THREE LITTLE BUILDINGS

Today class, we're going to consider the importance of thinking small, but in a big way.

Edmund Beaman Gilchrist (1885-1953), was a gentleman architect, Philadelphia born and bred  His  specialty was residential design, although he also created some notable smaller public structures..  He was part of that distinct group practicing in Philadelphia---the firms Mellor, Meigs and Howe,  Duhring, Oakie and Ziegler; and Tilden, Register and Pepper---who were leading the pack in the design of beautiful houses that somehow managed to be picturesque and vernacular, and at the same time, imaginative, modern and new.  These architects were among the most imaginative, and most influential of the era in residential design.

In the first half of the last century, this stretch of the Maine Coast, and Northeast Harbor in particular, was known as 'Philadelphia on the Rocks', and indeed it sometimes seemed in this Dilettante's youth that there was a Philadelphian behind every tree in the summertime.   Thus it was only natural that Gilchrist and his peers would receive many commissions for summer houses in the region.  Collectively those cottages constitute some of the best architecture produced up here during the 1920's and 1930's and five of those houses have been chosen for inclusion in my book.  (For those, the faithful reader will have to wait.  And it will be worth it) .

For my entire life, I've enjoyed looking at--and learning from--Gilchrist's work here in Maine.  Picturesque as his buildings are, they are also at home in their surroundings, precise, elegant, understated,  but never under designed, and not without surprises and mystery, and in that eclectic age, he proved himself an adept player of the game, always creating something fresh from traditional idiom.  Here are three  buildings whose small size belies the vast quality of their design, making mockery of so many of the overblown structures of today.

Eleanor Denniston, like Gilchrist from was from Germantown.  She summered on remote Petit Manan Point, far from the social whirl of Mt. Desert Island.  In 1911, she commissioned Gilchrist to design a chapel for her property at Petit Manan.  It is a simple, almost miniature building, in the English tradition, but nearly reductionist in its design. A tower was built of stones hauled up from the beach, the slab siding was cut from trees on the property, and the interior was left unfinished, dependant entirely on simplicity, light and proportion for effect.  Click HERE for an evocative series of photographs which give a far better idea of this building.

  As one approaches Islesford on Little Cranberry Island off Mt. Desert, if one can take one's eyes off the spectacular scenery for a moment, a little cluster of buildings comes into focus on shore,  Most are vernacular structure of clapboard or shingle--boathouses, sheds, small cottages--but soon one spots this sophisticated little brick building sitting tactfully in their midst, different from them yet, fitting in.  This is the Islesford Museum, built again for a Philadelphian, Dr. William Otis Sawtelle, an Islesford summer resident strongly interested both in local history and cultures, as well as the ancient history of the Mt. Desert region.  He commissioned Gilchrist to design this elegant reductionist structure for his collection in 1927.  It is now the museum for Acadia National Park.  I could happily live there, should the Park ever tire of it..

The view from Little Cranberry Island.  We may not have a Barneys up here, but there are compensations

Outside, it is as reductionist and as imaginative as a Delano & Aldrich design, beautifully detailed, its unusual hooded fanlight echoed by another, this time antique, over a  door within. The brick is handmade, the details no more and no less than are needed for effect.  Inside, a hall connects three rooms on a 'T' plan with brick walls and gray painted floors, a fireplace in each room.  It is spartan, quiet, and cool, and for all its city airs, feels exactly right for its island location.  Sadly, I have no interior photos available.

The spring house at Sieur de Monts

At the other extreme, Bar Harbor in the 1920's was at the height of fashion.  Through much of the early 20th century, the Italian styles were popular there, being thought appropriate to the scenery and as a backdrop for summer gaiety, and many of the large cottages there were veritable replicas of Tuscan villas.  Even new  Lafayette (now Acadia) National Park, designed to keep the landscape forever wild, did not escape.  At the Park's Sieur de Monts Springs, local architect Fred Savage was commissioned to design a protective structure over the spring, based on a design by summer resident Egisto Fabbri, that would not look out of place in the countryside near Florence.

Dr. Abbe's sketch for his museum (National Park Service)

Thus in 1926, when Robert Abbe, a pioneering radiologist who was also an amateur archaeologist made plans to create a small museum for his collection of Stone Age antiquities, it did not seem incongruous that he would commission Edmund Gilchrist to design the museum in the style of a Florentine chapel at Sieur de Monts. (Okay, it is incongruous, an Italian chapel in the middle of the forest, housing ancient Native American artifacts.  But it works.)  Dr. Abbe died before his museum was completed in 1928

Even with Savage's spring house as introduction, it is a surprise to walk up a gentle wooded trail and suddenly be faced this exquisite little echo of the Renaissance in the forest.  Yet, it is a tribute to Gilchrist's skill that the building also seems inevitable and appropriate, even right in its surroundings, against all logic. A critic once wrote of the unexplainable alchemy and mystery of Gilchrist's architecture.  All of those qualities are present in this cool, understated building.

Are those signs flanking the entrance really necessary?  Really?  I've barely forgiven the park for the asphalt path

The domed main room maintains its period museum charm, with original display cases, dioramas, and relief maps created by Dr. Abbe.  These maps were in great demand among his friends and were decorative features of several Bar Harbor cottages.

