It got me thinking about the history of that small building and the tiny one beside it that now houses part of the candy store.

Capt. Eliphalet Perkins was in the West Indies trade. His original 1775 store is now Copper Candle. Perkins Wharf was often piled high with casks of molasses and rum from the West Indies in Eliphalet’s day. When the spiritous liquors trade became illegal in Kennebunkport the Perkins Company switched to the heating coal trade. They continued to use their old shop as a coal office until the 1877 Dock Square Fire burned half the businesses in the village. The Perkins Rum Warehouse became the new home for Wheeler and Bell, one of the burned-out businesses.

Eliphalet Perkins relation, Captain Joseph Titcomb, had a tiny coal office built further down Perkins Wharf next door to the old Seavey Sail Loft by contractors Ira Grant and Octavious Hutchins in 1879.

In 1902, later coal company owner Capt. Fordyce Perkins had the 1879 coal office moved 20’ farther down on the wharf to make way for a new slightly larger building that was most recently the coffee shop. The 1902 building became the headquarters for Electrical Contractor Charles Robinson who was very busy installing electricity all over town.

Kennebunkport poet and philosopher, Silas H. Perkins inherited the coal company when his father Capt. Fordyce passed in 1903. Every afternoon during the summer Sile’s tiny office became a poetry and checkers salon for fishermen, farmers, millionaires, and famous authors. National newsman, Francis Noble described the scene, “where the intelligentsia and the proletariat gathered to talk.” They all encouraged Sile to publish his 3 poetry books.

Coal heat continually lost popularity until Sile was forced to close Perkins Coal in 1944. The tiny 1879 building became Netta’s Beauty Shop and The Mug Shop in the 1950s. It is now the gable portion of The Candyman.