{"id":13858,"date":"2017-09-28T18:30:53","date_gmt":"2017-09-28T22:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=13858"},"modified":"2019-08-29T11:21:36","modified_gmt":"2019-08-29T15:21:36","slug":"east-of-eden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/east-of-eden\/","title":{"rendered":"East of Eden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe allowfullscreen allow=\"fullscreen\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:500px;\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23f5f5f5&#038;backgroundColorFullscreen=%23f5f5f5&#038;d=flipbook&#038;hideIssuuLogo=true&#038;hideShareButton=true&#038;pageNumber=83&#038;u=portlandmagazine\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>October 2017 | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/pdf\/Oct17%20East%20of%20Eden.pdf\">view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">For <strong>$15.5M<\/strong>, you can be the toast of Bar Harbor, from soup to guns. <\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">By Brad Emerson<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-13862\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/oct17-East-of-Eden-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"oct17-East-of-Eden\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/oct17-East-of-Eden.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/oct17-East-of-Eden-200x150.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>In 1867, New York businessman David H. Haight acquired a large shorefront parcel on Sonogee Point in Bar Harbor, then still known as Eden. Haight hired a Boston builder named Doane to put up a large wooden 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 Bostonian, earlier that year to construct his own simple cottage\u2013there being no contractors on the island considered capable of building a cottage to the standards of a wealthy urban visitor. Seeing the opportunity, Doane remained, building a number of large cottages as Bar Harbor\u2019s boom began. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>CASTLE BOOM<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">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\u2019s most prominent citizens, and it was considered a serious contender for Newport, Rhode Island\u2019s, crown as high society\u2019s summer capital.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\"><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Throughout the next two decades, elaborate cottages of stone and shingle, embellished with gables and turrets, were built along the shores by some of America\u2019s most prominent architects, including William Ralph Emerson, Rotch &amp; Tilden, Frank Furness, and Bruce Price. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">In 1902, David Haight\u2019s heirs sold three parcels of their father\u2019s shorefront, and in the next two years, three grand new cottages appeared: Andrews Davis\u2019s \u201cLa Selva,\u201d Henry Lane Eno\u2019s \u201cSonogee,\u201d and Edith Vanderbilt Fabbri\u2019s \u201cBuonriposo.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">The Davis cottage (See our story \u201cViva La Selva,\u201d May 2013) was in the traditional idiom, but the Eno and Fabbri cottages were inspired by Mediterranean villas, a style newly popular in Bar Harbor, where florid travel writers of the day often drew comparison to Italian coastal vistas .<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>The Brahmin &amp; The Ladds<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">In May 1908, the <em>Bar Harbor Record<\/em> announced that the Haight cottage was to be demolished by its new owner, yachtsman Walter Graeme Ladd of Pasadena, California. The site was to be prepared for a new cottage by architect <strong>Guy Lowell<\/strong>, whose Building of Arts in Bar Harbor was nearing completion (See our story \u201cAthens in the Wilderness,\u201d April 2014).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">Walter Ladd had worked as an insurance broker, but his chief occupation was managing the fortune of his wife, the former Kate Everitt Macy. Kate\u2019s grandfather, Josiah Macy, was a Quaker from Nantucket who\u2019d parlayed a fortune made in shipping and commissions into another as the first oil refiner in New York, and finally into a third, when that refinery was sold to John D. Rockefeller\u2019s Standard Oil Trust. Mrs. Ladd and her brother, V. Everitt Macy, were the principal heirs to their grandfather\u2019s $40M estate (approximately $1.2 billion in today\u2019s dollars). <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\"> Guy Lowell was not yet 40 when he received the commission to design the Ladd cottage, but he was already at the top of his profession as one of the most published and admired designers of the era. He had a degree in architecture from MIT; had studied landscape and horticulture at the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew; and finally, in 1899, received a diploma from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. For the Ladds, he conceived an Italian villa with stucco walls and red tile roof. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">Lowell began with an \u2018H\u2019 shape plan. The projecting wings thus allowed for exceptional air and light, and took full advantage of the views\u2013with many of the principal rooms enjoying three exposures. Even the servants\u2019 dining room, now the laundry and office (the original industrial-scale laundry was in a separate building), enjoys bright light from three large arched windows, an unusual amenity for the era. The plan of the house, while formally arranged, is open, gracious, and highly livable, with proportions so well resolved that every space and detail seems inevitably \u2018right\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">Mrs. Ladd\u2019s Quaker heritage is reflected in the relative simplicity of this very large house. The design depends as much on superb proportions and scale as ornamentation for effect. The center of the main fa\u00e7ade is the exception, featuring exuberant Renaissance-style stucco decoration in full relief framing the entrance. But even here, the lightness that proclaims this a summer villa prevails. