Winterguide 2016 | view this story as a .pdf

This Househunters’ Special opens with a dazzling portfolio of glamour real-estate listings, including the North Haven Island retreat of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

Flying Home

“Yesterday’s fairy tale is today’s fact. The magician is only one step ahead of his audience.” –Anne Morrow Lindbergh

$4.3M

By Colin W. Sargent

When transatlantic solo aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh married, the newlyweds slipped from the reception in a decoy car and drove in secret through the Manhattan sparkles to Long Island Sound.

A boat waited on the shore. Charles, 27, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and rowed his 22-year-old bride into the night.

The New York Times was dumbfounded. Where had the world’s greatest celebrity couple disappeared?

Lindbergh, The Lone Eagle, kept rowing, silent and bent to his purpose. The silhouette of a sleek vessel grew larger with each stroke. It had been created especially for the occasion to his exacting specifications (Eighty-six the two-berth design to a single honeymoon suite below decks, and could you fellows please make the saloon a little taller so I won’t have to bend over while I’m driving this thing?).

Radio announcers–who’d made Lindbergh the Most Famous Man on Earth for his feat of flying solo from New York to Paris in 1927–pounced on the story of the missing couple. Where do two genius lovebirds, notoriously shy, hide to find a place to begin their new life together and hear themselves think?

Associated Press, June 7, 1929. “The cruiser Mouette, with Col. Charles A. Lindbergh and his wife, the former Anne Morrow, aboard, was going East along the Maine coast today. It was thought that the young couple might be heading for the island of North Haven and the Summer home of Mrs. Lindbergh’s father, Ambassador Dwight W. Morrow.

“The little cruiser made York harbor last night and Col. Lindbergh took on supplies sufficient to run him to North Haven, about 100 miles up the coast.

“The Mouette was tied up but an hour and then cast off and finally anchored off Cape Porpoise, some 15 miles east of York harbor.

“‘Going East’ was the colonel’s reply to an invitation from Republican National Committeeman Joseph W. Simpson that he spend the night at York Harbor.”

“That sounds like my father,” says Reeve Lindbergh, the bestselling author (Under a Wing) who grew up enjoying summers at Deacon Brown’s Point, her grandparents’ retreat on North Haven Island and her parents’ secret destination. “Once my father was preflighting a plane. A reporter wanted to know, Just tell me what direction you’re going. He said, Up.”

No wonder Lucky Lindy fit in so well in Maine.

As for the name Mouette for the getaway yacht, “That sounds like my mother,” Reeve says. It’s sensitive and lyrical, a canny nod to intimacy and distance. It means seagull in French, near and dear to Charles Lindbergh because they were the first living things he saw to let him know deep down that he’d made it across the Atlantic in his famous flight.

Both Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh sought sanctuary for many summers afterward in their honeymoon destination in Maine, the place of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s magic girlhood on North Haven Island. Anne’s father, a partner at J.P. Morgan and later Ambassador to Mexico and U.S. Senator from New Jersey, had commissioned Deacon Brown’s Point to be built in the 1920s to enjoy its inimitable views of the Camden Hills.

The architectural firm of Delano & Aldrich designed the main house in the late 1920s for Ambassador Morrow, the company having displaced McKim, Mead & White as the firm of choice for New York City clubhouses and, in turn, their members’ houses, according to Architectural Digest. Clients included members of the Whitney, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller families. In this case, a casually luxuriant farmhouse getaway (all the rage–think Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House) as a respite from urban tumult was just what the ambassador ordered.

North Haven Island was Charles’s and Anne’s northernmost U.S. jumping-off point for North to the Orient. After launching from the harbor here, the two flew across Canada and Alaska to reach the North Pacific, Japan, and China. Anne’s moving account of the adventure won the first National Book Award ever given for nonfiction. It was number one among nonfiction bestsellers in 1935. In spite of its fame, it is an underrated book. Like Deacon Brown’s Point (for that matter, all of North Haven Island), it is a work of misunderstood beauties. A crush of radio and print reporters covered their takeoff in a Lockheed Sirius modified with floats from North Haven harbor into history.

On the market right now is a matter of national, and deeply personal, significance. Every inch of this property whispers Morrow/Lindbergh. Anne Morrow Lindbergh is the soaring talent. She knew and described North Haven as no one can or ever could again. Their daughter Reeve remembers those days:

“It was my grandmother’s house,” Reeve says via telephone from her home in Vermont. “She died when I was nine, in 1954. My mother was very much attached to the property. That was the summer place. So dear was it to her, you can see that the apple tree right on the front of the house has been pruned, so she could sit on the branches.

