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Academic Papers

"Past Perfect"

The first 12 summers of designer Kate Davis’s life were some of her best. At the start of each season, she and her parents would migrate from Manhattan to the southeastern shore of Mount Desert Island, Maine. Once there, they settled into Passage West, a six-bedroom, shingle-style cottage built in 1922 atop Ox Hill in Seal Harbor. When her parents divorced, Davis and her mom continued summering in Seal Harbor, renting various places until her mother purchased a house on the edge of Acadia National Park. Still, Davis’s fondest memories hail from her early childhood at Passage West.

In 2019 Davis, the founder of Manhattan-based Davis Designs, learned that Passage West was for sale. She and her husband, who own another historic property on Ox Hill, purchased the decaying 3,665 square foot cottage, which Davis restored for their adult children. “I knew I could bring it back to the home I remembered from my childhood,” says the designer, who feels passionately about saving old houses.

Davis describes the renovation, during which the crew peeled the three-story structure down to the studs, as a two-year labor of love. “Anyone else would have torn it down,” says Keith Higgins of EL Higgins Building and Remodeling. “We spent a lot of time restoring whatever we could—windows with wavy glass, doors that needed to be squared up, reclaimed maple floors—to retain the old character,” he says.

The team also replaced the crumbling stone pillars that hold up the back of the house with steel beams. “The house was literally sinking,” Davis says. “The floor on one side of the [southernmost] bedroom was almost seven inches higher than on the other. The prior owners had taken to propping furniture up on blocks to make it look even!”

The cottage came full of furnishings, including many that Davis remembers from her childhood. As a designer who favors reusing pieces over getting rid of them—she often stores items unwanted by one client to reappropriate for another—Davis challenged herself to use as many of Passage West’s contents as possible. According to her mother, she even put the same faded books back on the sunroom shelves.

Architectural designer Todd Stanley, founder of Downeast Home Design, collaborated with Davis to increase functionality and improve flow throughout the home. The most significant changes on the first floor were to the kitchen, where an ancient stove jutted into the space and oddly angled countertops did little to ease circulation. Finding enough square footage to add the center island was a priority. “We bumped back a wall to steal about a foot of space from the dining room,” Stanley says. The new island provides an expansive work surface, additional storage, and a spot for a single stool at one end.

High-end appliances (“Everything works now!” her mom exclaimed.) and simple white cabinetry with sturdy pulls are obviously updated but not slick or suburban. Granite countertops sourced at a quarry on nearby Swans Island lend a rustic feel and tie to the landscape. “When you look out the kitchen window, you see a big granite mountainside,” Davis says.

In the formal dining room, lobster wallpaper by Abnormals Anonymous references Maine summer-time fare. “We sat down to dinner together every night as a family, either here or on the back porch,” Davis says. “We boiled lobsters, shucked corn, and shelled fresh peas.” Gold fretwork chairs harken back to New Englanders’ taste for Chinese Chippendale style, though these have durable, faux leather seats. The lacquered table on bamboo legs by designer Miles Redd for Ballard Designs is a similar nod, and budget-friendly to boot. “I like to mix in fun catalog pieces,” Davis says.

Original antique side tables and chairs, plus a pair of Asian imported lamps, connect the living room to its roots, while the saturated teal trim infuses a summer-house sensibility and enlivens the mantel. “I have vivid memories of roasting marshmallows in this fireplace,” Davis says. Another mainstay was the old foghorn Davis and her friends used to blow (and drive her parents crazy). Unfortunately, it was nowhere to be found. “I am desperate to reclaim it,” she says.

The sunroom, with its Serena and Lily sectional upholstered in awning stripe performance fabric and its flat-screen television, is outfitted for twenty-first- century families. “There were no TVs in Seal Harbor when I was growing up; they were practically illegal,” Davis laughs. The model ships that the designer returned to the windowsill inspired her choice of wallpaper: St. Tropez by Lee Jofa, featuring oversized sails. “I raced 420 [sailboats] in college and have been waiting forever to use it,” she says.

On the second and third floors, Davis and Stanley rejiggered the layouts in order to create five well-appointed bathrooms. Each have a distinct personality; some retain the original cast-iron tubs. When she was a kid, old-fashioned baths were a point of pride in Seal Harbor. “Houses only had clawfoot tubs; putting in a shower was frowned upon,” Davis explains. That said, at 5:30 p.m., “I’ll be back in 20 minutes,” was a common refrain. “Everyone from the Hill would descend upon the tennis club to shower in the locker room,” she recalls.

The new layouts comfortably accommodate two families. The second floor boasts two suites with his-and-hers closets and attached baths. One has a soothing, seafoam green palette, a gas fireplace, and an original spindle back settee. The other is wrapped in a fuchsia jute wallcovering. Here, Davis paired a mirrored desk with an existing faux bamboo chair that she adorned with a velvet cushion. “I love the juxtaposition of a humble antique against something extravagant,” she says.

