During one of our routine daily knowledge enrichment exercises (OK, we were wandering around and opening every drawer in the building trying to find a plastic fork), we stumbled upon two folders full of Monitor file photos and stories about the history of Eagle Square. And there was so much good stuff in there, we had to share it with you, our beloved readers! Turns out the square has undergone more facelifts than Joan Rivers. It was built on the site of the old Eagle Hotel to much fanfare, eventually went through financial struggles that included several auctions (we found evidence of at least two) and foreclosures and once featured an airy marketplace of shops and food vendors engineered to resemble Quincy Market at Faneuil Hall in Boston. Ambitious? Perhaps. OK, yeah, it was ambitious. The square officially opened in June of 1983, and still features several funky artifacts, like a globe-ish sculpture found at St. Paul’s and relocated to the square. The mid-80s weren’t kind to Eagle Square. Businesses struggled as the project “never flourished as its creators once hoped,” according to a Feb. 7, 1990 brief in the Monitor. Two foreclosure sales took place, but eventually the Museum of New Hampshire History took over the Stone Warehouse, and businesses moved back into the square.
