Summer Colony

Kurth-Kliegel Cottage // 1896

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Elka Park in Hunter, New York, is a really unique summer colony developed in the late 19th century as a country retreat for wealthy German-Americans to escape the woes of city life, primarily from New York City. Between 1890-1896, a total of 21 homes were built as summer cottages, 17 remain to this day. Almost all “cottages” were built with at least 4 bedrooms with space for servants, guests would lodge at the nearby Elka Park Clubhouse, which was destroyed by fire and replaced after WWII. The private community remains a secluded respite and relatively unknown to most. This cottage was built in 1896 for a tax commissioner Mr. Kurth, from plans by Hugo Kafka, a Czech-American architect with an office in New York City. Kafka also had a summer cottage at Elka Park. This cottage was purchased in the 1920s by Johann Kliegl, a German inventor and businessman who settled in New York, developing the “Klieglight”, a carbon arc lamp used heavily in filmmaking at the time. The late-Italianate style cottage remains well preserved to this day and even has a historically appropriate paint scheme!

Keuffel Cottage // 1893

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Built nextdoor to his business partner’s summer cottage (last post), Wilhelm (William) J. D. Keuffel, a German immigrant from Saxony, erected this summer cottage in the fashionable German-developed summer colony Elka Park in upstate New York. Keuffel & Esser Company (K&E) was founded by German immigrants Wilhelm J. D. Keuffel and Hermann Esser and manufactured high-quality surveying, drafting, and calculating tools for architects, engineers, surveyors, and building contractors in Hoboken, New Jersey with a sales office in Manhattan. By the early twentieth century, it was one of the largest manufacturers of scientific instruments in the world. Keuffel made good money, and summered in Elka Park for years until his death in 1908. The Queen Anne style Victorian “cottage” features the typical asymmetrical plan, corner towers, varied siding and detailing, and many porches to provide the residents with sweeping views of the distant mountains.

Esser Cottage // 1894

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Hermann Esser (1845-1908) was born in Elbertfeld Germany and emigrated to the U.S. in the fall of 1866 and settling in Hoboken, NJ. On September 30, 1869, he married Bertha Michelmann of Hanover, Germany, who also emigrated to the U.S. years prior. In the states, Essen joined his old business partner Wilhelm J.D. Keuffel (also a German) and they ran the Keuffel & Esser Company, a scientific instrument manufacturing firm originally founded in New York City in 1867. Best known for its popularization of the slide rule, Keuffel & Esser was the first American company to specialize in the manufacture and sale of drafting and surveying tools. By the early twentieth century, it was one of the largest manufacturers of scientific instruments in the world. Their original store was located at 127 Fulton Street in Manhattan. Esser, with his wealth, decided to build a cottage in summer colony of Elka Park, New York, just north of Manhattan. The enclave was founded and has long been inhabited by wealthy German residents from New York City. This cottage was built for Mr. Esser in 1894, and is decidedly more Colonial Revival than many other cottages here. Esser only enjoyed a few summers here as he moved back to Germany in 1902, and died in 1908.

Radnor Cottage // c.1907

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The historic summer cottages for middle-class summer residents of Maine have little written about them, but oh are these little cottages beautiful!! This is Radnor Cottage, a charming waterfront dwelling in the Haven Colony in Brooklin, Maine. The summer colony is comprised of a dozen quaint cabins (most historically without running water) for those of more modest means that wanted to escape the city for peace and tranquility on Maine’s rocky coast. The colony was developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a respite for academics and more who did not want to flaunt their credentials or social prestige. This home was purchased a few years ago and the inside looks like it’s never been altered! This is a dream home!

The Billows Cottage // 1895

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The Billows Cottage in Kennebunkport, Maine was built in 1895 for a B.S. Thompson, a wealthy coffee and tea merchant. The house was originally designed by Henry Paston Clark, a Boston architect who was very busy furnishing designs of some of the summer colony’s most iconic buildings and cottages. For this cottage, he designed it in a blending of Shingle and Colonial Revival styles with a side-gabled roof punctuated by dormers and sweeping verandas with rubblestone foundation. By 1904, the cottage was purchased by Robert C. Ogden of Philadelphia, who helped establish Wanamaker’s Department Store. Under Ogden’s ownership, the house was remodeled and expanded numerous times, but still retains its charm!