“Tibet tiger” wallpaper by Clarence House lines Davis’s old childhood room, where she sometimes spent the night on the attached sleeping porch. Kids who stay here still use the hall bath, a storybook space with pink grapefruit wallpaper and its original cast-iron tub.

There are three additional bedrooms and two baths on the third floor. In the boldly patterned blue bedroom with bright red accents, Davis tucked a float-ing shelf into a niche beside an original iron daybed. Clarence House wallpaper with painterly, multihued trees cocoons the bedroom next door, where she nestled a pair of original iron beds under the eaves. Opposite the beds, a skirted table flanked by original Chippendale-style rattan armchairs accentuates the home’s “generation-after-generation summered here” vibe.

Unused attic space on that level became a cozy twin bedroom lined with wallpaper picturing silly dogs atop blue and white stripes. The headboards, upholstered in a Lilly Pulitzer print, hail from Davis’s stepson’s former bedroom in New York. One of her sons created the paintings over the beds. “Using children’s artwork is effortless,” the designer says. “If you frame it with a mat, it looks like a Matisse print.”

Davis reinvigorated the cottage, making it fun while maintaining its essence. Although the Passage West of her youth had painted, not papered, walls and rag rugs instead of sisal mats, the timeless patterns and the natural materials mixed with time-worn furniture and unfussy fixtures maintain the aura of the almost 100-year-old Maine cottage. “It’s still the Passage West that we rented, just fresher,” Davis’s mother says. “And, when you walk in, you immediately know it’s Maine.”

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‘It was a miracle it didn’t burn down.’

An interior designer gives a tired Mount Desert Island mansion much-needed updates and renewed purpose for her new blended family.

By Marni Elyse Katz

On the southeastern shore of Mount Desert Island, Maine, where “desert” is pronounced “dessert” and mansions are called “cottages,” summer residents and tourists alike find solace in the wild beauty of Acadia National Park. Kate and Andrew Davis and their blended brood of five travel from New York City to Seal Harbor to hike, mountain bike, sail, swim, and socialize. “We’re a super active family; we’re always on the water or in the park,” said Kate, an interior designer who recently redecorated their Seal Harbor home. “It’s a really special community.”

Mount Desert Island became popular in the late-1800s among affluent East Coasters called “rusticators,” lured there by the romantic landscapes painted by Hudson River School artists beginning in the 1840s. Seal Harbor’s well-heeled inhabitants included John D. Rockefeller Jr., who donated 11,000 acres to the park and established its carriage road system. His 100-room estate, “The Eyrie,” was demolished in 1962, while the home of son David, “Ringing Point,” sold for $19 million three years ago. Perhaps the most well-known Seal Harbor resident today is Martha Stewart, who owns “Skylands,” the pink-granite estate built by Henry Ford’s son and daughter-in-law, Edsel and Eleanor.

The Davises’ home, “Eastholm,” is across the street from “Ringing Point.” Richard March Hoe and his wife, Annie Dows Hoe, built the nine-bedroom, Shingle-style cottage in 1902. The couple commissioned Carrère & Hastings, the firm that designed their Upper East Side home, not to mention the New York Public Library, the decade prior. (Coincidentally, the Hoe’s limestone mansion is just three blocks from the Davises’ Upper East Side home.)

In 1908, the Hoes hired Olmsted Brothers, the Brookline-based landscape architecture firm that designed Boston’s Emerald Necklace, to plan the property’s herbaceous garden. A blueprint and a letter that recommends planting Madonna lilies and tufted pansies among the existing peonies and phlox hang in the home’s stairwell.

When Andrew bought “Eastholm” 20 years ago, nothing had been updated in decades. “There were exposed wires hanging from the side of the building,” he said. “It was a miracle it didn’t burn down.” In comparison, the cypress floorboards and millwork were beautifully preserved. “The original floors, doors, windows, and banisters were remarkably underused for a house of that age,” Andrew said.

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The entry, staircase, and living room boast original cypress woodwork and alcove seats. EMILY GILBERT

Ensuing renovations included modernizing the plumbing, electric, and heating systems, as well as reworking the kitchen to accommodate modern-day living. “The kitchen was divided into four or five smaller rooms where different servants oversaw each area,” Andrew said. “It was inappropriate for the way we live today.”

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Kate refurbished the home’s original claw-foot tubs, adding showers, rods, and curtains. She believes this was used as the second-floor servants’ bath once upon a time. EMILY GILBERT

In 2019, Kate redecorated the 10,000-square-foot-plus home to better suit their newly blended family. The couple married in June 2017 and have five children between them, ages 13 to 24. As a wedding gift to Andrew, Kate commissioned a formal portrait of the kids on the back lawn of “Eastholm,” which hangs in the playroom.

