This charming Federal style saltbox house was built around the turn of the 19th century for Moses Howard, a “shipmaster” who moved to Kennebunkport from Cohasset, Massachusetts in 1793. The house here is clapboard with a symmetrical facade and central chimney. A saltbox roof extends off the rear of the house. Moses Howard did not stay in Kennebunkport for long as he moved to Portland by 1812. The house was lovingly maintained for the next 200+years.
Wadsworth Hall is a significant and hidden estate house located in rural Hiram, Maine. The house was built in 1800 for Peleg Wadsworth (1748-1829), an officer during the American Revolutionary War and a Congressman from Massachusetts representing the District of Maine. He was also grandfather of noted American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. General Wadsworth’s primary residence, now known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House in Portland, Maine, was built in 1785–86. Following the war, Wadsworth was granted 7,800 acres of land by the state in 1790 for his war service, the land was located here in Hiram. General Wadsworth would build this large Federal period home. After, he gave his Portland home to his daughter Zilpah and her husband Stephen Longfellow, parents of the poet Henry W. Longfellow. Wadsworth, in his role as a leading citizen in Hiram, opened his house for meetings and town functions, and even used the large hall for militia drills during bad weather.
Oliver Amsbury (1812-1867), a master mariner and resident of Rockport, Maine, built this large home on the crest of one of the hills overlooking the harbor. The residence is an excellent example of the Italianate style with segmental door and window hoods, a round arched window in a unique Palladian center bay window, and large brackets at the eaves. After Captain Amsbury died in 1867, the house was purchased by Charles F. Richards a lime manufacturer and later a treasurer of the Camden Savings Bank. The old Amsbury house is well-preserved and one of many old sea captain’s houses in the Pine Tree State!
Located on a hill overlooking the Head Tide Village of Alna, Maine, this stately brick farmhouse has sat for roughly 200 years. According to old maps of the area, the property was occupied by the Bailey Family as far back as the land was surveyed in 1813. The property was owned by Ezra Bailey, who possibly built the house soon after as the village began to develop. By 1857, the property and its house were owned by I. H. Bailey, seemingly Ezra’s son, Isaac, who married his first cousin, Laura Palmer. The couple resided in the old homestead until they sold it in 1866, moving to Boston. The brick, Federal style house has a four bay facade with the entry door surrounded by a recessed arched relief. Above the door is a blind fan with sidelights.
Located in the Head of Tide village of Alna Maine, this large Greek Revival was once the home of prolific poet, Edwin Arlington Robinson. The home was built around 1835, likely by Edwin’s grandfather, Edward Robinson. The home was inherited by Edward’s second-born son, Edward Jr. Edward Jr. and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Palmer had two sons before their third pregnancy. Their third child was Edwin, but his parents did not name him until he was six months old, as it was said that they wished for a daughter. On a vacation, other vacationers decided that their six-month-old son should have a name, and selected the name “Edwin” from a hat containing a random set of boy’s names. The man who drew the name was from Arlington, Massachusetts, so “Arlington” was used for his middle name. Edwin described his childhood as “stark and unhappy” and his young adult years were plagued with tragedy with the death of a brother from a drug overdose and with his older brother marrying the woman that he was in love with. He would defy the odds and was accepted to Harvard. He became engaged in writing, specifically poetry, with his early struggles leading many of his poems to have a dark pessimism and his stories to deal with “an American dream gone awry.” He would go on to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry three times in the 1920s. While he would likely not want to ever see this house again, it is significant both architecturally and as the home in his formative years in Alna.
One of the largest Colonial Revival style homes I have ever seen is located in the unassuming small town of Jefferson, Maine. Built in 1903 on the northern shore of Damariscotta Lake, the house stands three-and-a-half stories tall with a broad gambrel roof and clapboard walls. The house was built for Dr. Fred W. Jackson in the Colonial Revival style by relatively unknown Waltham, Massachusetts-based architect Samuel Patch. Dr. Jackson studied medicine and for several years practiced his profession in Providence, Rhode Island. There, he built up a large medical practice and accumulated property, later marrying into a wealthy family. This house in Jefferson was the family summer estate, and Frederick was said to have owned 1,000 acres and laid out bridle paths, gardens, and landscapes in the vast estate. Across the street, a massive gambrel-roof barn was built to house his livestock as part of his gentleman’s farm.
Philadelphia-based architect Lindley Johnson was hired as the official company architect by the Gouldsboro Land Improvement Company’s Grindstone Neck summer colony. As a result, he became the chief tastemaker for the bucolic neighborhood of summer cottages, chapels, and an inn (since demolished). Johnson would design a majority of the cottages in the Shingle style, taking cues from the natural topography and rugged coastlines, but he did deviate from that style a couple times; most notably for his own cottage, “Red Chalet”. While no longer red, the cottage stands out as an extremely rare example of a Swiss Chalet, with its sloping gable roof with wide eaves, exposed stickwork and oversized brackets, decorative carving, and shiplap siding.
Lucius S. Landreth, a Philadelphia attorney had this cottage built on Grindstone Neck in Maine around 1892 for his family. The cottage, like so many in the colony, was designed by architect Lindley Johnson in the Shingle style. The house is so perfect with its gambrel roof which is covered with cedar shingles all the way down to the stone foundation.
