After she survived the Titanic sinking, socialite Madeleine Astor, 19, came here to mourn her newlywed husband, John Jacob Astor IV; play a little tennis; and raise their child. Her astonishing Bar Harbor cottage, La Selva, is another survivor–yours this summer for $2.3 million.

By Brad Emerson

Only a few grand ‘cottages’ of Bar Harbor’s era as a glamorous summer resort survive. One of the most famous, La Selva, is for sale. Its story is quintessentially American, a serial whose installments might have been written by Howells, Wharton, or Fitzgerald.

La Selva (selva is Spanish for jungle or forest) was built in 1902 for Andrew Jackson Davis, a successful coal operator from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. His big payday came in 1900, when he sold the mines to the LeHigh Railroad and retired to enjoy his new fortune. The family had summered in Northeast Harbor, but now they set their sights on Bar Harbor, where they felt the scenery was even finer, and where in the company of some of America’s most prominent families–Morgans, Vanderbilts, Pulitzers, McCormicks, and Livingstons–their marriageable daughters would be launched in society.