photos/Chris Busby

Despite their dilapidated condition, dumps can serve useful purposes. As pigeon nests, for example. Or practice for the fire department.

This election season, we discovered a new use for beat-up buildings: propaganda holder.

Heading up Fox Street in Portland to Washington Avenue, one comes face-to-façade with this month’s specimen. The building at 131 Washington Ave., a former print shop, has the telltale signs of dumpiness: chipped paint, boarded-up windows, a concave roof. But it also has two signs you don’t normally see on such structures: campaign signs promoting Jed Rathband’s candidacy for mayor.

Built in 1928, the building is owned by Kenneth Dalton of New Jersey, but his daughter, Jill Dalton, and her husband, Ernie Paterno, both of East Bayside, are the ones in charge of the property. The couple formerly ran Filament Gallery on Munjoy Hill, which closed a few years ago.

Paterno said he and his wife plan to reopen Filament at 131 Washington and use other parts of the rambling structure for their glass and metal studios. Additional studios for visual artists and a performance space are also planned. (Although it’s not an official venue yet, an all-ages punk show with Huak, Mouth Washington and two or three other bands is scheduled to take place at this dump on Oct. 8.)

The renovation was delayed by the recession and the birth of their daughter, Paterno said, but they’ve made some headway and hope to make more progress in the months ahead. The improvements made thus far have mostly been behind the building, out of sight.

“It was a bum haven in the back,” said Paterno, who noted the irony of having a social club for recovering alcoholics next door (The Sahara Club) while “living behind my building was bum-hobo village, where [homeless men] were drinking all day. We cleaned that up and removed that behavior.”

Paterno has known Rathaband, who also lives in East Bayside, since they were kids. When the candidate asked if he could put signs on the dump, Paterno agreed.

Rival candidate Markos Miller of Munjoy Hill asked Jill Dalton if he could also put signs on the front, and she agreed. Miller’s signs, placed below Rathband’s, were up for a  day or so, but then came down.

Campaign sabotage? No. Turns out they were affixed to the building with duct tape (which apparently has its limits after all). Miller’s signs were leaning in the building’s doorway as this issue went to press.

The presence of Rathband’s signs doesn’t mean he’s got his old buddy’s vote. “At this point I don’t know who I’m supporting,” Paterno said. Other rival candidates are also welcome to post their propaganda on the property, provided they contact Paterno or Dalton first.

Are you reading this, Ethan?

— Chris Busby