MAINE ATTRACTION

Three women team up to produce an homage to the spirit of Maine by detailing cottage designs and characteristics found throughout the state’s mostly coastal environment. Our fondest memories are often attached to special places.

Three women with deep connections to Maine team up to produce an homage to its spirit by detailing cottage designs and coastal looks found throughout the state.

For Maura McEvoy, Basha Burwell and Kathleen Hackett, their childhood connection to Maine rests in the enduring style and love epitomized by the state’s seaside cottages.

So the trio produced The Maine House, a detailed anthology of the charm, centuries-old nostalgia and various characteristics of these classic homes, and a historical documentation of many Maine cottages and their current owners.

Maura and Basha grew up on Maine’s white sand beaches while visiting their respective grandparents’ cottages, each built in 1911 and infused with the state’s old-school cottage style. Maura, a photographer, remembers watching the demolition of beautiful houses and land in Maine’s coastal communities to make way for out-of-place construction, like a condominium complex, which decades later became her impetus for immortalizing Maine houses.

She reached out to Basha, a creative director and stylist, to unite their passion for Maine’s character in a book. Over the course of four years and 3,000 miles, the pair explored Maine in its entirety, from dirt roads to 100-year-old eaves, to nail down the simple virtues of these dwellings built and maintained with love. They recruited Kathleen, who was raised nearby, to help craft the narrative of a “Maine home” and all it represents.

“Our hope is that The Maine House serves as both a record of and a tribute to the place we all want it to be, the one that plays out in a city-dweller’s fantasy, a child’s dream … an artist’s imagination … a sailor’s aspirations ... and a nature-lover’s reverie,” the trio writes.

Some of the 30 cottages featured in the book are their own. Maura stayed close to her roots, renovating a cottage three doors down from her grandparents’ old home. Although the aluminum siding, knob-and-tube electrical wiring and outdated flooring materials weren’t necessarily inspiring, the cottage’s 1920s core and fantastic views fascinated her.

Other cottages simply embody the charisma and perseverance of classic authors like E.B. White, whose writing shed still stands in Maine. Throughout the cottages, walls battered by decades or hundreds of years of storms give a profound meaning to the homes’ weathered look. Series like the Hardy Boys or White’s timeless Charlotte’s

Web are reading staples in the homes. Cast-iron stoves anchor these cottages’ kitchens, and the décor is an eclectic hodgepodge of memories and family heirlooms.

“Here are spaces that personify the artists whose work is made better through struggle, a Mainer’s point of pride,” the women write. “Here are cottages resolutely unchanged—where to silence a slamming screen door would be to strip the place of its soul.”

|OPPOSITE, TOP LEFT| Maura McEvoy renovated this cottage with gorgeous marsh views and a marvelous 1920s interior for her family. The house stands three doors down from her grandparents’ summer abode, which has been left largely untouched since 1911, save for the additions of an indoor shower, an upstairs toilet and some double-pane windows. |OPPOSITE, TOP RIGHT| The owner of this eccentric cottage filled his spaces with “found” or bequeathed unique objects, none of which are remotely coastal, to create a “house-sized cabinet of curiosities.”

|ABOVE| Kathleen Hackett, one of the book’s creators, and her family furnished their Maine cottage with a mix of finds from flea markets and antiques sales along the coast, with sconces from Paris and framed leaves from the family’s outings. |RIGHT| Teal crockery stands out on these warm wooden shelves but complements walls found elsewhere in this 1917 home. The current owner’s grandmother customized those walls’ color—a combination of Prussian blue, yellow ochre, linseed oil and turpentine.

|ABOVE LEFT| The founders of Berman Horn Studio architectural firm in New York designed this cottage to be all about the view. Their modernist twist on a historic home is a result of raised ceilings, white paint and expanded windows—all to accentuate the cottage’s gorgeous surroundings.

|LEFT| These twin beds are nestled in a nine-bedroom Maine dwelling that was converted from a commercial fishing wharf building into a house in the 1920s. Painted furniture, like this striking blue bedside table, and patterned curtains can be found throughout the home.

The Maine House by Maura McEvoy, Basha Burwell and Kathleen Hackett, published by Vendome Press, © 2021; vendomepress.com.