Maine

Dixmont Corner Church // 1834

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Dixmont, a small rural town in central Maine was originally originally a land grant by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (of which Maine was then a part) to Bowdoin College, which sold the first settlers their land for profit to build on their campus. As a result, the town was originally called “Collegetown”, which was obviously short-lived. Dr. Elijah Dix (1747-1809) of Boston, who never lived there but took an interest in its settlement, encouraged others to settle there, and when the town was officially incorporated in 1807, it named itself after Dix, as Dixmont. A “malignant fever” broke out among the settlers in the early years, also killing Elijah Dix while in Dixmont on a trip there in 1809, he was buried in the Dixmont Corner Cemetery. Elijah was the grandfather of reformer and nurse Dorothea Dix. The early settlers had this church built by 1834 by Rowland Tyler, a local master builder whose only other documented work is the 1812 City Hall of Bangor. The Dixmont Corner Church is one of Penobscot County’s oldest Gothic churches and also exhibits some Greek/Classical elements.

Thompson Cottage // c.1892

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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.

Charles and Elizabeth Doremus Cottage // c.1892

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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.

Barncastle // 1884

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Barncastle, located in the Town of Blue Hill, Maine, is an elaborate and distinctive house. Designed by George A. Clough and built in 1884, the building is a sprawling complex in the Shingle style with additional eccentric details. As Blue Hill and other coastal communities of Down East Maine saw popularity as summer colonies of wealthy city-dwellers flocking to the rugged coastline, many new residents either built new “cottages” or renovated older (often ancestral) homes. Effie Hinckley Ober (1843-1927) who was born in town, married Virgil P. Kline, personal attorney to John D. Rockefeller, and for thirty years worked as attorney for the Standard Oil Co. of Ohio. Effie founded the Boston Ideal Opera Company in 1879 and traveled with the group extensively, retiring in 1885, upon that time, she would move into Barncastle for summers (then named “Ideal Lodge” after her opera company). In 1884, before her retirement, Effie hired her childhood friend, architect George A. Clough, who was born in Blue Hill and worked in Boston, to completely redesign her ancestral home. Clough’s design engulfed a smaller Cape Cod-style house owned by Effie’s mother Mary Peters Hinckley Ober Atherton, a descendant of early Blue Hill settlers, creating an absolutely elegant Shingle-style summer cottage. The house is highly visible on a main street, but what many do not see is the arch-and-turret link between kitchen wing and carriage barn. “Barncastle” is now home to an elegant inn and restaurant!

Parker House // 1814

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Wrapping up this series on a tour of buildings in Blue Hill, Maine, we have two stunning old homes left! 

This landmark Federal style house was built sometime between 1812 and 1816 by Robert Parker, whose wife was a daughter of Joseph Wood, one of the first two white settlers of Blue Hill. The home is significant not only architecturally, but for its connections to a number of old settlers to Blue Hill and their families.

By the turn of the 20th century the farming, mining and granite producing town of Blue Hill had been discovered. Writers, artists, musicians, and wealthy urban families from all over the East Coast found inspiration or retreat in many coastal Maine communities including Blue Hill, building “cottages” to summer at. Not all those who arrived to Maine were ‘from away’, as many built new or renovated their old ancestral homes to be occupied when seeking the peace and tranquility of coastal Maine. The Parker House was no different. In 1900, it was renovated in the Colonial Revival style as a summer home for Frederick A. Merrill and his wife, Elizabeth, residents of Boston. The couple hired George A. Clough, who worked as the first City Architect of Boston, but grew up locally in Blue Hill. Mrs. Merrill was descended from Mrs. Robert Parker’s sister. The current owner, the Merrill’s great-grandson, has undertaken a restoration of the house which pays homage to its Colonial Revival past. The stunning house can even be rented!

