December 2015 | view this story as a .pdf

Five oceanfront stunners for sale–and the whispers that surround them.

By Colin W. Sargent

Manhattan Transfer: $9.5 M

Only dreamers would dare assemble an imaginary portfolio of the swankiest properties cresting the Maine Multiple Listings. And based on your internet activity, we’ve profiled you as a dreamer. Read on.

399 Hermit’s Point Road, Islesboro

Say you’re a two-term mayor of New York. In fact, you’re the very gentleman who gracefully accepted The Statue of Liberty from the people of France. Which means, of course, you’re also the eponymous shipping plutocrat who founded W.R. Grace & Co., the monolithic industrial empire that is still covered with admiration in magazines such as Forbes and Fortune. (According to lawinfo.com, “John Travolta’s 1999 movie A Civil Action was based on the true story of 8 Woburn, Massachusetts families who were seriously hurt by water contaminated by the W.R. Grace Co.”) 

The year is 1918. And say you want to build a modest Renaissance Revival palace for your daughter, Louisa Nathalie Grace. Where would you build it? Where else but Maine, on the storied shores of Islesboro? You’ve commissioned famous Philadelphia architect Wilson Eyre, born in Florence, Italy, to create the ultimate fantasy home on this windswept peninsula. Eyre, at the top of his game, and by many accounts America’s premier domestic architect before Frank Lloyd Wright, is accustomed to having frighteningly powerful resources at his disposal. In one project, to address an empty space, he called Maxfield Parrish to have him whip up a bespoke mural–a one-of-a-kind design.

Here on Islesboro, Eyre dreams up an eight-bedroom stucco fortress with baths ensuite that will boast a lovely fir and mahogany deepwater dock. Tuscan touches include luxurient loggias. Across the peninsula, reflecting in the water, a stone guest house enchants as few structures can.

Listing agent Terry Sortwell descibes this nine-acre Shangri La and the world it surveys: “It overlooks Penobscot Bay and offers magnificent views to the south down the bay, west to the Camden Hills, and east over Seal Harbor and Islesboro. Miss Grace was an accomplished artist, and she painted here in a studio she added to the house.” The stone guest house “on the cove was inspired by the seaside cottages she admired on a trip to Italy.” Sortwell’s favorite spot is “the lower loggia. When you walk through the doors you’re looking right down the bay.” Taxes are $33,647.

This Side of Paradise: $5.5M

19 Crosstrees Road, North Haven

Just because “Crosstrees” was–until this year–the summer home of the late Paul Cabot (1930-2014) doesn’t mean the following doggerel is in any way appropriate:

And this is good North Haven,
the home of fried clams and Izod,
where the seagulls talk only to Cabots,
and the Cabots wish to communicate
with prospective buyers
exclusively through their real estate broker.

Because first of all, this Colonial Revival landmark has always been, to its very bones, a Gaston family property for well over a century. Moreover, Cabot’s wife, Jennifer Felton Cabot, is charmingly forthcoming about listing the getaway her family has loved for five generations.

“I’m Mrs. Paul Cabot,” Jennifer says, noting she’s just gone through “my first Christmas without him. But [Crosstrees] has never been a Cabot place. It was built in 1895 by William A. Gaston, my grandfather. My mother, Hope Gaston Felton, inherited it, and I inherited it from her. Crosstrees looks towards Stonington, while the Lindberghs look out to Camden Hills.”

High-flying neighbors to be sure (see our “Star Map of North Haven Island” Summerguide 2014). Another summer neighbor, the post-impressionist painter Frank W. Benson (1862-1951), “was a very good friend of my grandfather. He painted my mother’s portrait. It’s hanging in my house in North Haven.”

As for the next generation, “My children would love to keep Crosstrees if they could all come for two weeks in the summer, but it’s not the kind of place you can use for two weeks. I spend most of the summer there, and it takes a lot of doing to keep it up”–15.5 acres of location, location, location.

On top of that, “North Haven, for better or worse, is terribly hard to get to. I have two children in New York, one in Nevada, and another in Massachusetts,” so distance makes a dismal event planner, even though objects in the home cast a magic spell.

