House of the Month S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7 1 0 1 from top: anna gallant carter; inset: courtesy downeast properties E. B. White’s Web Lovers of Charlotte’s Web who believe the E.B. White House has just one story to tell may be surprised. By Colin W. Sargent T his fall, with its crisp lines, black shutters, white clapboards, and gnarl of apple tree, the E.B. White House in North Brooklin can be yours for $3.7M. The sellers, summer residents Robert and Mary Gallant, are the former owners of a bracelet of 40 Gallant-Belk department stores based in Charlotte, NC. In 1986, a year after White died, the Gallants bought this soaring 44-acre saltwater farm from his son Joel White, the naval architect who owned Brooklin Boat Yard. That same year, the E.B. White House, with its classic re- straint, 2,080 feet of coastline, and under- stated elegance, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was a spectacularly public epitaph for a writer who fetishized privacy. And it’s your first clue to unraveling the mystery of why this property has intentionally not been listed on the Maine Multiple Listings. Early Days The People of the Dawn were the first to civilize this part of Vacationland embraced by Blue Hill Bay. Like the Manhattans of New York, the Penobscots loved to party– the clamshell heaps they left behind are tes- timony to their veneration for this land–in- cluding the grand picnic spot with endless views they called Naskeag. Fast-forward to 1795, when Capt. Rich- ard Allen–a housewright who likely knew his way around a fast ship–built this post- Revolutionary frame house for the first of its owners, William Allen Holden. In those days, this area was called Sedgwick. In 1849, the town of Port Watson was incor- porated. But the name Port Watson didn’t stick–it was changed to Brooklin barely weeks later. A quick line edit (because, well, there was a brook and a boundary). Arrivistes Elwyn Brooks White (1899-1985) grew up loving Maine–from his boyhood, his fam- ily had summered at Belgrade Lakes. While studying at Cornell, he spent a concur- rent hitch in the Army before graduating in 1921. By 1929, he was a budding New York- er contributor who was falling for the mag- azine’s fiction editor, Katharine Angell. She divorced her husband and married White that same year. While Maine was never a hideaway, it clearly beckoned. Scandal? “Whatever,” Roger Angell, her oldest son, has recalled of the romance between his mother and stepfather, whom he would lat- er come to admire. In 1930, the Whites had a son, Joel White, the future wooden boat designer. In 1933, the young family of four (Roger was 13, Joel 3) bought this house in North