SUMMER LIVING – AUGUST 2007

By Joshua Bodwell

Photography François Gagné
Styling Linda Banks & James Ligh

A Kennebunkport home grows myths as it grows out of the rocky shore

Certain houses are so exceptional, so unique, and they affect the lives of so many people, that they are no longer merely houses—places where people live and eat and sleep—but something else altogether. They have become icons. On the idyllic Ocean Avenue that winds out of Kennebunkport’s Dock Square, there stands just such a house.

Built on a tiny neck of land jutting into the ocean, and constructed to appear as though it is growing out of the rocky shore, the summer cottage—known to many as the Stone House—has inspired hyperbole of impressive proportions over the years. Residents and tourists alike have created and perpetuated myths about the house, which many see as the archetype of a coastal Maine residence. Many make the unverifiable claim that the house is the single most photographed and painted house in the state. One popular legend would have us believe the house is the same that appears in silhouette during the opening credits of the late-1960s vampire television soap opera Dark Shadows. And, perhaps stemming from that gothic association, the home is also rumored to be haunted.

But beneath the fog of folklore and hearsay, the Stone House—or Bayberry Cove Cottage as its architect actually named it—is a real home with a real history. And it is inhabited by a real family that has owned and revered it for three generations.

How a House Grew Out of the Rocks
In 1872, a group of entrepreneurs from Boston stumbled upon Kennebunkport and came up with the idea that the town could become a southern version of the booming millionaire summer-resort community of Bar Harbor. The group of men—which included the writer John Townsend Trowbridge, a friend and contemporary of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman—joined with a few Maine businessmen and formed the Boston and Kennebunkport Seashore Company. The group purchased a 700-acre tract of land that included more than five miles of coastline. Local fisherman disliked the jagged stretch of land since it lacked a sheltered harbor, while the local farmers found it fairly useless as pastureland. The area was renamed “Cape Arundel” by the Seashore Company. Plans were drawn up, house packages were advertised, and before long grand hotels and mansions—which the wealthy called “summer cottages”—were springing up along the shore.

In the early 1880s, Boston architect Henry Patson Clark built a home for himself in Cape Arundel. Over the next few decades, Clark would design nearly 30 buildings in Kennebunkport and leave a lasting mark on the community. Two of Clark’s most visible works are still standing today on Ocean Avenue: the medieval-inspired Episcopal church called St. Ann’s by the Sea (built in 1887), and his most massive project, the grand Colony Hotel (1914).

In 1915, Clark was commissioned to design a home for a rare and prominent lot on the ocean side of Ocean Avenue for a Mr. James Harrison. Clark designed Bayberry Cove Cottage, a sturdy, cedar-shingled cottage that echoes, both in materials and continuity with the surrounding landscape, the neighboring St. Ann’s by the Sea. Clark gave the cottage a tall stone foundation, massive chimney, and porch columns that all look as though they were made of stones plucked from the beach right beside the home.

In 1931, Bayberry Cove Cottage was sold to William L. Pierce and his wife, Esther Cott Pierce. The house has since been passed down through the family. Today, Pierce O’Neil, the grandson of William and Esther Pierce, and his family—wife Ashley and their three daughters, continue to summer at the Stone House, just as the generations of their family did before them.

The Sensation of the Stone House
Raised in Bedford, New York, Pierce O’Neil has spent nearly every summer of his life in Kennebunkport, and the years have nurtured a deep fondness for the community and its residents. Pierce says the Stone House has come to represent an escape from his work and hectic schedule in New York. “I cross the bridge into Dock Square,” he says, “and the tension goes out of my shoulders. Everything slows down—my driving, my talking, everything. There’s nowhere I’d rather be”

Ashley sums up their summers in the Stone House with just two words: family and relaxation. “The minute you go onto that back porch and look out at the sea,” she says with an air of reverie, “everything shuts off and you just totally relax.” Even in a state full of spectacular ocean views, the Stone House porch is a thing to behold.

Beyond the porch’s railing there is nothing but a small, craggy ledge and the wide-open expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. The rocks below are bright and sun-streaked, but the low tide reveals dark lower halves covered in slick masses of seaweed. All day, the sun glints off the undulating water and an endless stream of boats drift by—sailboats cruising toward deeper water and lobster boats puttering from buoy to buoy checking traps. The sun is best at midday on the back porch, but with a small patio off the kitchen and an additional side porch, the O’Neils say there is always a place in the home where the sun is just right.

Still, Pierce explains, the view is only one of the many magical aspects of the house, which seems to offer something for all the senses. With the ocean waves crashing insistently against the rocks, it is as though the house has a “built-in sound machine,” he says. And the cool, salt-tinged air blown in off the water continually fills the house with a sharp, refreshing fragrance.

“It feels like you’re in a boat sometimes,” Ashley says.

Pierce agrees: “It almost feels like you’re living outside.”

The O’Neils recently called upon their friend Linda Banks, an interior designer who consulted on their Connecticut house, knowing she understood the nature of their summer home. Banks and associate James Light worked carefully in their design to capture the heritage and mystique of the house, honoring the O’Neil’s request to freshen up the interiors without changing the feel of the home.

Inside, the house is appropriately outfitted for summer living and guests—its three floors offer no less than seven bedrooms, four-and-a-half baths, and multiple fireplaces for those chilly, Atlantic-side evenings. And thanks to Clark’s thoughtful design, every bedroom in the house has an ocean view, so summer guests can’t grumble about getting the “bad room.”

And, of course, the architecture is also a testament to Clark’s skill. At nearly 100 years old, the house—which has survived countless storms and waves so high that they broke over its roof—feels as solid as it must have on the day it was built. The secret, it turns out, is in how Clark “attached” the house to the ledge upon which it sits. In the basement, the basement floor has the uneven tops of rocks poking up all over the place. This construction technique allows any ocean water that might make its way into the basement to flow right back out. “People marvel at that basement,” Ashley laughs.

But no one, it seems, marvels at the house more than the O’Neils. Every few years the family considers spending their summer vacation somewhere other than Maine. “We’ve thought about trips to London or Montana, or a safari in Africa,” Pierce says. “And at first it sounds good, but then I start thinking it would mean less time in Kennebunkport—and I say no way!”

“I feel incredibly lucky to have access to this property,” he says, “and I’m eternally grateful to my grandparents for that.”

A Symbol of Summer
For every definable and undefinable thing that Bayberry Cove Cottage is, there are other things it is not. It is not, for instance, the house seen during the opening credits of Dark Shadows. Ashley, who grew up watching the television show, put an end to that myth when she wrote the Dark Shadows fan club and requested a picture of the opening credits. “It’s definitely not this house,” she says with a laugh. “They used some monstrous mansion for the television show.”

But Bayberry Cove Cottage not only inspires myths—it also inspires art. “There are always artists setting up their easels on the sidewalk,” Ashley says.

“It’s almost rare when you don’t see someone sitting out by the rocks painting this house,” Pierce says

So does that make the Stone House the most painted and photographed in Maine? We’ll likely never know. Either way, the O’Neils seem to take all the painters, picture-takers, and rumor-spreaders in stride. They seem to accept that the iconic stature of the Stone House has come to mean something bigger than the building they call “home” for part of each year. It has come to symbolize, for countless thousands of people, both Maine and summer.

The O’Neils have considered winterizing the house over the years, but Pierce sounds noncommittal when he talks about it. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not sure if the house is meant to be lived in during the winter. The house is all about summer.”