“I remember it as a kind of a paradise from my early years. North Haven meant freedom for me. We had nurses. Our parents would come and go. I’m sure there were watchful eyes over us. The presence of that generation was there [pruning the tree], but we thought we were free. We could go all over the property. It was very exciting to be on that land.”

Just as they are today, “There was a white fence and two gateposts coming toward the front door, and you can sit on them. It’s very clear to me, my cousin Rhidian Morgan and I were sitting on those gateposts. There was a beautiful garden path.” Approaching the black front door, surrounded by shingles silvered by storms, “There was that wonderful, very embracing entry to the house I remember best.” Inside, there were “lots of rooms, a big dining room. While it was very similar to my grandmothers house in Englewood [New Jersey, across the Hudson from Manhattan], it was lighter. Chintzes, bookshelves, even the furniture felt just lighter. Clearly designed for summer. I didn’t know how fleeting summers like that could be.”

Day to day, “It was very much a house for the Morrow family. The men would come and go, and the women and children would be there. My grandmother had a cook, Elsie. My brother John would catch fish and bring them in [for supper].” Here on the wild Maine coast, “There were finger bowls. It was good, but not fussy cuisine. Oh, yes, lobster. I remember the butter balls,” the napkin holders.

In later years, “we [ventured all over the island]. My sister Anne was one of the slightly older group [of perennial summer cousins visiting]. She was their ringleader. Long blonde braids, very intense, very mischievous, and kind of magical. She loved going on the rocks and playing pirates. I don’t know if she lit fires on the beach, but she had a twinkle in her eyes. She wasn’t always good. I wasn’t particularly active with the older crowd. I was always the watcher.”

Watching her mother write, Reeve was inspired to become a writer herself. She always marveled at her mother’s intimate distances, beginning with North to the Orient. “They were just, in 1931, starting off,” Reeve says. “Here she is, writing about flying over North Haven, just coming over the property: ‘As we neared our geographical destination, we were also nearing an emotional one. The last lap of the journey across to the island by small boat completed both of these ends and each familiar personal landmark, drawing from us the same exclamations–“The four-masted schooner is still there!” “Isn’t that the five-mile buoy?” “There’s our big spruce tree!”–linked us at last completely and satisfactorily to all past summers–to all vacations and to Maine.’”

So in the library at Deacon Brown’s Point, a most unusual situation foreshadowed the present day. Imagine Charles, Anne, and their daughter Reeve together, joking and chatting. Who knew the Pulitzer Prize-winner in the family (Charles, for The Spirit of St. Louis), would wind up in the trail position in terms of talent? It wasn’t that the daredevil and engineering savant couldn’t write.

“It’s just that I don’t think he had that type of surrender,” Reeve says. “His thought processes were different. His writing was almost oratorical. You can hear him speaking when he writes. Emotion and distance. There’s a lot you understand from writing, and quite a lot you hold back. You can’t let every bit of it out. There’s a balance of self  protection and revelation,” a telling secrecy.

Many Mainers have no idea that we hosted the summer retreat for the Lindberghs for so many decades, and that Maine is so central a creative force. It took some energy to keep this under wraps. When the Lindberghs traveled, they often traveled under assumed names, the children, too. Even their car was designed to be under the radar, to discourage a second glance.

“It’s funny–[in a place that had a four-car garage and chauffeur’s quarters] my father drove a Volkswagen.” No need for TV reception on North Haven, because the Lindberghs did not watch TV. Across time, a wistful rebellion grew in Reeve that energizes her work and even factored into her choice of schools, Radcliffe. Which must have been a scandal, because Reeve’s grandmother had been president of Smith College, “My mother went there under duress,” she says. “My sister and I did not go to Smith.” Anne, too, went to Radcliffe and became an author herself, dying of cancer at 53 in 1993. “We did it out of an upside down and backwards loyalty to our mother.”

More time went by, though it stood still on North Haven, where, constant as the north star, there’s still that apple tree, still pruned by an invisible hand. “I love that apple tree.”

Reeve and her husband still visit North Haven from time to time to say hello to the stars, most recently a couple of summers ago. “We’ve known the Thachers forever,” she says of the family who purchased Deacon Brown’s Point after her grandmother died.

It is the Thacher family, who has loved this place dearly for the following decades, who are now offering it for sale.

