How Portsmouth's first Market Square Day in 1978 came together like a 'miracle'

PORTSMOUTH — Monika Aring remembers sitting in her car, praying the rain would stop before the first Market Square Day dawned. It did, and the rest is history.

"It was a magical day," the festival's founder said of June 10, 1978. "The square was totally crammed full of people. The chamber of commerce had said nobody would come downtown."

The crowd was estimated at 40,000.

Aring and her family had moved to Portsmouth from Brooklyn in 1976. She was 31, living on Pickering Street and waitressing at a restaurant next to Prescott Park. A sign on a lamp post drew her to an October 1976 city council meeting on how to use federal funds to renovate Market Square.

"I went and it was standing room only," she recalled in a recent interview from her home on Bainbridge Island, Washington. "I heard them arguing about putting in a Zayre Department Store and parking lot in Market Square to bring people downtown — the Newington Mall had just opened."

She doesn't know how she got to the microphone. But she remembers what she said: "Your square to your city is like your heart to the body. You destroy that, you destroy your city."

"I knew from growing up in Europe," said Aring, a native of Germany.

Approached by City Councilor Joyce Hanrahan after the meeting, Aring soon found herself talking with the New Hampshire Council for the Humanities as well as city merchants, public school teachers, University of New Hampshire professors, including Paul Brockelman, Portsmouth Herald Editor George Robinson and civic organizations like the Rotary Club.

By April 1977, a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts made it possible for her to quit a job selling cars at Brady Ford and work full-time on finding out what Portsmouth citizens wanted to see in their market square. The Market Square Day celebration evolved from those conversations.

"In our minds, the whole project was engaging people in an inquiry — what's the purpose of a square," she said. "It was very powerful, that process. It was designed to give people an idea of their city, but it turned into an event. Market Square Day was held to showcase a farmer's market, local artisans, music, eating, dancing, guerrilla theater and road race."

The late Bruce Ingmire, a local historian and Portsmouth Athenaeum member who plunged headfirst into preparations for the first Market Square Day, later became famous for donning Colonial regalia and leading history walks. In a 1992 essay, he reminisced about the first festival in 1978.

"In the years preceding 1977, the Square had thin sidewalks and residents and visitors took their lives in their hands to cross from the North Church to Green's Drug Store," he wrote. "There is a theory that the success of Green's Drug Store (now the site of Starbuck's) was directly related to the amount of aspirin sold to the survivors who had gotten a headache dodging the cars in Market Square."

Robert Thoresen, Portsmouth's city planner in the 1970s, spearheaded a project to use federal funds to restore Market Square and enlarge the space reserved for people. It was a challenging task and faced opposition from downtown merchants afraid of losing parking spaces.

Thoresen, a member of the Athenaeum, recently put together an exhibit at the Portsmouth Historical Society that tells the story of the city's dramatic changes during this era. "Reinventing Portsmouth -- Renewal to Renaissance: 1970s" runs through Oct. 9.

Ingmire was part of a cadre of about 2,000 volunteers who showed up for the 1978 Market Square Day.

"Much of the city had been up at sunrise," he wrote, noting he was busy helping blow up balloons for the arches above the square.

2023 event:Market Square Day celebration and 10K bigger than ever in honor of Portsmouth's 400th

The balloons were the idea of Aring's late husband, architect Roomet Joost Aring, who "wanted a graceful canopy over the whole thing," according to Monika, who described him as "my right hand" for the project.

"We were all running around with our walkie talkies," she said of the volunteers. "We had teams for each stage, with four-hour rotations. It was incredibly organized, down to the last minute. We created parking areas, and police had to be paid time-and-a-half to deal with the traffic. That almost broke our budget."

The nonprofit Pro Portsmouth, which formed in 1977, is still raising money for and organizing Market Square Day, along with First Night, Children's Day, and Summer in the Street. Monika's daughter, Antje Bourdages, has served on its board for years.

After the wild success of the first Market Square Day, Aring found herself the subject of national media attention, with chambers of commerce across the country asking her to speak about how to revive dying downtowns.

"They wanted a formula — you do these 10 things and you'll have it," she said.

But for Aring it was about community engagement, what she calls "an inquiry into how citizens see the future of their city."

After leaving Pro Portsmouth in 1982, Aring started a public relations company, and then a marketing firm. In 1988, the Brooklyn College music graduate realized a lifelong dream — to go to Harvard University.

"Someone hired me to write a white paper on the state of education in New Hampshire," she said. "I met education leaders and got back into the process of inquiry. That led me to Harvard."

She credits her Market Square Day experience with getting her into the highly competitive John F. Kennedy School of Government master's program in public administration.

In a 40-year career in international development — she is still working — she has helped governments, private-sector companies, educators and civic leaders in 60 countries craft policies for jobs and skills for young people. Or as her LinkedIn profile says, "I learned that yes, together we can produce miracles."

The Portsmouth Athenaeum, 9 Market Square, is a membership library and museum founded in 1817. The research library and Randall Gallery are open Tuesday through Saturday, 1 to 4 p.m. For more information, call 603-431-2538 or visit portsmouthathenaeum.org.