Abstract
Bar Harbor is only nine miles from Northeast Harbor, but moving there around 1898 dramatically altered the patterns of Savage’s life and work. By the late 1890s, many Bar Harbor cottages were in the hands of second or third owners; consequently, renovation and additions became an important part of his practice. His earlier work had revolved a round the design or construction of new cottages, but after 1898 almost half of his commissions were for additions to existing cottages, or for different types of buildings, including stables, stores, offices, private clubs, public buildings, and garages. Stylistically his work became more diverse too, as the popularity of the shingle style was waning, and he quickly demonstrated an ability to work in various revival styles. Savage’s shift toward the use of historical revival styles reflects the contemporaneous evolution of the shingle style away from its initial informality and toward a more restrained, academic expression. The “decline” or transformation of the shingle style is usually attributed to a variety of reasons, including the growing influence of schools of architecture with their emphasis on historical styles, and social and economic factors that discouraged sprawling floor plans, such as a diminished pool of live-in servants as more and more Americans entered the middle class and the imposition of the income tax.1 Parenthetically, it is worth noting that just as he designed additions and alterations, other architects have altered buildings designed by Savage. Stone Ledge in Northeast Harbor, which Savage designed in 1892 for Miss Clara Williamson, exemplifies both this process of change and the move away from the shingle style.
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Chapter III
For a discussion of the evolution of the shingle style see Roth, Shingle Styles, Innovation and Tradition, 35–39; see also Scully, The Shingle Style and the Stick Style, 130–154.
U.S. Manuscript Census, 1900, vol. T623, reel 592, Enumeration District no. 53, sheet no. 12. Alice Preble is listed as being single and having been born in May 1879.
Bar Harbor Record, August 23, 1899. The dimensions may have been altered as planning progressed, for the Bangor Industrial Journal reported on November 11, 1899, that the building was 112 by 45 feet with a piazza 16 feet deep “overlooking the golf links.”
For illustrations see Scully, The Architecture of Summer, plate 27, the Short Hills Casino (1882–1883) by McKim, Mead and White; plate 29, the Washington Park Club (1883) by S. S. Beman; plate 82, the New York Athletic Club’s Country Clubhouse (1888) by George Martin Huss; plate 88, the Summer Headquarters of the Portland Club (1888) by John Calvin Stevens; plate 122, the Lake St. Clair Fishing and Shooting Club (1890) by Rogers and MacFarlane; plate 151, the Burlingame Country Club Stable (1894) by A. Page Brown; and plate 180, the Nassau Country Club by Woodruff Leeming.
Bar Harbor Record, May 23, 1900.
Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr., Old Money, The Mythology of America’s Upper Class (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), 49–53; see also Hale, The Story of Bar Harbor, 173.
R. H. Moon was Savage’s foreman for many years. He directed construction on the J. L. Ketterlinus, the Edgar Scott, the W. J. Schieffelin, the J. C. Livingston, and the A. J. Cassatt cottages. He established himself in Bar Harbor in 1900 and “had charge of several of the largest crews ever employed in the building trade in Bar Harbor.” Bar Harbor Record, June 27, 1906.
Bar Harbor Record, April 4, 1900. See Appendix II for other documents related to this controversy.
Bar Harbor Record, September 19, 1900.
Bangor Industrial Journal, November 30, 1900.
A. C. Savage, a manuscript account book entitled “Account with A. C. & Geo A. Savage,” in the collection of Rick Savage. At the head of the first page, A. C. Savage entered money spent prior to October 30, 1900, and among the first six entries is “F. L. Savage Bill $2,647.62.” And in April 1902, A. C. “Paid F. L. Savage com. on Hotel $153.39.” The initial payment must have been for plans and perhaps included repayments for materials ordered by Fred.
Edward N. Akin, Flagler: Rockefeller Partner and Florida Baron (The Kent State University Press: Kent, Ohio, 1988), 120–123; see also Hap Hatton, Tropical Splendor: An Architectural History of Florida (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 22–25.
