I F you want to understand what went on inside the head of Mount Desert Island's most illustrious native architect - the man responsible for more palatial summer cottages Until recently Mount Desert Island on the island than anyone else - take a look at his porches. Porches figure largely in the designs of Fred L. Savage's sum- had all but forgotten that merhouses, built in the late 1800s and early 1900s and which Fred Savage was can still be seen today almost everywhere on Mount Desert. As a boy, Savage spent his summers tending the family gar- den, hiking the island mountains, and hunting for wild The Man Who Built berries, and even as an adult the outdoors continued to have an impossible-to-ignore appeal for him. He understood why people came to Mount Desert in summer - and it wasn't to Northeast while away their days inside. They were there to escape the dark rooms and dusty cityscapes that had enclosed them all winter. On days when they didn't feel like a rigorous tramp amid the majestic heights of Mount Desert or a brisk sail off- shore, an interlude on a commodious porch with an invigo- Harbor rating view at least provided exercise for the spirit, as well as a healthy dose of fresh air. Fred Savage had the ability to design interiors that could satisfy any Philadelphia family, but somehow he never came to be known for his interiors. He just didn't expect people who summered on the most beau- By Letitia Baldwin. tiful island in America to linger inside. A hundred years after Savage launched his career, the extent of his impact on Mount Desert architecture is only now beginning to be fully understood. One can study books writ- ten on the island a mere twenty years ago and find hardly a mention of his name; only within the last decade have stud- walked in through the front," he recalls. Along with the linen, ies confirmed that Savage's work has had a major influence dishes, almost down to the soap in the soapdish that had been on the landscape of the island - and of Northeast Harbor in left behind, the Gerrishes made a far more important dis- particular. The mark of his design can be found on nearly covery: boxes and boxes of Fred Savage's blueprints neatly every type of structure on Mount Desert, ranging from state- rolled up and stored in the basement, many of them proving ly "cottages" such as the Breakwater in Bar Harbor and the that houses long believed to have been built by other archi- grand old Asticou Inn in Northeast Harbor to numerous com- tects had actually been Savage's creations. When the mercial and municipal buildings. Some eighty Savage struc- Gerrishes moved again, six years later, they took all the blue- tures still stand in the Northeast Harbor area alone. And the prints along with their other belongings. "It was really a sec- distinctive flair of his summer cottages, not to mention the ond thought that we moved them at all," Lewis Gerrish, Jr., sheer number of them, has led Earle Shettleworth, Jr., direc- admits. "At that time they weren't something that most peo- tor of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, to rate ple would have considered important, but we figured some- Savage as "among the most interesting and significant archi- body sometime might find them interesting." Over the next tects in Maine at the turn of the century. Not only was twenty-five years, however, he and others began to realize Savage's output prodigious," says Shettleworth, "but at his the significance of his family's find, and in 1985 he donat- best he created some of the finest Shingle-style buildings in ed the collection to area libraries. Today, the blueprints of the area." Savage's Bar Harbor buildings reside at the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor. The rest - and there are hundreds of I RONICALLY, this architectural giant was long ignored them - are stored at the Northeast Harbor Library. in his own community and it is only a recent bit of "Ten years ago I knew only peripherally who Fred Savage serendipity that brought his achievements to light. When was," says Robert Pyle, head librarian at Northeast Harbor the architect's widow died in the early 1950s, the fifteen-room since 1971. "And then one fine day three people from the house that Savage had designed for her was bought by a man Maine Historic Preservation Commission, Earle Shettleworth, named Lewis Gerrish. His son, Lewis, Jr., was a teenager at Roger Reed, and T. Mark Cole, descended on me. Cole has the time and he still remembers