THE Ticking of Eternity

“The original family photo albums are here,” Jennifer says, possibly chronicling her Uncle William Gaston’s marriages to world figures like actress Kay Francis; Rosamond Pinchot Gaston (see sidebar); and Theodora Getty Gaston–the model for the torch-singer-turned-opera-star in Citizen Kane and author of Alone Together: My Life with J. Paul Getty (Ecco, 2013, $26.99).

Then there’s the dining room, echoing from happy get-togethers. “I can seat 16.” How about the enormous blue sofa in the sunroom? “I don’t know what’s going to happen to it. It may go with the house. It’s too big for my children to take on. It’s where people have read and slept here…” Forever.

Sometimes a space articulates itself in its deepest silences. “We have a player piano, and we have a lot of old rolls from the 1920s and 1930s. We’ve turned them on, pushed the furniture back, and danced after dinner.” The entertainment spaces vibrate with “First World War patriotic songs.” Also, “‘When Your Hair Has Turned To Silver.’”

 The Beautiful & Doomed

Asked about Rosamond Pinchot Gaston, Jennifer responds, “She was my mother’s brother’s wife. [He had three.] My uncle William Gaston never owned this house; his sister–my mother–inherited it, but he owned several islands off Vinalhaven. One of the islands he owned was later named Hurricane. Let’s see, I think he owned Crotch Island, Spectacle, and more. Rosamond must have been here at Crosstrees, visiting my grandparents, because my sisters remember playing with her children. When my grandmother died, my mother inherited the place, and maybe that’s when Uncle William bought the islands.”

Exquisite Sense of Place

Poignantly the sole family member here, Jennifer is keenly aware of her private world. “My favorite 30 seconds is watching the sun rise from my bed at 4:30 a.m, and hearing the seagulls. We don’t have crashing waves because Crosstrees is very protected. You could walk across the lobster buoys to Vinalhaven from my house.”

Another nook she loves is “the deck. You can see Calderwood’s Neck; Goose Rock Lighthouse, which is just in front of Stimson’s Island; the Little Thorofare and Main Thorofare. You can see the lights of Stonington at night, and on a clear night you can see northwest and see the top of Blue Hill.”

One of her guest houses is called the Custom House because “there used to be a Custom House on North Haven when Pulpit Harbor had a town.” Years ago, while winterizing part of the space, workers “found a sign. It had been part of the custom house. We had it regilded and gave it to my mother.” The other guest house “is called Hope Cottage. While expecting my mother, my grandmother didn’t want to stay in Boston in 1901, so they came up here and my mother was born on North Haven.”

Jennifer’s favorite meal is “fresh-cooked lobsters on my stove, in salt water. Yes, I use seaweed.”

Buyers’ Market

“People have looked at it and said ‘it just doesn’t work for us,’” Jennifer says of the estate that’s so dear to her. “‘We have to have this and that,’ you know. I say to them, live in it a while and see if you don’t like it before you start tearing it down. Because if you modernize it, it might lose its charm. I’m all for new plumbing, and I did put in a new kitchen when I inherited it. I couldn’t have coped with the kitchen as it was–I think you have to have modern facilities. I put in a laundry room; before, the laundry had been in another building. My grandmother had 14 servants. I don’t.” She pauses. “The old paneling should stay. The fireplaces are wonderful. On a foggy day we use them, and they are wonderfully warm. They throw a lot of heat.” Which conjures Edna St. Vincent Millay’s description of burning the candle at both ends: “They make a lovely glow.”

Taxes are $25,562.

Look Who Flapped In

As one of three wives of “Uncle William Gaston,” starlet Rosamond Pinchot Gaston was a sometime summer visitor at Crosstrees between 1928 and 1933. Five years later, estranged but not yet divorced, she “was found [dead from carbon-monoxide poisoning in a car parked inside the garage of a rented mansion in Oyster Bay, Long Island, NY].” According to a Jan. 24, 1938, obituary, she was wearing “a shimmering white evening gown, silver slippers, and an ermine wrap.” A garden hose snaked from the exhaust into her motorcar window.