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s1\">Rather than the predictably ponderous front door, one enters through French doors and steps into a large transverse hall with apsidal ends. a shallow vaulted ceiling, and<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>a polished pale marble floor. But one barely notices this, because enticing from the end of a hall<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>directly ahead is an enormous arched window with columned arcades, directly facing the ocean. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">Lowell used a sure hand combining function with beauty and drama. From these halls radiate the main rooms. One goes up a few steps from the ocean hall into an anteroom with bookcases and fireplace, and on the wall facing the window, a large mural by T.R. Mantey, original to the house, duplicates the island view out the huge window opposite. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">This in turn leads to the dining room (which contains its original Renaissance-style furniture designed by Lowell). Across this hall is a reception room, now used as a card room, which leads to the enormous, high living room, where arched French windows open to terraces and the large portico with ionic columns provides shade from the mid-day sun. Its enormous Ionic columns, ennobling and graceful, frame the views and make a perfect transition from indoors to outdoors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\"> Behind the living room is the former billiard room, now used as a study. A shallow fitted closet, echoing and balancing the windows and doors of this perfectly symmetrical room, still contains the fitted storage racks for cues and equipment. Both rooms open to the main hall. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">At the other end of the hall, a corridor leads to the kitchen wing, servants\u2019 stair, and elevator. Up a broad flight of stairs are eight large bedrooms and a sitting room, each with fireplace and room-sized bathrooms with large French windows. Many of the bedrooms have vestibules, affording added privacy. Every room is bright, and on the day of my visit, despite the heat and sun outside, the rooms were cool and capturing every breeze from tall open French doors, bringing the outside in. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">A door leads again from the upper hall to the servants\u2019 hall, entering a parallel world worthy of Downton Abbey. The woodwork here is varnished cypress and bead board, and linen rooms and utility closets with deep sinks attest to the maids who once ruled this parallel universe. The servants\u2019 stair makes a last run to the third floor, where an 80-foot corridor lit by ventilating skylights leads to a linen room, 11 maids\u2019 rooms, and two baths. A garage across the street, lost in the Bar Harbor fire, contained quarters for the butler, chauffeur, and footman. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s3\">Again, such was Lowell\u2019s talent that these rooms, thanks to the ingenious skylights, cross ventilation from large dormer windows, and the deep roof, not a hint of attic stuffiness is to be found here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">In spite of her world-class venue, the frivolous life of a Bar Harbor socialite\u2013endless rounds of parties and entertainments\u2013was not for Kate Ladd. For much of her life a semi-invalid, her favored diversion was an afternoon musicale and tea. Many noted musicians of the era played at these recitals. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">Then there were the medical pursuits. Named for Kate\u2019s philanthropist father, who\u2019d died young of typhoid fever, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation was created in 1930 to further the causes of Science and Health Research. The foundation\u2019s first grant was in support of bring Alfred Einstein\u2019s assistant, Walter Mayer, to the United States. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">Walter Ladd came from a middle-class family in Brooklyn, and Kate\u2019s mother objected to their engagement, finally relenting by 1888 when they were married. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">In 1891, Ladd listed his occupation as \u2018Insurance Broker.\u201d By 1893, that occupation had changed to \u201cGentleman\u201d when Ladd liquidated his own business holdings to devote himself to the management of his wife\u2019s fortune. His chief hobby was yachting. In 1915, he commissioned the <em>Wenonah<\/em> from the Lawley shipyard. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>TIME AND TIDE<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">Walter died in 1933 and Kate in 1946. War and the Depression had diminished the market for huge Bar Harbor summer cottages, but in the optimistic post-war era, George Strawbridge snapped up Eegonos. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s3\">Strawbridge was a member of the Philadelphia family that owned the famous Strawbridge &amp; Clothier store. Mrs. Strawbridge was the former Margaret Dorrance, daughter of the founder of Campbell\u2019s Soup. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">The Strawbridges freshened the house, and in the playful spirit of the previous owners, gave it a new name, <em>Villa Ponte di Paglia<\/em> (a pun loosely translated as \u2018House of Strawbridge\u2019). Mrs. Strawbridge died in 1953, but in those few short years, the world around the house had changed dramatically. The great forest Fire of 1947 burned many of the large estates in the neighborhood, and big cottages were once again out of fashion. Nearby, Buonriposo was demolished the following year. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">Thankfully, <em>Villa Ponte di Paglia <\/em>met a sweeter fate. In 1954, the house was purchased by Dr. Richard Gott, a native of Brooklin, Maine, who taught French at the prestigious St. Mark\u2019s School in Southborough, Massachusetts. Dr. Gott also purchased La Selva, the neighboring estate that had once sheltered Mrs. John Jacob Astor IV. He combined the two into a luxurious campus for his new summer school, <em>l\u2019Ecole Arcadie<\/em>: \u201cAn intense six-week summer program for boys and girls aged 13-18. All classes and activities are conducted in the French language. Salt water swimming, tennis, cycling, and sailing complete a delightful summer. European staff.