The Story Of Bar Harbor An Informal History Recording One Hundred And Fifty Years In The Life Of A Community With Plates

Maine's premier tourist destination, Bar Harbor has many historic buildings. The area was once a shipbuilding and farming hamlet that became a Gilded Age resort of the highest order-until a fire in 1947 destroyed many of its buildings. This pictorial history takes Bar Harbor from its origins to the fire. It also offers intriguing curiosities, including insights on the upstairs-downstairs aspects of resort life. The book's captions are packed with fascinating information.

By 1898, when the production of picture postcards began, Bar Harbor had become one of America's leading summer resorts and second only to Newport, Rhode Island, in wealth and social standing. For the next six decades, the postcard recorded the transformation of this coastal island community into a middle class tourist destination. Grand hotels, seaside mansions, and elegant gardens made way for roadside cabins and motels catering to automobile travelers. Bar Harbor features many never-before-published postcards from the collections of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, the Bar Harbor Historical Society, and the Penobscot Marine Museum.

From the end of the Great War until the onslaught of the Great Depression, Americans had a good time, and nowhere was that more true than in Bar Harbor during high season. Amid peace and prosperity, the wealthy flocked to Mount Desert Island, foxtrotted at the Swimming Club and tangoed at the Dreamwood Ballroom on Ireson's Hill. Rumrunners made covert pickups from isolated coves along the Mount Desert Narrows while Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Astors coasted serenely in and out of Frenchman's Bay. Horse-drawn carriages found a haven in the quiet roads of Lafayette National Park while roadsters sped along Bay Drive. Year-round residents faced brutal winters, but even then they had spirited celebrations with Winter Carnivals and Hayseed Balls as the '20s roared on in Bar Harbor.