One Weekend in Maine

CAPE PORPOISE, ME. – Maine fulfilled my pre-conceived notions: rugged coastline, superior lobster, and lots of Revolutionary-era cottages and Victorian mansions — almost nothing but old houses, in fact, in the area around Kennebunkport.

Click on any picture below to enlarge.

I particularly love the over-the-top yellow and white gingerbread castle. Looks like it was originally a brick Colonial, amended in the 1840s with the addition of carved wood detail, and lots of it, in the Carpenter Gothic style that was then the rage.

Garden Stalker

IT’S ONE THING to be a garden voyeur, checking out places that are open to the public or that I’ve wangled an invitation to. Now I’ve gone a step further and become a stalker, sneaking looks into yards whose owners are unaware of my presence.

More than once I’ve parked my car (or left it running) and stealthily crept around to peek over a hedge or fence at a house whose roofline promises something interesting, scurrying away guiltily when a door opens or a voice is heard.

The latest object of my stalking is a stunning estate on Springs Fireplace Road just north of Fort Pond Boulevard. It’s a cedar-shingled Colonial – or is it just Colonial style? The house is so well done I can’t tell if it’s new or old. I suspect it’s new, but the general shape of the building – large and boxy, with a high peaked roof and wings added on just as they would have been if the place were indeed 18th century – seems authentic.

The landscaping is by Oehme van Sweden, according to a small sign on the property, in the currently fashionable idiom — ornamental grasses and prairie-style flowering perennials in drifts or ‘waves,’ a look pioneered by that firm and Piet Oudolf, the Dutch landscape architect. There’s a pool, a pergola, and a no-nonsense electrified deer fence.

No problem in front. The property is open and farmlike, visible to all who pass by. In order to see the side and rear of the property, I twice went down an old farm road and snapped a few pictures. It was only on my third visit that I noticed the small “Private Road – No Trespassing” sign.

Oh well.

I wonder what person or persons of impeccable taste live there. Anyone have a clue?

Revolutionary Decor

I PITY THE POOR COLONISTS (or anyone who lived in the pre-modern era, really). Their homes were so devoid of comfort. No rugs on the hard wood floors, nothing to sit on but stiff-backed chairs, thin mattresses stuffed with straw. Even when they did get those fireplaces cranked up in winter, I’ll bet it wasn’t to 68 degrees.

Still, their interiors were beautiful in a Puritan sort of way, to judge by the rooms at Mulford House in East Hampton, one of the finest English-style buildings of its era on this continent.

Built in 1680, the house is furnished today as it might have been in 1790, when Daniel and Rachel Mulford lived there with their children and household help.

As recently as 1949, descendants of the family lived in the house, foregoing such luxuries as plumbing and electricity so the house could remain in a state of near-perfect preservation.

One section of wall is stripped to reveal layers of paint colors through the centuries, and a bit of an upper wall has been left open to show dried seaweed packed between the beams for insulation.

But the Mulford House doesn’t feel like a museum. It feels like a sparsely decorated Early American house , very evocative and very real.