how the house was filled with really been the linchpin for this whole collection, in seeing the Savages' furniture when his family moved in - "just as that it was placed in the libraries and in surveying the hous- though somebody was walking out the back door as we es that Savage designed. If it hadn't been for the discovery Sporting one of the elegantly sited porches for which he became noted is Rosserne (above), a cottage designed by Savage and built in 1891 overlooking Somes Sound. Photographs courtesy of Northeast Harbor Public Library FEBRUARY 1996 33 of the blueprints, half the people in Northeast Harbor would For nearly four decades, Savage still be attributing their houses to some Philadelphia, Boston, or Baltimore architect." oversaw the construction of hundreds of buildings on Mount E QUALLY serendipitous was the way that Fred Savage became an architect in the first place. Locals on Mount Desert Island, an astonishing Desert did not commonly aspire to the professions in output for a small firm. Victorian days, and the island world in which Fred Savage grew up was an isolated one, a place where families were large and communities small. Men turned their hand to whatever would keep their families fed, be it farming, boatbuilding, or fishing. Fred Savage's father was one of the few whose ambitions and abilities were larger than what the local economy could satisfy. Descended from sturdy Scottish pioneers, Augustus Chase Savage had his own schooner by age eighteen and delivered car- goes such as cordwood that he and his father had cut, up and down the coast from Labrador to Florida. His son, Fred, born in 1861, was still a baby when the fairly prosperous sea-captain enlisted in the Civil War, leaving behind his wife, Emily, and the first three of their six children in the clapboard farmhouse he had built for them at Asticou, a village that was little more than an extended- family enclave, located about a mile north of Northeast Harbor. At war's end, Chase Savage returned to an island world that was rapidly changing. Schooners were being replaced by the larg- er and swifter steamboats that called regularly at Bar Harbor and Southwest Harbor; trains now came as close as twenty miles away, to Ellsworth, the county seat. The captain resumed his ship- ping business, but he could see that the dramatic changes in trans- 34 DOWN EAST portation would swiftly make Mount Desert Island one of the East Coast's most accessible summer resort destinations. With that in mind, the Savages were among the first islanders to open their home to summer boarders. Emily kept their paying guests well fed with her hearty New England dinners, often topped off by fresh pies filled with berries the children picked on the slopes of Savage's Hill. Even more significantly, the astute captain began investing in local real estate until ultimately he owned nearly the entire eastern shore of Northeast Harbor. He was determined to be ready when the summer cottagers came. 0 NE of the first to build a cottage in Northeast Harbor was Harvard President Charles Eliot. For nearly a decade he had been spending his summer vacations aboard his thir- ty-three-foot sloop Jessie, setting sail from Boston's India Wharf to become one of the first leisuretime boaters in Mount Desert waters. He, along with the rest of the island's earliest vacation- ers - artists and scientists, later followed by educators, clergy, Versatility made Fred Savage a prosperous man, but and pleasure sailors - wanted, in the words of historian Samuel he never forgot he was an islander. The first modest Eliot Morison, "nothing of the island but what they found, tak- home he built for his own family (top) was located in the ing their pleasure in boating, fishing, walking, driving in buck- settlement of Asticou, where he had grown up. He also boards, and picnicking." When Charles Eliot tired of his peri- designed more prosaic buildings such as commercial blocks patetic coastal holidays and, like many others, decided he want- in downtown Northeast Harbor (above). With a growing ed to put down summertime roots along that rockbound coast, list of commissions for grander structures, however, such as the farsighted Captain Savage was ready to accommodate. Not the sedate Asticou Inn (opposite, bottom) or the Gables only did Savage sell him the land - a majestic shorefront lot (opposite, top), an opulent summer cottage, he joined overlooking the Bear Island lighthouse - but proceeded, in the the ranks