Frank Lloyd Wright-Inspired Style and Camping Collide in Maine

When a traditional architectural style meets handmade details, the result is a quietly modern retreat.

In Bar Harbor, Maine, on a secluded waterfront property once used by Brooke Astor as a summer hunting ground, sits an eclectic little garden of collected curiosities: a fragment of a French-style chapel, a Chinese teahouse, a meteorite. At the center of it all, blending right into the landscape, is a 2,500-square-foot wood-and-stone cabin, designed by New York’s SPAN Architecture principals Karen Stonely and Peter Pelsinski. Nestled into a fern-covered hillside, the modest structure looks to the traditions of John Calvin Stevens, local architect Robert Patterson, and a modernism steeped in vernacular architecture rather than the International Style. "We took a really strong cue from that influence and from the landscape," says Stonely.

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Heather Corcoran
Former Senior Editor @ Dwell Lover of color, craft, and a great story.

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