The Bar Harbor Record, February 6, 1901. Local historians differ about the proper spelling of the name of this cottage, but the Bar Harbor Times, July 25, 1914, notes that Mr. and Mrs. John Callendar Livingston were at Callendar House. Transcribed by Jared Knowles, “An Exploration of the Colonial Revival Through Selected Works of Fred Savage, Architect” (MA Thesis, Savannah College of Art and Design, 1994), 54–57.
Ibid.
Surviving catalogues from Savage’s office include: The Phoenix Wire Works, Catalogue No. 35, Detroit, Mich., April 15, 1909; Southern Beauty Enameled Ware, the Cahill Iron Works, Chattanooga, Tenn., n.d.; General Compressed Air House Cleaning Co., St. Louis, Mo., 1907; Lignine Carvings, Ornamental Products Co. Detroit, Mich., n.d.; Hot Air Pumping Machines, Rider-Ericsson Engine Co., Walden, N.Y., 1904; Architectural Varnishes and Stains for Natural Woods, Murphy Varnish Co., Newark, Boston; Cleveland, St. Louis, Chicago, n.d.; Modern House Cleaning Tools and Equipment Catalogue, Vacuum House Cleaning Company, Saint Louis, Mo., n.d.; Modern Lavatories,Western Metal Supply Co., San Diego, Cal., n.d.; Specifications and Instructions for Finishing New Woodwork and Floors, S. C. Johnson & Son, Racine, Wis., n.d.; The House of Silence, Linofelt Keeps out Noise, Heat, Cold, Union Fibre Company, Winona, Minn., 1907.
The Bar Harbor Record, April 17, 1901.
Jeffery Karl Ochsner and Thomas C. Hubka, “H. H. Richardson: The Design of the William Watts Sherman House,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol. 51, no. 2 (June 1992): 122, 136.
Many relevant illustrations from this journal are reproduced in Scully’s Architecture of the American Summer; see pages 56–57, 72–73, 98, 104–105, 154, and 169.
Elizabeth Mitchell Walter, “Jay Hambidge and the Development of the Theory of Dynamic Symmetry, 1902–1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, 1978).
Bar Harbor Record, December 19, 1900; see Appendix II for a contemporary description of Savage’s colonial revival interior.
Bar Harbor Record, December 19, 1900.
Bar Harbor Record, April 1, 1903.
Scientific American Building Monthly, March 1904, 56–7.
Bar Harbor Record, January 22, 1902.
Anne Archbold also held a fishing world’s record, landing a sixty-pound wahoo on a twenty-five-pound test line in the Bahamas. New York Times, March 28, 1968.
Bar Harbor Record, March 30, 1904.
Ibid.
For notice of Savage’s vacations, see the Bar Harbor Record, October 26, 1904, November 15, 1905; March 7, 1906; and April 14, 1917. For the trip to Florida in 1913, see typed extracts from the diary of Emily Manchester Savage (1834–1914), Fred’s mother, in the collection of the Northeast Harbor library.
Charles W. Eliot, The Right Development of Mount Desert (privately printed, 1904). Beneath his name at the conclusion of the fourteen-page pamphlet, Eliot placed the date-December 25, 1903. He apparently meant for his readers to understand that the essay was intended as a gift to the island he loved.
According to President Eliot the idea for the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations was based on the work of his son, Charles Eliot, landscape architect, who had instigated the creation of the Massachusetts Board of Trustees of Public Reservations. See George B. Dorr, Acadia National Park, Its Origin and Background (Bangor: Burr Printing Company, 1942), 51–52.
Ibid., 7.
Ibid., 19–20.
Bar Harbor Times, July 25, 1914; August 15, 1914; and September 5, 1914.
Roger G. Reed, “Bar Harbor Cottages,” 15–26.
E. R. Robson, School Architecture. Being Practical Remarks on the Planning, Designing, Building, and Furnishing of School-Houses (1874; reprint, New York: Humanities Press, 1972).