Amen Farm // c.1850

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Can I get an “Amen”?! Amen Farm was built in the mid-19th century on 47 acres in Brooklin, Maine, overlooking the Blue Hill Bay and Acadia National Park in the distance. The Cape house, like many on Blue Hill peninsula, is modest and was enlarged by telescoping ells as space was needed. The house was long owned by the Bowden Family who farmed the land, later adding a small gas station to the side of the road (since removed). Later owner, Joseph “Roy” Barrette (1896-1995) likely helped give the home its name. Barrette got his first look at Maine in 1919 from a ship, when he was a deck-hand on an 800-ton coal barge, hauling West Virginia coal from Norfolk to Portland. He had bought this farm in 1958 and was looking forward to his retiring years, which he intended to spend in a library of some 3,000 volumes and indulging his hobbies as a gardener, a gourmet, and a connoisseur of fine wines. John Wiggins, associate editor of The Ellsworth American newspaper, impressed by Barrette’s garden, his literary tastes, and his writing style, persuaded him to write a column, which he called “The Retired Gardener.” He wrote many essays and three books from this home in Brooklin where he never fully retired. Roy died in 1995 and the property was eventually listed for sale in 2019. The house is undergoing some work and landscaping upon the time of the photos.

The Floats // 1900

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Newton Booth Tarkington (1869–1946) was an American author best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921). He is one of only four novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was considered the greatest living American author in much of the 1910s and 1920s. While he was born and grew up in Indiana, “Booth” eventually fell in love with the coast of Maine, and built a home in the charming village of Kennebunkport. In Kennebunkport, he was well known as a sailor, and his schooner, the Regina, survived him. Regina was moored next to Tarkington’s boathouse this building, which was named “The Floats” which he also used as his studio. The building was constructed in 1900 as a shop to build ships. He purchased the building, preserving it for generations to come. After his death, the boathouse and studio were converted into the Kennebunkport Maritime Museum. The building appears to now be a private residence, perched above the harbor. How charming!

John Bourne House // c.1800

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John Bourne (1759-1837) was born in Wells, Maine as the son of Benjamin Bourne. When the American Revolution hit a peak, when he was only sixteen years of age, John enlisted in the service of the country, and marched in company of Capt. Thomas Sawyer, to Lake Champlain. After the war, he learned the trade of shipbuilding and established himself in Kennebunkport, at the height of the village’s manufacturing. John Bourne built ships for a wealthy ship-owner and became successful himself. Bourne was married three times. His first wife, Abigail Hubbard (m.1783) died at just 24 years old after giving him three children. He remarried Sally Kimball a year later, who died in her twenties at just 28, she birthed one son for him in that time. His third wife, Elizabeth, would outlive John, and they had five children together. After his marriage with Elizabeth, John likely had this home built, possibly from his own hands. The Federal style home stands out for the unique entry with blind fan and modified Palladian window framed by engaged pilasters.

Kennebunkport Post Office // 1941

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During the Great Depression, the federal government built over 1,100 post offices throughout the country as part of the New Deal’s Federal Works Agency. Many of the post offices funded and built in this period were designed by architect Louis Simon, Head of the Office of the Supervising Architect for the U.S. Treasury. Few architects had such a role in designing buildings nationwide than Federal architects who designed buildings ranging from smaller post offices like this to courthouses and federal offices. They really are the unsung designers who impacted the built environment in nearly every corner of the nation. As part of the Treasury Department Section of Fine Arts, artists were hired to complete local murals inside many post offices built in this period, depicting local scenes and histories of the towns they were painted in. In Kennebunkport, artist Elizabeth Tracy who submitted a preliminary sketch of her piece “Bathers” which was approved depicting a beach scene, though the townspeople had not been consulted. Unfortunately, the opinion of a vocal part of the Kennebunkport populace was highly negative to Tracy’s painting, largely due to the fact that her beach scene depicted people on a beach in adjacent Kennebunk, not Kennebunkport! Within a few years, the townspeople gathered funds to hire artist Gordon Grant to paint a satisfactory replacement mural in 1945. The new mural remains inside the post office.

Captain Nathaniel Ward – Abbott Graves House // 1812

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In about 1812, Captain Nathaniel Ward Jr. of Kennebunkport purchased this home in the village from housewright and builder Samuel Davis. The Federal style house is five bays with a central entrance with pedimented fan over the door. Two end chimneys would heat the home in the winter months when Nathaniel was out at sea and his wife, Sarah, would be maintaining the home and caring for their six children. The couple’s eldest son Charles Ward, served as the second American Consul to Zanzibar in Africa. In his role, Ward bickered continuously with the Sultan, whose word of law changed with the wind and he eventually left his position and settled in Salem, Massachusetts. This house was later owned by Abbott Fuller Graves (1859–1936), a renowned painter before he built a Prairie Style house in Kennebunkport in 1905.