The Pink Palace, Castine’s whimsical 1924 relic, is for sale for $849K.

By Colin W. Sargent

In 1924, Miss E. K. Branch, a banking heiress from Richmond, Virginia, hired William Lawrence Bottomley, famous in her city, to design a summer place at 65 Battle Avenue in Castine. Soaring above Penobscot Bay, Bottomley’s Mediterranean-style mansion is lively, louche, and still an exclamation point among the fir trees and Colonial landmarks in this town. In its early days it was decked out in a shade of salmon so lively that passing yachts used the beloved Pink Palace landmark as an aid to navigation.

Effie Branch brought her southern servants here and exulted in the ocean breezes of this colorful retreat. Her salons featured musical performances and dramatic readings led by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Ellen Glasgow, a fellow Richmond native, lifelong friend, and devotee of Bottomley’s divine designs. (Richmond still celebrates New Yorker Bottomley’s brick creations along Monument Avenue, a landmark architectural district that today is thankfully not so monumental since statues of Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis were removed amid civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.)

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