Oldfarm 10: Oldfarm House

Interior of Oldfarm

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Location:

44.374098, -68.193052

Oldfarm House

For years, Oldfarm was the center of hospitality for Dorr’s distinguished guests and public officers as he worked to establish Acadia National Park. Utilizing sketches from Boston-based landscape architect and engineer Ernest W. Bowditch, the Dorrs employed Gardiner, Maine architect Henry Richards to design the new large family home on Compass Harbor.

Like many of the Mount Desert Island “cottages” built in the late 1800s, Richard’s design was an early form of the “Shingle Style” of architecture, which blended the English Queen Anne style and American Colonial Revival architectural styles popularized between the years of 1880 and 1900 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The shingles were made of California redwood and fit together well with the reddish-pink two-foot granite foundation where the eleven-thousand square foot house sat upon.

Granite was sourced from local quarries, presumably some quarries owned by Charles Dorr, and provided the base for the foundation as well as other masonry features such as steps and retaining walls. The first and second floors, made of oak, birch, and maple, contained more than a dozen rooms for family and servants, including six bathrooms.

As the home neared its completion in 1881, George claimed the third floor “Sea Room,” where the northern views of the Porcupine Islands and Frenchman Bay were a source of daily enjoyment.

Duration:

1 minute

Station Ten of the Oldfarm Video Tour