“If The Maine House was our cri de coeur, this second volume represents a mission, one that aims to illustrate that it is possible, indeed essential, to rescue Maine’s quirky architectural history,” writes Kathleen Hackett in the introduction of The Maine House II.
Published in 2021, The Maine House invited viewers into the saltwater-weathered architecture of the New England state. Up and down the coast and further inland, Maine’s historic hamlets are defined by buildings of a signature look: typically white clapboard or shingle cottages. Though gorgeous beachfront manses exist on Maine’s craggy coasts, those recent architectural builds don’t tell the real Maine story. For that, look to structures more humble in design—dwellings of fishermen, artists, and locales. The appeal of Maine is its understated, no-frills take on the good life, and this was the subject of the first book and its sequel The Maine House II, from Kathleen Hackett and Basha Burwell with photographs by Maura McEvoy.
As described by Hackett, these aren’t designer homes. Instead, “we set our sights not only on houses that have been preserved, renovated, restored, rescued, and sensitively expanded but, equally as important, on the people who live in them.”
In the second volume, we get glimpses into 30 homes across Maine—including a mid-century build by the self-taught architect Emily Muir, who designed over 45 homes in or around Crockett Cove near Stonington. This home, The Falls at Crockett Cove, seems almost dwarfed by the pines that surround it on the waterfront of East Penobscot Bay. “‘It had me at the full glass front. But the fact that it sits on a huge piece of granite that hangs out over the water? You can slip into nature without disturbing it,” says Carolyn Evans, who together with her husband, Ray, are its current stewards.
Then there are properties like the 1790-built Cape-style home that had been abandoned for years before being lovingly rehabilitated by two artists, Dan Anselmi and Marc Leavitt, who sought not to designer-home-ify the space, but to honor its great bones. “There was no heating system, no family room, no great room, no room for a refrigerator in the kitchen, an ailing roof, and a vertigo-inducing staircase,” says Hackett. “Anselmi and Leavitt looked straight past all of it, mesmerized by what was there. For these two artists, whose professional lives left little time to build their practices and whose Back Bay one-bedroom apartment offered no space in which to do it, it was love at first sight.”
What’s more Maine than a lighthouse? The final property in the book is that belonging to Jamie Wyeth, an artist who comes from a long line of painters inspired by their surroundings—his is a cozy lighthouse teeming with antiques, including glass oil lanterns and dioramas of schooners. “I could live four lifetimes and not scratch the surface of what this place offers up to me every single day,” he says. “The lighthouse itself is a symbol and so singular. It’s like a person.” One that expands his perspective every day. “There is something about the view from the top of the lighthouse, seeing the perimeter of the world, that is just thrilling,” says Wyeth.
View the remaining properties in The Maine House II, out now.