of Mount Desert gentry, even serving for a while (Continued on page 57) as commodore of the Bar Harbor Yacht Club. FEBRUARY 1996 35 Northeast Harbor (Continued from page 35) opened up his own firm in Northeast Harbor, and found himself in demand immediately. fall of 1880, to build Eliot's cottage, the Ancestral, for him. Fred Savage, by then nineteen and a handsome young man with N ORTHEAST Harbor was growing like a boomtown," Bob Pyle points dark hair and an assertive gaze, worked out. "And Savage was the man on as one of his father's crew. the ground with architectural skills. By Somehow, during the construction of 1895, certainly by the turn of the century, the rambling house, with its bays, bal- the town would have been recognizable to Geese Mate For Life conies, overhanging gables, and ocean- a resident of today, and major parts of the Symbol of Eternal Love front piazza, the young Savage's fine downtown were designed by Savage." cabinetry skills came to the notice of the Eternal love is beautifully symbol- Although Savage maintained the sole ized in our Geese Mate for Life pin. illustrious college president. The combi- architectural office in Northeast Harbor, he Finely crafted in 14K yellow gold, nation was certainly auspicious: an inno- was hardly the only designer who was two geese are majestically depicted vative educator well accustomed to keeping busy during the boom. "There together in flight. As a gesture of searching out budding talent and a high- your love, or the special bond between were of course other architects building two people, it makes the perfect gift. ly skilled youth, backed by an ambitious houses in Northeast Harbor, Peabody and Comes beautifully gift wrapped with father. "The old saying, 'You can always Stearns, for instance, and William R. the sentiments expressed by this piece tell a Harvard man, but you can't tell him Emerson [considered the originator of the on a small card tucked inside the box. much' was not at all characteristic of Shingle style]," explains Bob Pyle, "but Shown actual size. Eliot," notes Bob Pyle. "He knew talent from an architectural standpoint, you'd Pin with ruby eyes $345.00 have to say that Fred Savage had the major Pendant w/ruby eyes, 18" chain $445.00 Curiously, this influence in town." For nearly four decades, Savage over- Absolute Satisfaction Guaranteed amazing outpouring Mail or phone orders M-F 9am 5pm 1-800-433-2988 saw the construction of hundreds of build- Postage Pd. Sent within 24 hours UPS Second Day Air ings on Mount Desert Island, an astonish- Visa, MasterCard or American Express of architectural talent ing output for a small firm in those pre- Cross Jewelers was accomplished by computer days. By 1902, he had taken on Manufacturing Jewelers since 1908 a partner, Milton Stratton, but the number 570D Congress St. Portland, ME 04101 92 a man with little of plans produced remained exceptional inclination to toot even for a two-man office. Although he may have risen from a small-town local to his own born. a highly regarded professional and a regu- lar in Bar Harbor circles, the tremendous Huston &Company when he saw it, and he had a very high outpouring of blueprints from his office and regard for the abilities of the local peo- the quality of his work suggests that he ple." In addition to his carpentry job, never lost the appetite for enterprise that had Fred had just landed the position of always moved his parents and their ances- Northeast Harbor postmaster, but it tors. "There is not a corner of Mount Desert apparently took little persuasion for him that does not have even the smallest design to forsake that for a chance to learn by Savage," architectural historian Mark architecture. "You have the coincidence Cole points out. Savage's work ran the of Fred being just at the right age and gamut from summer cottages to year-round potentially formative for growth and homes to churches, schools, stores, banks, advancement," says Earle Shettleworth. theaters, clubs, and municipal offices. Nor "He took a quantum leap by being placed was Savage's work confined strictly to through Eliot's connections at Peabody Mount Desert: he designed a number of cot- and Stearns, one of the top New England tages on the nearby island of Islesboro and architectural firms." he also produced plans for residences as far Over the next few years young Fred away as California. But he is best known We invite you to apprenticed with the distinguished Boston for the rambling, grey-shingled