JURY DUTY: Interior Decoration on Trial

I recently spent a long day in the Hancock County Courthouse in Ellsworth, Maine, as part of a jury pool.  I wasn't selected for a jury, but while there I spotted a crime that should be on trial, though I'm certain that I could not be an impartial juror, so egregious is this case to my delicate sensibilities.  But back to that crime in a moment, while we take a brief detour before exposition.

The Public Library, built as the home of early 19th century builder Seth Tisdale

Ellsworth is a pleasant town, not high style, the sort of place where people put on pancake breakfasts and bake sales and hold raffles to raise money for good causes.  Most of the population is neither desperately poor nor obscenely rich, giving the small city a particularly homogeneous tone.  Politics tend toward the conservative side, to the irritation of the more liberal but less populous coastal villages that satellite it and share a  legislative district.  As Route One passes through Ellsworth, beginning the last hundred or so miles of the long trip up from Key West before ending at the Canadian border, it is lined with strip malls and convenience stores, making it the retail hub of the area.

The old jailhouse between Library and Courthouse, now the home of the Ellsworth Historical Society

Courthouse, Congregational Church, and City Hall

The City Hall was designed by Philadelphia architect Edmund B. Gilchrist as part of a city renewal effort after a 1932 fire destroyed part of downtown.  The designn of the building, with its beautiful details, reflects a mid-Atlantic sensibility.  Originally, the cupola and roof were a beautiful verdigris copper, replaced in recent years by the deadly brown now seen, and the building was given a certain insouciance with white shutters, now long gone.  

Uphill on State Street, bordering the Union River and overlooking the mostly brick downtown, is a small cluster of handsome civic buildings, with a magnificent Greek Revival Church rising above them.   

The first Congregational Church of Ellsworth, one of Maine's finest Greek revival buildings, designed in 1846 by Benjamin Deane of Bangor, and built by Thomas Lord, a talented carpenter/carver/architect from Blue Hill.

This is the scene that greeted me on a cold gray day, as I parked the car  at the courthouse to report for Jury Duty.  Not having a particularly criminal streak (well, beyond traffic offenses), I hadn't been in the main courtroom since my last time on jury duty about 20 years ago.  Up the wide flight of granite steps I went, and inside noted how utilitarian the interior is---no Tweed courthouse splendor for Down East Maine--no marble columns, no terrazzo floors, no central rotunda.  I climbed the very ordinary flight of stairs to the second floor, signed in, and walked into the courtroom, prepared for a very ordinary day. Instead, I saw evidence of a crime that wasn't on trial, but should have been.

The County Courthouse, also rebuilt after the fire.

A fragment of the original buff and marbelized black linoleum at the top of the stairs, meeting the institutional tan linoleum that has replaced it in the corridors.  I've reached an age where I realize that very few things ever get better in older buildings.

  The courtroom is a handsome room---very Ogden Codman in its details, paired Corinthian pilasters flanking tall arched windows, and a handsome cornice.  The last time saw the room, it was an institutional beige (or was it gray?), with long straight dark green curtains of the fireproof variety (or were they maroon?) .  Dignified, dull.  Well kiddies,  that was last time.

This time, what greeted me was a perky color scheme of pink and white, with green carpeting, and most gobsmacking of all, floral curtains.  It wasn't quite what I was expecting.  God knows how, God knows why, but the Maine District courtroom had been cheerily redecorated in best bed and breakfast style--or at least what I think of as bed & breakfast style.  You actually couldn't pay the Dilettante to stay in a bed & breakfast. Well, maybe if it were in Venice.  But you'd have to buy the ticket too.  But I digress:  The pink was that Gawd awful pink, hovering between dusty rose and dried Pepto, that was popular in all the worst waiting rooms and mid-range hotels 20 years ago.

The trim and molding were a very creamy ivory white.  The cheap carpet was a shade of green that doesn't occur in nature.  Holding it all together were those curtains.  Oh yes, those curtains--unlined, in a chintz pattern of dogwood in blush pink and green on an ivory ground, they were the glue that held this remarkable scheme together. They were very perky, tied back with jaunty insouciance.  I hate perky, although I'll tolerate insouciance just because I like saying it.  I don't know who manufactured the fabric, but I can safely guess that it wasn't Brunschwig et Fils.  These looked as if they had been bought in bulk at a sheet sale at Macy's--20 years ago (um, not that I'd know, of course...).  Whoever had done this had even hung a pair of those curtains in the shallow arched recess behind the judge's chair. So much for the dignity of the court.

Two false windows in the courtroom are elegantly mirrored to maintain continuity in the design giving a rather  ballroom atmosphere.  The mystery, however, is why these false windows have roller shades, when the real windows don't?  The evidence is inconclusive. The other mystery is why, when three windows were blocked by expansion beyond, they were merely covered with plywood, rather than mirror paned also.  Things really don't improve when old buildings are altered.

This was definitely a 'What Were They Thinking?' moment, and curious, I asked around, but could not find out who the guilty party was.  Maybe a judge's wife---'Honey, I know just the thing to brighten up that dreary old courtroom of yours'----or the wife of a county commissioner, maybe?   But that's just hearsay and speculation.  Not enough for a jury to convict---it may have even been a professional job---but whoever is guilty, they forgot Elsie de Wolfe's first rule:  "Suitability, suitability, suitability".

The judge may not be given to flowery statements, but the curtains behind his bench are another matter

The evidence is overwhelming.  I pronounce the defendant guilty of Decorating Under the Influence.