“Some [Morrow and Lindbergh] things stayed after the china was sold,” Reeve says. “When you go to see the house, please check and see if there’s a big map on the wall with my father’s signature on it. I think that’s still there. Don’t forget to tell me about the map.”

If you’re traveling from a distance to tour this property, a great way to experience it is to stay at the Samoset Resort the night before. You can enjoy a romantic oceanfront dinner on the mainland, wake to sunrise and coffee on your private deck, drive 1.5 miles, and catch the ferry to North Haven in the graceful, unhurried way you deserve. As the boat pulls away from the mainland, you suddenly find yourself in the middle of an Eric Hopkins painting–shaggy islands, pointed pines dissolving into blue infinity.

Once you’ve landed, it’s a winding drive across an eternity of silence to reach Deacon Brown’s Point. We do a double-take as we approach the boundless 15.88-acre estate with its sea grass and 1,400 feet of rocky surf. The black clutch of an apple tree. Nothing less than a lone eagle is swooping over the house to bid us welcome. We catch our breath. He spirals slowly over the roofline, banks 45 degrees, and continues on his great circle route.

The shape of the fields tells a story. On this grassy swale, Charles Lindbergh arrived and departed in multiple generations of private aircraft. On this stone crescent beach, he rowed in from his flying boats and likely moored Mouette. Perched on these lichen-stained stone walls, he looked over the ocean with his wife and imagined and mapped out endless, impossible adventures.

There is something so big and charmingly sprawling about this unforgettable cottage. Nearly all of the 13 bedrooms has a water view across Penobscot Bay, looking out on the blue curves of the Camden Hills and Pulpit Harbor. Gracious entertaining? There’s a 28-foot dining room with Georgian crown molding and a fireplace.

The living room is 24.5 feet and includes more crown molding, a fireplace, and bookshelves (in case pals like Elizabeth Bishop stopped by, a copy of her poem “North Haven” hangs on the wall).

In this rarefied company, no matter whether you self identify as a Morrow or a Lindbergh or a Thacher, you have a sitting room, too, 20 feet, complete with built-ins.

The ice-chest room is still here, and the solemn white baths and sinks, original to the house. A stylist or set designer would swoon at the homey, homely wallpaper in many of these rooms. And yes, Reeve, a number of original charts are on the walls just the way Charles Lindbergh left them, along with handwritten amendments and drawings of aircraft. So is a large black and white photo showing North Haven, and this estate, from the air.

If you’re keeping score, the Thacher family includes novelists and financiers, such as the well connected Auchinclosses (one with no degree of separation from Gore Vidal, and another the stepfather of Jackie Kennedy), which explains why paintings by Hugh Auchincloss adorn many of the rooms today. Liz Thacher Hawn, writing from Minneapolis by way of New York, helps us keep it straight:

My parents bought the Morrow place in an arrangement with Connie Morgan (Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s sister) and Chester Bowles. The Morgans kept the guest house of the property along with the land around it, including the tennis court, which they kindly allowed us to use. Most evenings, if it wasn’t raining, were spent on the patio outside of the dining room where the views over the bay extended from Rockland to Blue Hill. It was a lovely place to hang out and talk about everything under the sun. In short, we loved the place and still do. Sadly, ownership divided among so many families is difficult to manage so we have decided, as we are moving into our seventies, that it is time for us to sell, hoping that another family will come along who will enjoy it as much as we have.”

The upsides are the downsides of this gorgeous slice of bold oceanfront. It’s grand, has chauffeur’s quarters, can only be reduced by “improvements.” Heaven forbid the apple tree gets cut down. Property taxes are $25,734.

Because Mouette took us here, let’s step on board again. Because the Lindbergh honeymoon yacht is still afloat in 2016 (many owners later, fully restored on a lake in Wisconsin). “Oh, yes, the Mouette,” Reeve says. “We used it to go back and forth to the island. I know my grandmother used it later. It was built by the Elco Electric Boat Co. [who would later design and construct John F. Kennedy’s PT-109], owned by the family of one of the St. Louis backers [of the Spirit of St. Louis]. They still make them.”

She waits just long enough for an apple to drop. “Aboard the Mouette, I think it might have been their first time alone together. I think it might have been built for that reason. It was one of the lovely things.”

Risk Mgmt.

