O c t o b e r 2 0 1 7 8 1 House of the Month Photos Courtesy the knowles co. East of Eden By Brad Emerson For $15.5M, you can be the toast of Bar Harbor, from soup to guns. I n 1867, New York business- man David H. Haight acquired a large shorefront parcel on Sonogee Point in Bar Har- bor, then still known as Eden. Haight hired a Boston build- er named Doane to put up a large wood- en summer house with a mansard roof and encircling verandas for enjoying the ocean views. Mr. Doane had been brought to Bar Harbor by Alpheus Hardy, a wealthy Bosto- nian, earlier that year to construct his own simple cottage–there being no contractors on the island considered capable of build- ing a cottage to the standards of a wealthy urban visitor. Seeing the opportunity, Do- ane remained, building a number of large cottages as Bar Harbor’s boom began. CASTLE BOOM Just a dozen years later, Bar Harbor was a destination town, a fashionable watering hole for the East Coast elite. Its huge hotels attracted some of the country’s most prom- inent citizens, and it was considered a seri- ous contender for Newport, Rhode Island’s, crown as high society’s summer capital. Throughout the next two decades, elabo- rate cottages of stone and shingle, embel- lished with gables and turrets, were built along the shores by some of America’s most prominent architects, including William FUN FACT: Remember the New York Supreme Court buiding with all the stairs that Charlie Sheen climbs at the end of Wall Street? Guy Lowell designed that, too.