O c t o b e r 2 0 1 7 8 9 House of the Month It was spotted by architect Stanley Hal- let. Hallet didn’t dream of huge Gilded Age summer cottage in Maine–in fact, quite the contrary, he had dreams of Provence– but he was smitten. By forming a coopera- tive partnership, the Hallets and three oth- er couples–the Lewises, the Grahams, and the Hills–found themselves in possession of a 35-room Italian villa on the shores of Frenchman’s Bay in September of 1975. The four couples drew up a plan for sharing common and private spaces–not that difficult with eight master bedrooms on the second floor and 11 bedrooms for servants on the third. The house was occasionally rented for functions to help with upkeep. In the tra- dition of a new era, the villa received a new name. In whimsical fashion it became East of Eden, a reference to Bar Harbor’s origi- nal name (even though the house is techni- cally northwest of Eden). Though a few of the partners came and went over the years (and Hallet’s brother Michael moved in and became the de facto handyman), there is no doubt that their stewardship saved the house from probable destruction–or death by Bed and Breakfast. PULLING THE TRIGGER All things come to an end, and the partner- ship placed the estate on the market. Lucky for them, things had changed since the sev- enties, and big houses were back in fashion. In 2007, it was purchased by William B. Ruger Jr., a noted collector of automobiles and 19th century art and heir to the Ruger firearms fortune. When questioned about why he took on this project, current owner William B. Ruger Jr. replies, “During my frequent vis- its to Bar Harbor, I’d always admired the grand old cottages. In the 1960s, I was of- fered ‘The Turrets,’ now the administration building of the College of the Atlantic, for $20,000, but at that point I felt the price– or rather the funds required to restore it– would be a bit of a stretch. When I was of- fered ‘The Turrets’ again for $50,000, the pressures of my job precluded my taking it. My desire to own a Bar Harbor house re- mained, and years later, when ‘East of Eden’ became available, I jumped at the chance.” A man of informed and decided taste and opinions on matters aesthet- ic and technical, he was ready for the project, having previously complet- ed a similar restoration of a late Victorian country estate in New Hampshire. East of Eden’s “clarity of design and planning and first-rate craftsmanship appealed to me, as did the challenges of solving old prob- lems properly with modern solutions, and I decided, with the house approaching 100 years, that it deserved to be brought back to its past splendor, but in a way that would William B. Ruger, Jr., 77, served as an execu- tive at the Sturm, Ruger & Co. firearms com- pany until his retirement as CEO in 2006. His father, William B. Ruger, Sr. (1916-2002), co- founded the Southport-Connecticut-based company with Alexander Sturm in 1949. “Bill Jr. alone has a $90 million stake in the gun company,” wrote Forbes Magazine the year William Sr. died. Meet the Seller