Edwin Packard Cottage // 1899

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Yet another of the large summer “cottages” in the Cape Arundel Summer Colony of Kennebunkport is this stunning eclectic home, built in 1899 for Edwin Packard of New York. As a young man, Edwin married Julia Hutchinson and would soon amass an ample fortune. He became European buyer for A.T. Stewart & Co. In 1889 he came President of the Franklin Trust Company, resigning in 1892 to become President of the New York Guaranty and Indemnity Company. He was a Director of the Franklin Safe Deposit Company, the American Writing Paper Company, the Fajardo Sugar Company and the Brooklyn YMCA, and a member of the New York Chamber of Commerce. Busy man! From his wealth, he sought solitude and relaxation in Kennebunkport, hiring Maine architect John Calvin Stevens to design this cottage for his family to retreat to for summers away from the city. The Shingle style and Colonial Revival style house features a prominent gambrel roof, Palladian windows, and bay windows, all covering a sweeping front porch.

Juniper Ledge Cottage // 1889

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Ellen Kemble (Bartol) Brazier was born in New York City in 1844, the eldest of four children of Barnabas and Emma Bartol. Her father had many business interests in sugar refining and the family was able to travel the world from his wealth and success. The family spent most of their time in Philadelphia, but like many of the city’s wealthy residents, they often summered elsewhere. Ellen Bartol married Joseph Harrison Brazier in 1866 and they had two children. When her father Barnabas died, Ellen inherited some of his remaining fortune and as a part of high society, she had a summer cottage in Kennebunkport built. Working with Maine architect John Calvin Stevens, she oversaw the designs of Juniper Ledge, this gorgeous, eclectic shingled residence in the Cape Arundel summer colony. Ellen would summer at the cottage until her death in 1925, but before she died, she joined her daughter in the 1910s and 1920s at Women’s Suffrage events and fundraisers, helping to pass the 19th Amendment, allowing women the right to vote in the United States. Ellen is buried in the West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia next to her husband, not far from her parents.

Grayling Cottage // c.1900

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John Bach McMaster (1852 –1932) was born in Brooklyn, New York to a rich plantation owning father and mother who ran operations in New Orleans until the outbreak of the Civil War. After this, John graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1872, worked as a civil engineer in 1873–1877. Falling in love with the field of American History, he switched careers and in 1883, became professor of American history in the University of Pennsylvania. McMaster is best known for his History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War (1883), a valuable supplement to the more purely political writings of earlier years. The book was a huge success and John was able to purchase house lots in the newly established Cape Arundel Summer Colony in Kennebunkport, Maine, a colony populated by many wealthy Philadelphians for summer homes. He first appears to have built “The Kedge”, a chunky, but beautiful cottage on a cliff. McMaster would also have this larger cottage built by the turn of the 20th century, which in design, appears to be a more eclectic Shingle style dwelling. Just a stone’s throw from the Atlantic, the house features continuous cedar shingle siding, sweeping porches to provide views of the ocean, a prominent chimney, and Colonial-inspired fanlight motifs.

Spouting Rock Cottage // 1887

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Another of the earlier summer cottages built in Kennebunkport’s Cape Arundel summer colony is this charming dwelling perched on a stone outcropping overlooking the rocky coast of Maine. Spouting Rock Cottage was built in 1887 as a transitional Shingle style and Queen Anne summer home for author John Townsend Trowbridge of Arlington, Massachusetts. Trowbridge spent many summers in Kennebunkport and was engaged in local cultural affairs, he even named Spouting Rock and Blowing Cave, natural features in the town. For his summer cottage, Trowbridge hired Arlington-based architect J. Merrill Brown, who provided a rustic, timeless design without all the unnecessary frills and details for the rugged coastline. That is to say that the cottage is anything but boring, with its sweeping porches, complex form with rounded stair-tower, and dormer with curved shingle returns. Perfection.

Gable and Tower Cottages // 1889

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These two similar houses in the Cape Arundel Summer Colony in Kennebunkport, Maine, were built in 1889 for Prosper Louis Senat (1852–1925) and his wife Clementine. Prosper was a well-known artist from Philadelphia, who would summer in Kennebunkport and traveled the world with Clementine, painting landscapes and seascapes. Senat and his wife lived in one cottage and likely rented the other to family and friends when visiting town. His studio was built on a nearby street and is extant. Tower cottage (greenish-grey) was renamed Shady Oak Cottage in the 20th century. Both cottages were built by George Gooch, a local contractor from plans by an unknown architect and feature bay windows, short towers, smaller windows, and continuous shingle siding.