Quoted by Malcolm Seaborne in an introductory essay to the reprinted School Architecture, 22.
Robson, School Architecture, 74.
Ibid., 178.
Ibid., 265–266.
For a description of the Washington Normal School in Machias see the Bangor Industrial Journal, December 1909, April 1910, June 1910, and August 1910.
Fred L. Savage to C. H. Burt, April 16, 1908; and Fred L. Savage to Morris McDonnald, February 10, 1916, typescript letters in the collection of the Mount Desert Historical Society, Town of Mount Desert.
Attributed to Fred L. Savage, “Beautiful Bar Harbor,” 8. A seventeen-page typescript in the collection of the Mount Desert Historical Society. The complete text is reproduced in the Appendix.
Hale, Jr., The Story of Bar Harbor, 208–209. See also Helfrich and O’Neil, Lost Bar Harbor, 110.
Savage, “Beautiful Bar Harbor,” 9.
For a history of the movement see William H. Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). See also John W. Reps, The Making of Urban America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 497–525.
Bar Harbor Times, March 22 and 29, 1919. Although they both worked on Mount Desert, Farrand and Savage never worked on the same site at the same time. At different times, they both worked at the cottages Haven in Northeast Harbor and Chilton and Buonriposa in Bar Harbor. See Diana Balmori, Diane Kostial McGuire, and Eleanor M. McPeck, Beatrix Farrand’s American Landscapes, Her Gardens and Campuses (Sagaponack, N.Y.: Sagapress, 1985).
Gary Stellpflug, “Ironwork,” Friends of Acadia Journal (Summer/Fall 2000): 11–12. See also Acadia National Park Official Website, “Paths into the Past,” www.nps.gov/acad/trails.htm.
Bar Harbor Record, August 16, 1905. The poll was conducted by the Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association, and the vote against cars was 105 to 0. Arthur Train published a satirical essay about the potential impact of automobiles. He predicted aggressive drivers, cars clustered at scenic spots, an “invasion” of transients who would contribute little to the economy and whose pervasive presence would drive cottagers away. He titled his essay “A Prophecy, the Isle of Mt. Deserted”; see Bar Harbor Record, August 28, 1907.
Bar Harbor Record, August 16, 1905.
Bar Harbor Record, December 9, 1908.
Bar Harbor Times, August 29, 1914.
The Franklin was made by the H. H. Franklin Manufacturing Company, 1901–1917, and subsequently by the Franklin Automobile Co., 1917–1934, both based in Syracuse, New York. They sold thirteen cars in 1902; sales rose to 13,000 during the 1925–1926 model year. An early four-cylinder Franklin cost $1,800; an early six-cylinder Franklin cost $4,000. By the late 1920s, a large Franklin with all the options could cost as much as $7,200.
Bar Harbor Record, April 9, 1913.
Bar Harbor Times, September 26, 1914.
Bar Harbor Times, February 13, 1915.
Although Savage prepared plans for the Islesford Hotel, the project was never built. Robert R. Pyle, conversation with the author, April 2003.
Reed, A Delight to All Who Know It, 134.
Josephine Morrison, “Notes on the Photographs,” a manuscript accompanying the album, Hauterive, 1899, in the collection of the Bar Harbor Historical Society.
Bar Harbor Record, October 13, 1915.
Morrison, “Notes on the Photographs.”
Ibid.
Probate Court Docket & Index to Records, 1923 to [n.d.], Hancock County [Maine], vol. 4, page 64, case no. 10825, Estate of Fred L. Savage, Bar Harbor. The will was filed March 11, 1924, vol. 172, page 363; the amended account was filed and settled July 20, 1926, vol. 213, page 97.
Robert Pyle, conversation with the author, June 2004.
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(2005). Bar Harbor and the End of the Cottage Era (circa 1900–1924). In: Maine Cottages. Princeton Archit.Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-56898-649-1_4
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