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>ADIEU TO ALL THAT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\"><em>L\u2019Ecole Arcadie<\/em> closed in the early 1970s. The 1960s and 1970s were a dark time for Bar Harbor cottages. A roll call of the estates demolished in those decades reads as a requiem to an era. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">But the house was once again to be lucky. It was spotted by architect Stanley Hallet. Hallet didn\u2019t dream of huge Gilded Age summer cottage in Maine\u2013in fact, quite the contrary, he had dreams of Provence\u2013but he was smitten. By forming a cooperative partnership, the Hallets and three other couples\u2013the Lewises, the Grahams, and the Hills\u2013found themselves in possession of a 35-room Italian villa on the shores of Frenchman\u2019s Bay in September of 1975. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">The four couples drew up a plan for sharing common and private spaces\u2013not that difficult with eight master bedrooms on the second floor and 11 bedrooms for servants on the third. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">The house was occasionally rented for functions to help with upkeep. In the tradition of a new era, the villa received a new name. In whimsical fashion it became East of Eden, a reference to Bar Harbor\u2019s original name (even though the house is technically northwest of Eden). Though a few of the partners came and went over the years (and Hallet\u2019s brother Michael moved in and became the de facto handyman), there is no doubt that their stewardship saved the house from probable destruction\u2013or death by Bed and Breakfast.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>PULLING THE TRIGGER<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">All things come to an end, and the partnership placed the estate on the market. Lucky for them, things had changed since the seventies, 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. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">When questioned about why he took on this project, current owner William B. Ruger Jr. replies, \u201cDuring my frequent visits to Bar Harbor, I\u2019d always admired the grand old cottages. In the 1960s, I was offered \u2018The Turrets,\u2019 now the administration building of the College of the Atlantic, for $20,000, but at that point I felt the price\u2013or rather the funds required to restore it\u2013would be a bit of a stretch. When I was offered \u2018The Turrets\u2019 again for $50,000, the pressures of my job precluded my taking it. My desire to own a Bar Harbor house remained, and years later, when \u2018East of Eden\u2019 became available, I jumped at the chance.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">A man of informed and decided taste and opinions on matters aesthetic and technical, he was ready for the project, having previously completed a similar restoration of a late Victorian country estate in New Hampshire. East of Eden\u2019s \u201cclarity of design and planning and first-rate craftsmanship appealed to me, as did the challenges of solving old problems 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 ensure its survival for another century.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>THE LATEST RENAISSANCE<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">East of Eden\u2019s age had begun to show, and Ruger set about putting it right, embarking on what would be a multi-year, multi-million-dollar restoration from the ground up. He and designer F.W. Atherton, Associates<\/span> <span class=\"s2\">assembled a team of contractors, craftsmen, and artisans. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s1\">The renovation resembled a military invasion. Ten chimneys were rebuilt, down to replacing each Italian-style chimney cap. The red tile roof was fully restored. Under the roof, the rafters supporting the wide eaves had rotted, the whole thing supported only by the soft trim below (which Atherton notes admiringly was of top grade old-growth cypress, and itself as good as the day it was installed).<\/span> <span class=\"s1\">The 12 bathrooms were gutted. The mural in the library was cleaned and repaired; windows were rebuilt; high tech infrastructure systems were installed (the basement resembles Pentagon command); and the kitchen and pantries upgraded. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">Outside, Ruger was thorough in his restoration. The home\u2019s iconic Ionic columns were rebuilt, and the elaborate baroque brackets supporting the second floor balconies were replaced. The magnificent stucco work of the fa\u00e7ade was cleaned and restored to its former glory. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s4\">Perhaps the home\u2019s most dramatic addition\u2013and a departure from its original form\u2013was the eight-bay garage, dubbed \u2018Garage Mahal.\u2019 Designed by F.W. Atherton, its pedestrian entrance has a baroque frontispiece that holds its own with the house. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s2\">As a final touch, the grounds of the long-lost Buonriposo, the neighboring Fabbri estate, have been incorporated into East of Eden, providing acres of sweeping lawn as foreground for the ocean views that have so long ago remind previous residents of the Bay of Naples. Taxes are $55,640. Listed by The Knowles Company. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>October 2017<br \/>\nFor $15.5M, you can be the toast of Bar Harbor, from soup to guns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[133],"class_list":["post-13858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-october-2017"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13858"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16631,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13858\/revisions\/16631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}