Your basic 3-bedroom, 8,000-square-foot Xanadu. $10.9M

Imagine being the inventor of the risk-management algorithm that stood the New York Stock Exchange on its end and changed its direction forever. Having earned your fortune, you’re now zigzagging among these islands off Rockport in your yacht. You peer through the mist at the wildest part of Islesboro jutting straight up from the sea, snarling with pines, half invisible in the fog. You have your 30-seconds Eureka moment.

You’ll build your Xanadu right here.

“An island is a boat at permanent anchor,” says Dr. John Blin, the financial visionary. “When I visited Islesboro and [caught a glimpse of] that special spot overlooking the bay facing East, I thought of designing a house with many of the features of the classic yachts of yore and furnishing it with the exquisite works of art and furniture I have collected over the years of my travel especially Asia.”

Imagine a building site that moves while it stays still.

So mystical was this spot, it “could easily be any coastal island in Japan, Korea, or Northern China.” He started building it inside his mind. From the start, he knew it would have “gardens and Japanese grounds that would make Kyoto proud.”

It was a hands-on experience to build The Froggery, a 15-acre temple crowned by an 8,000-square-foot palace on 500 feet of water frontage. Blin’s favorite spot? “In the turret facing east between the deck over the atrium and the media room to the north, there is a secluded spot with two club chairs straight from any of the majestic ocean liners” out of the past, “say the SS Normandie. Here you sit watching the sunrise. Even in the middle of the day it is shaded and secluded enough that time does stand still. In the upper Japanese gardens at the very top of Abrams Mountain, it’s equally timeless. Make a cup of Sencha and sit in the tea house overlooking Penobscot Bay. You will never want to leave when you see the Bay through the Tori gates. Again you could be on Hokkaido.”

    So he’s the genius who designed and founded Advanced Portfolio Technologies, Inc., in New York, and earned his stripes as an expert on risk assessment, invested millions to build a dream some people might misunderstand on the jagged coast of Maine. Because he couldn’t afford not to?

“Risk is one of those words that’s just too familiar for comfort! You know it when it’s too late. Before risk, its that amorphous nagging afterthought in the back of our mind. Keeps gnawing at you. In the world of finance, it’s that feeling that what you think you own may in fact be built on quicksand. So how do you deal with it? Well, the thing is that whatever you hold does not exist in a vacuum. Its value is relative to/dependent on everything else. Think of a piece of cloth. The naked eye can hardly see the threads, interwoven into a seemingly whole piece. Under a microscope the threads appear far more like individual pieces with their own separate existence. When we think of assets (stocks, bonds, houses, precious metals, diamonds, whatever) we tend to think of them singly first, then as a follow up we think of possibly swapping one for the other. Well there you have it: if everyone feels that way (and they do), then they have met the enemy: they are the risk! It’s that behavior which leads to the rocking and rolling. So to measure risk and deal with it you need to come up with a mathematical model that allows you to process the whole lot in one single representation. The math is fascinating as it shares a lot with many different areas. Suffice it to say that the insight is that this mathematical representation requires imagining many dimensions far more than the 3 or even 4 with physics space-time that we are used to. Modern physics has expanded to many more dimensions, e.g., in String Theory. Well, in the world of assets what we own and use as a repository (we hope) of our wealth on earth there are even more dimensions.”

    Early on, the financial universe resisted this algorithm. Blin doubled down and tried “[Winston] Churchill’s one-percent inspiration and then ninety-nine percent perspiration. Or even blood, sweat, and tears. Initially you meet with doubt if not derision and polite ignorance. You just keep going. And eventually it becomes recognized as the risk management system bar none. Or as one of our very famous, world-class clients (American) puts it: it’s the gold standard when it comes to risk.”

Since he’s not risk-averse, does this play specifically into his putting this mansion and estate up for auction? This is a high-stakes gamble. Auction estimate: $10.9M.

“I am an economist and mathematician by training. I believe that in fact the most effective way to discover value is to focus the pool of potential buyers in a very laser-oriented venue–an auction. In the markets the auction process is well established. Ditto in the allocation of such goods as the spectrum. The traditional ‘waiting for Godot’–wait-and-see-if-someone-is-interested–is very inefficient and, all things considered, unlikely to bring in the real value save by pure accident. Hence the auction format.”