structures visit our new firm, which, incidentally, had designed with wide porches and whimsical turrets, showroom and Eliot's cottage. Not only did Chase most of which he designed to suit the studio of fine Savage wholeheartedly support his son's rugged Mount Desert coast. furniture at career choice, he immediately recognized Curiously, this amazing outpouring of 226 Log Cabin Rd. the value of having an architect in the fam- widely admired architectural talent was Kennebunkport, ily. All the time Fred was in Boston, he accomplished by a man with little incli- Maine 04046 moonlighted, sending plans and drawings nation to toot his own horn. "Savage was back to Northeast Harbor for the hotels a quiet man and kept to himself," notes 207/967-2345 and guest cottages his enterprising father Mark Cole. "Those who remember him in FAX 207/967-2360 and brothers were busily building to business found him generous and kind, but accommodate the rapid influx of summer knew little of him personally." Catalog on Request visitors. Returning to Maine in 1887, he "This is the critical element about Fred FEBRUARY 1996 57 David Savage," Bob Pyle concurs. "He did not MARGONELLI consider himself an artist. He did not have a big ego involved in his work. Fine Handmade Furniture Once a house was finished, it didn't mat- Showroom Hours: Mon.-Sat. ter whether people remembered that he 10 a.m.-5 p.m. had built it or whether he had used other people's suggestions in it." Thus when RR 1 Box 2585 River Road Dr. Cornelius B. Smith, a New York Edgecomb, Maine 04556 minister, wanted his summer home, 207-633-3326 Rosserne, overlooking Somes Sound to have bow windows and an outdoor stair- Free Brochure Available case, Savage obliged, incorporating them right into the mix of architectural ele- ments that he favored - Palladian win- dows, wide piazza, and a turret topped by what was to become one of his trade- Thursday is Free marks, an ogee roof. The result, Earle Appraisal Day Shettleworth believes, was one of Kaja Veilleux, Maine's foremost Savage's best works. appraiser, will give you a free verbal Savage's exteriors were his forte. appraisal on anything old you bring. Interiors were not. Dining rooms and sit- Jewelry, silver, paintings, furniture, ting rooms could be on a large scale, but china, clocks, rugs, autographs, toys, often they were fairly prosaic, with the typ- smalls, etc. One item or a car full! ical dark woodwork and paneling of the Every Thursday. Call for appt. day and little attention paid to the built-in cabinetry and finely carved moldings that KAJA VEILLEUX ART & ANTIQUES some society architects delighted in. Newcastle Square, Business Rt 1, Newcastle, ME 04553 "Possibly, knowing the reason people Phone 207-563-1002 Fax 207-563-1002 Hours: Mon-Sat 9-5 came to the island and being an outdoors- man himself, he felt the mountains and the sea were what people should be enjoying and not their living rooms," Mark Cole speculates. "Certainly, to this day, one of the nicest features of his cottages is the open porch or terrace." W ITH houses going up every- where on Mount Desert, the dapper Savage was a familiar sight around the island as he drove his high-spirited chestnut mare, Nellie, to and from construction sites. The course of his personal life, however, was not running SO smoothly. Upon his return to Maine in 1887, the twenty-six-year-old architect had married a local girl, Flora Salisbury, and at Asticou built a hand- some Shingle-style home, Hilltop House, for them and the two children that were soon born to them, Francis and Floralee. Eventually, despite the strict Victorian temper of the times, their marriage soured and ended in divorce. Amid con- siderable bitterness, Flo moved to Brewer with the children and Fred relo- cated to Bar Harbor where he later mar- ried his secretary, Alice Preble. Back in Bar Harbor, Savage designed ©1995 C. Lenay a fifteen-room Tudor-style year-round FARRELL and Company home on Atlantic Avenue for himself and BUILDING TIMBER FRAME HOMES, his new wife, the house that would later BARNS & OUTBUILDINGS SINCE 1976 be bought by the Gerrish family. Although 505 HODSDON ROAD POWNAL, MAINE 04069 (207) 688-4459 he was generally described as a quiet man, he was certainly prosperous and 58 DOWN EAST D. A Sampling of MORRIS evidently well regarded. He joined the Bar Down East Books Harbor Board of Trade and became com- ARCHITECTS/LAND PLANNERS modore of the Bar Harbor Yacht Club, Considering new construction If you