Redwood is a historic summer house at 10 Barberry Lane in

Bar Harbor, Maine Bar Harbor () is a resort town on Mount Desert Island in Hancock County, Maine, United States. As of the 2020 census, its population is 5,089. The town is home to the College of the Atlantic, Jackson Laboratory, and MDI Biological Laborat ...

, United States. Designed by

William Ralph Emerson William Ralph Emerson (March 11, 1833 – November 23, 1917) was an American architect. He partnered with Carl Fehmer in Emerson and Fehmer. Early life and education A cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson, William was born in Alton, Illinois, and ...

and built in 1879, it was the first

Shingle style The shingle style is an American architectural style made popular by the rise of the New England school of architecture, which eschewed the highly ornamented patterns of the Eastlake style in Queen Anne architecture. In the shingle style, Engli ...

house built in Bar Harbor, and is one of the oldest of the style in the nation. The house was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1978.

Description

Redwood is set near the southeastern end of Barberry Lane, south of the main village of Bar Harbor, on a point north of Cromwell Cove that overlooks

Frenchman Bay Frenchman Bay is a bay in Hancock County, Maine, Hancock County, Maine, named for Samuel de Champlain, the France, French explorer who visited the area in 1604. Frenchman Bay may have been the location of the Jesuit St. Sauveur mission, establish ...

. It is a large -story wood-frame structure with a roughly cruciform plan, set on a fieldstone foundation. It has a long north–south axis with roughly centered projections to the east (facing the water) and the west (facing toward the street). The western projection is gabled-roofed, with a second-floor chamber set above a porte-cochere which shelters the main entrance. To its right a tall two-story window rises to a small gabled peak, with an elaborately decorated brick Queen Anne style chimney to its right. The eastern projection has a polygonal shape, with a semi-pyramidal roofline. The southern elevation has a recessed Palladian window set in a half-timbered upper section. An enclosed single-story polygonal porch projects from the southeast corner of the building. The interior of the house is richly decorated with woodwork.

History

Bar Harbor began to develop a reputation as a summer resort area in the 1860s, with its early tourist trade served by local residents boarding visitors in their houses, and by hotels that were built to meet the demand. In the 1870s wealthy visitors began building private houses. C. J. Morrill, a wealthy Bostonian, commissioned

to design this house, which was completed in 1879. This was the first (of many) residential commission Emerson executed in the Bar Harbor area, and was his first full expression of the Shingle style, whose oldest known example is the 1875

William Watts Sherman House The William Watts Sherman House is a notable house designed by American architect H. H. Richardson, with later interiors by Stanford White. It is a National Historic Landmark, generally acknowledged as one of Richardson's masterpieces and the ...

Newport, Rhode Island Newport is a seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island, United States. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, and nort ...

, designed by H. H. Richardson. Later owners included J. Howland Auchincloss, whose son Louis Auchincloss was considered one of the inheritors of the Edith Wharton tradition in literature. In the 1940s, Mrs. Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis, then known as Jaqueline Bouvier stayed at Redwood with her step-father Hugh Auchincloss.https://www.portlandmonthly.com/portmag/2016/06/playground-of-the-rich-famous/ "Playground of the Rich & Famous", ''Portland Monthly'', Summerguide 2016

References

{{National Register of Historic Places Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine Shingle Style architecture in Maine Houses completed in 1879 Buildings and structures in Bar Harbor, Maine National Register of Historic Places in Hancock County, Maine

Description

History

See also

References