As he speaks to us, Blin is 14 hours ahead of us, in Hong Kong, talking about rustic Maine. What’s Hong Kong got that we haven’t got? “Well, I’ve used the place [on Islesboro] now for 10 years. My life focus while very much international as always (I was born and grew up in Normandy, France; got my PhD; and spent my years in the U.S. albeit in a global company I founded) has now decidedly shifted to Asia where I believe the 21st century will play out to a large degree. So that’s where I am focusing the next chapter of my life. As Jim Rogers put it: In 1800, if you wanted to do something, you went to London. In the 20th century, you went to New York. In the 21st century, you go to China/Asia. Hong Kong is the one spot for a gweilo (Westerner in Chinese) like me to bridge the gap quickly while I am learning Mandarin. Using the same approach as in the risk area, one can create a low-risk investment strategy with good upside and limited downside–not some mad promise of outsized returns but a disciplined, well-thought-through, quantitative approach. I have used it for my own investments very successfully. Using my audited record, I am about to launch a global fund using that strategy.”

Time for you to take your shot? The house will be sold at auction to the highest bidder without reserve on site at 180 Abrams Mount Road, Islesboro, June 16.

The Butterfly Hunter

$1.15M

Cousin to novelist John Dos Passos, international butterfly authority Cyril Dos Passos (1887-1986) set up a getaway on Rangeley Lake after World War II and enjoyed the quiet splendor here. Hunting high and low in Maine in spite of deadly bouts with hay fever, he discovered many variants of the winged species, particularly rare variations of oeneis katahdin, pictured. To read a splendid monograph about visiting Dos Passos at his house in Maine, visit http://bit.ly/1JsyjnV.

After he died, his son Manuel owned it. Manuel sold it to Carll Burr, a big real-estate family from New York, says listing agent Caryn Dreyfuss of City Cove Realty.

To reach this 2.56-acre retreat from Rangeley Village, follow Route 4 South one mile. Take a right on Burr Road. When the road forks, turn left and enter the private gate, where you’ll find No. 17.

Built in 1950, the 1,868-square-foot cedar-shingled lakefront cottage has two high-pitched pavilions connected by a gracious central entrance. The wraparound screened porch invites with cooling views of the lake. Inside, this rustic classic with knotty pine interior has a fieldstone fireplace with Jotul gas insert in the living room. The built-in library near the fire, also in knotty pine, is worthy of its eminent occupant. Just as lovely, the dining room has built-ins, a corner cabinet, and a gas stove.

There are four bedrooms and three baths; the master bedroom with clawfoot bath en suite is on the first floor with entry to the living room. Upstairs, there’s a tub over the kitchen.

Outside there is 375 feet of water frontage, with crystal views of Greenvale Cove, and in the blue distance across the lake, Bald Mountain and Doctors Island. To the rear is Nile Brook, which defines the back of the property. There’s a front-lawn fire pit with views of the lake. Another winged victory: a classic, drive-in boathouse with an electric boat hoist.

These butterflies aren’t free. Price is $1.15M.

Restored To Glory In Rockport $7.5M

This classic cottage dates to 1903, but restoration and reconstruction have turned the 5,000-square foot main house–with four fireplaces, a chef’s kitchen, detailed woodwork, air-conditioning, and amenities–into a 2016 year-round showplace. The $7.5M price includes a 1,900-square-foot guest cottage, a dock, stone beach, and generous decks. Gaze up Penobscot Bay to the Camden Hills and east to the islands. Taxes are $46,733.

When Summer Was a Verb  $4.575M

Here is a beautiful bit of history, built in 1900. “J. Peter Grace [1913-1995, grandson of industrialist titan W.R. Grace] and his wife Margaret bought the house 60 years ago,” says listing broker Linda Jonas at the Swan Agency. “They had nine children.” With 9,600 square feet, 14 bedrooms, nine bathrooms, and eight fireplaces, “Edge Cove” is a castle. “There’s a wonderful scale to the rooms. The cabinetry, butler’s pantry, and moldings are all original. And you’re right next door to the yacht club in Northeast Harbor.” The $4.575M price includes 223 feet of rocky shorefront, two acres to roam, and a charming guest cottage. Taxes are $27,048.

Your Own Private Dynasty $3.75M

The only care before you descend for a swim in your waterfront pool–which overlooks your 175 feet of water frontage on York’s Nubble Point–is where you left your Krystle Carrington silk beach robe. “Land’s End at Nubble Light” is 7,000 square feet of vast, pavilion-sized rooms, soaring windows, and “endless views,” as listing agent Troy Williams of Keller Williams Luxury Homes notes. With five bedrooms and 4.5 baths, you’ve got plenty of room for company. The $3.75M price includes the sight of Nubble Light, almost close enough to touch. Taxes are $29,400.