One of the more unique summer cottages on Grindstone Neck is this perfect home built around 1892 for Angelo Tillinghast Freedley. Angelo was one of many Philadelphians who built cottages here on Grindstone Neck, and worked as an attorney there. The house is an excellent example of the Shingle styles under a gross gambrel roof. Houses like this showcase how versatile architect Lindley Johnson was in his many designed cottages here in Maine. The house’s entrance is tucked away on the side of recessed arched opening, how perfect!
John Bonsall Taylor (1854-1929), a Philadelphia patent lawyer and Director of the Gouldsboro Land Improvement Company, charged with developing Grindstone Neck in Maine, built this rustic cottage around 1892 for his family. He hired Lindley Johnson, a Philadelphia-based architect who furnished plans for many other buildings in the summer colony. Johnson trained under renowned architect Frank Furness before opening his own office. The rustic Craftsman house even has a “widows walk” which provides views to Bar Harbor across Frenchman Bay.
Men from Philadelphia and New York gathered to establish the Gouldsboro Land Improvement Company in the late 1880s with the goal to develop an alternative, more quiet summer colony to rival Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Isle. Two of the early investors (and summer residents) were J. Bonsall Taylor and Carter Berkeley Taylor, brothers from Philadelphia. John Bonsall Taylor’s cottage (last post) and this cottage, built for C. B. Taylor, were constructed around 1891-2 and are typical examples of upper-middle-class summer cottages in Winter Harbor. Philadelphia architect Lindley Johnson designed John’s cottage, so it could be hypothesized that he was also architect for C.B. Taylor’s here. The house as originally built was enlarged in the early 20th century, but maintains the rustic quality and charm that so many of these Shingle style cottages possess. And that red trim really pops!
Who doesn’t love a good porte-cochere? In case you don’t know what they are, a porte-cochere is a covered porch-like structure at an entrance to a building where either a horse and carriage (historically) or car (today) can pass under to provide arriving and departing occupants protection from the elements. They are normally found on larger residences and institutional building where the wealthy frequent. The Thompson Cottage on Grindstone Neck in Winter Harbor was built around 1892 for James B. Thompson from Philadelphia. The original cottage was largely updated after Thompson’s death in 1915, the property was owned by Annie Cannell Trotter, who summered at another house in the colony with her husband Nathan Trotter, until his death.
In 1889, the Gouldsboro Land Improvement Company, bought 300 acres of farmland to build a residential summer colony as an alternative to the busy Bar Harbor across the bay. They hired landscape architect Nathan Franklin Barrett to design the subdivision of 198 cottage lots of at least one acre and arranged them on roughly parallel roads, with a primary road (Grindstone Avenue) running the length of the peninsula’s spine through woodlands to dramatic ocean views at the tip. The summer colony has many great cottages and chapels tucked away on rocky outcroppings with towering spruce trees all around. This charming cottage was built for Charles Avery Doremus and his wife Elizabeth Ward Doremus around 1892. Charles was a scientist, the son of chemist and physician Robert Ogden Doremus. He graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1870. He became a professor in chemistry and became a leading specialist on toxicology, often called into court cases to help solve crimes. Elizabeth was a playwright from Kentucky and her father and his brother owned plantations in Mississippi before the American Civil War. The couple summered at this cottage on Grindstone Neck until Charles’ death in 1925. It is a great example of a rustic Shingle style summer cottage.
While Blue Hill has historically been a summer colony for wealthy city-dwellers to escape to experience the beauty of Maine, it has never gotten the coverage as Bar Harbor or the other Mount Desert Island towns. Many of Blue Hill’s summer cottages are more refined and hidden away amongst the trees, and that is how the town likes it, unpretentious. I was lucky enough to take a wrong-turn and stumbled upon this gem of a cottage between the Blue Hill village and East Blue Hill, I had to take a photo! Upon further research, the rambling cottage was built in 1908 for Ellen and Edward J. Brooks of New Jersey. The cottage was named Elwin Cove, possibly as a merge of their children’s names ELinor and WINfred.
Jonathan Fisher (1768-1847) was born in New Braintree, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard College Divinity School. In the record of Plantation No. 5, (now Blue Hill), the selectmen voted to invite the Rev. Mr. Fisher to preach for four months in the summer of 1795. After his four month stint, the committee approached him, asking if he would stay and make the town his home, he accepted. He first built a primitive house which was outgrown by the time he had three children growing up in it! He had the current home built in 1814, attaching the original home as a rear ell (addition). Reverend Fisher died in 1847. His wife Dolly, died in 1853. At the end of the nineteenth century, Jonathan Fisher’s grandchildren decided to renovate the house. In 1896, they tore down the original house of 1796 and replaced it with a two-story addition to their grandfather’s 1814, giving it the current configuration. When the Fisher grandchildren who had been living there left Blue Hill, a number of local citizens concerned for the future of the building made arrangements that eventually led to the transfer of ownership of the house to a local non-profit foundation, the Jonathan Fisher Memorial, and made it possible for the house to be opened to the public. The Fisher House is open for tours in the summer.
Buildings of New England 