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Kate commissioned Maine-based portrait artist Judy Taylor to paint the children, plus their spaniel, Charlie, on the back lawn of "Eastholm" as a wedding gift. The playroom wallpaper is Schumacher “Abstract Leaf.” EMILY GILBERT

Kate’s goal was to infuse a sense of playfulness while respecting the architecture. “I wanted to keep the traditional feel of the turn-of-the-century summer cottage, but update it with youthfulness, whimsy, and family livability,” the designer said. “To achieve this, I used bright colors and patterns and clean lighting fixtures in high-gloss lacquer and polished finishes.” She also hung joyful artwork, much of it personally meaningful and often by local artists.

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The cypress window trim and floors are original. Art consultant Blair Voltz Clarke selected much of the artwork in the second-floor hall. EMILY GILBERT

The entry and living area are replete with original cypress woodwork. Kate tempers the formal architecture with light, airy furnishings that have an understated “I’m a generations-old fancy/rustic cottage with moth-eaten wool sweaters in the attic” vibe. Sofas with subtle leopard-print chenille upholstery sit on either side of a driftwood coffee table; pungent yellow pillows perk up the neutral palette.

A vintage, kidney-shaped sofa reupholstered in Schumacher’s iconic Chiang Mai Dragon fabric anchors a secondary seating to which an impressionistic landscape painting by Santa Fe artist Jim Rabby draws the eye. “I asked my mother’s friend, designer Marshall Watson, what to do with this corner when he stayed with us,” Kate said. “He drew this floor plan with a kidney sofa and an arc lamp on a napkin.”

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The family porch, which is constructed from 3-foot thick granite slabs, is outfitted with a Serena & Lily sectional sofa and a Selamat rattan swivel chair.EMILY GILBERT

There were no family heirlooms to work around, which Kate explains can make the process either easier or harder since there are no predetermined starting points. Her solution? “We built around white rugs that Andrew picked out for the living room and dining room, which allowed for colorful furniture,” Kate said.

The couple did, however, bring back a Murano glass disc chandelier from their European honeymoon (they married in the South of France) to hang over the wood-plank table in the dining room. A landscape on a diamond-shaped canvas by Rockland-based artist Eric Hopkins is the focal point. The couple faux-argued about the piece, which Andrew commissioned, for months. “I would hang it as a square, and he would switch it back to a diamond,” Kate said with a laugh.

Kate outfitted the not-quite-octagonal granite porch adjacent to the living room in sisal, rattan, and pinstripe performance fabric, citing durability as a concern. “We often have 12 to 20 kids running around; all the kids have possies here, and they move as a pack,” she said. They also hang out in an outbuilding they call “the cabin.” It’s a clubhouse of sorts, complete with a sleeping loft and an Xbox.

A cypress stair with two 90-degree turns leads to the second floor, where there’s a bedroom for everyone, a round guest room, and an office for Kate. In the primary bedroom, framed photographs of roses that Andrew took in London’s Hyde Park complement the Celerie Kemble botanical print drapery and loveseat.

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Kate used Celerie Kemble for Schumacher “Hothouse Flowers” fabric for the drapes and loveseat along with Leontine Linens in the primary bedroom. Andrew photographed the roses in London’s Hyde Park. EMILY GILBERT

The kids’ bedrooms are varying shades of blue with accents that include striped headboards, monogrammed bedding, lacquered grass-cloth dressers, draperies in iconic Schumacher patterns, Slim Aarons photographs, and fun, abstract art prints. As for how much influence each child wielded, Kate said, “If the kids were around, they had input into the design.”

The most significant recent addition is a pool, a huge undertaking that required blasting through the granite ledge. It’s sited in front of the estate’s original tea house. “Many of these old houses had auxiliary tea houses where people gathered in the afternoon to drink tea,” Kate said. “They were built with powder rooms and kitchenettes, which is just what you need in a pool house.” The pool is a popular hangout after a morning of tennis or a day trip to a nearby island for an afternoon picnic

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A new pool stretches out from the property’s original tea house. The main home is in the background. EMILY GILBERT

Now that the interiors feel fresh and the pool is complete, Kate has turned her attention to the grounds. “I’ve hired a landscape architect to restore the gardens around the house to reflect the original Olmsted design,” she said. “I want to be true to the home’s soul.”

See more photos of the property below:

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Marni Elyse Katz is a regular contributor to the Globe Magazine.

 

Works Cited

Katz, M. E. (2021, August 1). ‘It was a miracle it didn’t burn down.’ The Boston Globe. ‘It was a miracle it didn’t burn down.’

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