The nation mourned her. At 17, dressed as a nun, she’d won the hearts of New York theater-goers as the star of the biblical epic The Miracle. On the silver screen, she was memorable as Queen Anne in 1935’s The Three Musketeers. A niece of Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot (1923-7, 1931-5), Pinchot Gaston was kicked off the New York social register–presumably for ditching her debut and entering show-biz. Her widower, William Gaston, would later own what is now Hurricane Island, headquarters for The Outward Bound School.

Bar Harbor Bonanza: $6.75M

120 Schooner Head Road,
Bar Harbor

The secret back passage to Acadia National Park is whispered among locals because “that’s the way you can reach Sand Beach without having to pay.” For those of us who can’t afford to go free, it’s hard to beat this property at Schooner Head Road. After you pass Jackson Lab on the right, “the house is through a gated drive on the left, right before Seely Road,” says listing agent Kim Swan.

The view from this 15.6-acre slice is “Frenchman Bay and looks right at Egg Rock and the Lighthouse.” Built in 1990, the contemporary structure faces 570 feet of waterfront and scratches Heaven with its vaulting ceiling.

Naturally, “it has the benefit of up-to-date kitchens and baths.”

Taxes are $36,684.

Swooping Beauty: $1.98M

6 Bay View Drive, Freeport

To reach 6 Bay View Drive, journey to the extreme tip of Moore Point, “past Wolfe’s Neck State Park,” says co-listing agent David Banks. “It is situated at the very point of the peninsula.” You know you’ve made it out here when, at water’s edge, you’re enchanted by a once-in-a-lifetime view of Pound of Tea Island.

“The [2007] building’s curving design is Frank Grondin’s signature style,” says Ana Paprocki of Re/Max By The Bay. “It’s whimsical, with a medieval touch” while suggesting the darts and dips of gulls. A mammoth “floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace provides a focal point of the open-concept family room and dining area. In the gourmet kitchen, a Regal Atlantic wood cooking stove and eagles-nest sitting area with concrete floors surrounds a fireplace built with stone from the property and surrounding islands.”

Paprocki’s favorite spot is the “covered oceanfront patio, which offers an ideal entertaining space with a stone pizza oven and access to the beautifully landscaped yard” rushing to “185 feet of owned deep water and access to an association dock.”

Did we mention it’s LEED Gold Energy Standards certified? Because it’s being sold by its original owner/creator, the house’s design intentions will reach a new buyer intact, with “intricate detailing, a mahogany foyer…striking water views,” and the incomparable “oceanfront lawn.” With shared-private-association access to an ancient granite pier, it’s not a bad place to come in for a landing. Taxes are $24,202.

Little Cottage for Jack & Diane: $5.99M

1 Clapboard Island, Falmouth

In 1989-1990, a quarter century before John Cougar Mellencamp wrote the songs and lyrics for Stephen King’s 2014 supernatural musical Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, the rocker toured this ultra-private, shingle-style mansion in the center of Clapboard Island, looking for a Maine getaway. Back then, the house along with 22 acres of the island (the southern half) were for sale for $2.375M, with Vaughan Pratt of LandVest noting, “We sell kingdoms, not subdivisions.”

With just a single owner in the interim–and listed most recently at $5.99M and returning to the market this spring–the kingdom has added some basic necessities: “a helicopter pad and a zip line,” according to Ana Paprocki of Re/Max By The Bay.

“Magnificently conceived by [Pennsylvania Roalroad owner] Samuel F. Houston and friend/architect Joseph M. Huston in 1898,” the Shingle Style landmark near the island’s center was built by “100 local artisans who completed the island home in just 100 days,” with the help of “oxen brought over on barges.”

The estate sparkles along 3,200 feet of Casco Bay. Just a mile offshore, the island fills the windows of Dockside Grill on the mainland. Of course, from that distance, you can’t see the lady’s slippers on the property or feel your ears grow as you slip into the unencompassable silence of island living.

Boating out to your property, you’ll tie up to a private granite dock with 30-foot-wide granite stairs. Beyond the paneled entertainment spaces and 14 fireplaces, the most charming spot is a Hansel and Gretel-style playhouse, created by Houston after returning from Europe in 1912. Taxes are $38,693.