A most valuable footprint on the beach.

By Colin W. Sargent

“Seventy-one Shore Road in York was once a bathhouse,” says listing agent Abigail Douris. “Today, it’s a year-round cottage—all that remains of a hotel that burned down.” She motions left to the crown of a peninsula where the mammoth resort once guarded crescent-shaped Cape Neddick Beach.

“When the owners, Dr. Peter and Pamela Skerik, were renovating the cottage six or seven years ago, they uncovered the green column inside that matched accents of the old Passaconaway Inn at York Cliffs in 1902. Additional similarities in the roof and shingles indicated that the cottage was the original bathhouse for the inn.” [See photos, right.]

While the vanished inn hearkens back to Victorian times, this surviving structure dates to 1965. As you’d expect from a former bathhouse, it’s right on the beach. Sand rolls out from your huge living room and kitchen windows. The beach and surf fill your private world like a drive-in movie.

Read the full story in the digital magazine above.