love Maine, you'll love our hobnobbing with the likes of the or major renovations? books and calendars. To order, fill Vanderbilts and other well-heeled clients out coupon and mail with check or money order to Down East Books, whose houses he had designed. Once P.O. Box 679, Camden, ME 04843. islanders voted in 1915 to repeal their Please allow 2 weeks for delivery. island-wide ban on those new-fangled, For credit card orders, call noisy contraptions called automobiles, 800-685-7962 Savage - echoing the farsightedness of his father - opened up the island's first No. of Price automotive dealership and sold a line of Copies Book Each Total Franklins that ranged from utility road- 1997 Down East Wall Calendar 9.95 sters to luxury limousines. Life on Mount 1997 Down East Desert had been good for Fred Savage, but Engagement Calendar 11.95 ABCs of Maine 7.95 nine years later, he died suddenly from All-Maine Seafood Ckbk. 6.95 heart failure at the age of sixty-three. Arundel 15.95 The Savage legacy of creativity and Best Maine Stories 12.95 Come Spring 19.95 enterprise spilled over into subsequent Complete Guide generations. Fred's nephew, George, also to Fly-Fishing Maine 13.50 became an architect and designed, among PHOTO BY BRIAN VANDEN BRINK Complete Guide to Waterfowling in Maine 13.50 others, a house called Good Hope on the With over 20 years of quality Cooking Down East 14.95 eastern shore of Northeast Harbor for his- residential design experience, Country Living, our complete architectural services are Country Dying 10.95 especially helpful for seasonal clients. Crystal 8.95 Since the discovery Fox & Geese & Fences 9.95 Call or write for a free brochure. Good Maine Food 10.95 of Fred Savage's Island Alphabet 15.95 89 ELM STREET/P.O. BOX 250, CAMDEN, ME 04843 Jennie About to Be 13.95 extensive blueprints, (207) 236-8321 FAX 236-6391 Jennie Glenroy hardcover 24.95 librarian Bob Pyle Jennie Glenroy- paper 13.95 No. 8 on Reader Service Coupon, p. 64 Land of Discord Always 24.95 has noticed an Leroy the Lobster 9.95 Lighthouse Horrors 11.95 interesting change Littlest Lighthouse 4.95 Maine Ghosts & Legends 8.95 of heart about PHOTOGRAPHS Maine Sampler 3.95 Maine Woods Woolies 9.95 his work. In THREAD! Monhegan, The Artists' Island 50.00 torian Samuel Eliot Morison. Another Crosstitchers. Now Moose on the Loose 9.95 Murder on Mount Desert 24.95 nephew, landscape architect Charles K. Anything You Can See in Neil Welliver Prints 37.50 Savage, created the stunning Asticou Penobscot Bay Video 19.95 Azalea Garden and Thuya Gardens, which Your Camera Lens ~ You Pocket Guide to the Carriage Roads of Acadia 4.50 still lure thousands of visitors to Northeast Can Stitch! Seal Called Andre 7.95 Harbor every year. And Fred Savage's Silas, the Bookstore Cat 14.95 The Story of Andre 10.95 work continues to be a source of inspira- We Took to the Woods 10.95 tion today. In recent years, for instance, a Whale in Lowell's Cove 14.95 Seal Harbor summer resident modeled his Before After What the Sea Left Behind 9.95 palatial home on one of Savage's turn-of- *Turn your Photos into Art* Wild Fox 15.95 the-century creations, Brackenfell. World of Jennie G. 13.95 Think of the possibilities - Any Actually, since the discovery of Fred Child, Any Pet, Any Home or Savage's extensive blueprints, librarian Subtotal $ Scenic View can now become a Bob Pyle has noticed an interesting change Crosstitch Pattern, complete with Maine residents add 6% sales tax of heart about his work. "A lot of local DMC color codes and enlarged Please add $2.50 shipping & handling buildings used to be attributed to architects pattern sheets. for one item, plus $1 for each additional from Baltimore and Philadelphia and item shipped to the same address Just send any color or B&W Boston simply because nobody knew that photo plus a check or money TOTAL ENCLOSED $ they were by Savage or even who Savage order for $39.95 plus $2.00 S&H was," he says. "But the blueprints discov- NAME (tax included) to. ered by Lewis Gerrish, Jr., answered a lot of questions. Nowadays if you mention Clark's Crosstitch ADDRESS Fred Savage in Northeast Harbor, people Patterns pretty much tend to know who you're talk- 24 Silvermine Ave. CITY ing about. And more people come in now Norwalk, CT 06850 actually hoping to confirm that their hous- Gift Certificates Available STATE/ZIP D263 es were designed by Fred Savage, rather For more information, call 203-847-0830 8 AM-8 PM EST than by somebody else." FEBRUARY 1996 59