“The Dory” Cottage // 1888

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Before Miss Gerrard purchased the Glen Cottage (last post) in 1900 in Kennebunkport, Maine, she had already summered in her own summer cottage nextdoor for over a decade. In 1888, she hired an architect from New Jersey to furnish plans for this charming shingle and stone cottage as her summer retreat. The cottage features a prominent brick and rubble stone chimney facing the street with a gambrel roof. The entrance is tucked away under a recessed porch and looks to be the original dutch-door. I can’t imagine how amazing summers in this house would be!

Glen Cottage // c.1850

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Not all of Kennebunkport’s summer “cottages” are grand, Shingle style mansions… Glen Cottage was originally built in c.1850 as a Greek Revival style cape house. As the town developed into a desirable summer colony for wealthy residents of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, the small cottage caught the eye of a Ms. Garrard. Margaret Garrard purchased Glen Cottage in 1900 and hired Maine architect William Barry to transform the old cape, adding the dormers, octagonal bay, and door hood. Here, she ran the Bonnie Brig Tearoom for twenty years. Tea houses were important social centers for wealthy summer residents Later owners renamed the tea house, “The Old Tree Tea Tavern” and “Periwinkle” but in 1926, the name reverted to The Bonnie Brig Tearoom. Today, the cottage has reverted back to residential use with the owners lovingly maintaining the old cape.

Nesmith-Kent Cottage // 1891

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One of the most iconic summer “cottages” in Kennebunkport’s late 19th-early 20th century summer colony is the Nesmith-Kent Cottage, located next door to the often photographed St. Ann’s-by-the-Sea summer chapel. The cottage was built for Julia and Mary Nesmith, the daughters of John Nesmith a wealthy industrialist and textile manufacturer from Lowell MA. The sisters named the cottage “The Pebbles”, and spent their first night there on July 24, 1891. The half-timbered shingled house stood at the edge of the ocean near a former War of 1812 fortification. The sisters sold the property in 1910 to Arthur Atwater Kent, prominent radio manufacturer based in Philadelphia, who invented the modern form of the automobile ignition coil. Kent renovated the cottage extensively, increasing its size, and renamed “The Pebbles”, “At Water’s Edge” in a cheeky play on his last name. In 1919, he expanded again, purchasing a lot adjacent to his mansion which was the old fort constructed to protect the ships moored in the harbor during the War of 1812. In early 1919, workmen uncovered a few bones of what was calculated to be a seven-foot-tall man and two skulls of white men that had clearly met their end at the hands of Native people; one pierced by an arrow and the other scalped. The Kennebunkport Historical Society has one of these skulls in their collections. Today, the Nesmith-Kent Cottage is owned by the St. Ann’s-by-the-Sea congregation as their rectory.

Landgrove Tennis Clubhouse // c.1930

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The tiny town of Landgrove, Vermont, like many small rural towns in New England, suffered from population decline in the early-mid 20th century. In Landgrove’s case, the town was effectively saved by one man, Samuel Ogden (1896-1985). Samuel was born in New Jersey but eventually visited rural Vermont, eventually buying a run-down farmhouse in Landgrove in the year 1929. By the ’30s and ’40s, began to buy up all the houses in town and fix them up and then sell to people he knew as summer vacation homes, saving historic houses and barns from decay and providing them a new life. He worked as a realtor, selling the restored homes for a series of well-known cultural figures: documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, artist Bernadine Custer, and the violinist Nathan Milstein, among many others. In the process, Ogden helped to create an informal network that linked writers and artists across his section of southern Vermont, effectively gentrifying the town in the process (for better or worse). One of his draws to bring wealthy city-dwellers to summer in the hills of Vermont, was a community center/tennis club, known as the Landgrove Tennis Club. The club is still members-only and has just one clay court, but the clubhouse is oh so charming!

Church of the Holy Redeemer // 1907

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Built to replace the former St. Sylvia’s Catholic Church (1881-1909), the Church of the Holy Redeemer in Bar Harbor stands as one of the more imposing religious buildings in town. The new church was envisioned by Rev. James O’Brien, who wanted a larger church structure closer to downtown Bar Harbor than the current St. Sylvia’s. The Neo-Gothic stone church was designed by Bangor architect Victor Hodgins, and was constructed from granite blocks quarried from Washington County, Maine. Inside, massive trusses from felled cyprus trees nearby support the roof and stone walls. Gorgeous stained glass windows line the walls which flood the interior with color.