Lost Bar Harbor

From the 1880s to the end of World War I, the fashionable resort of Bar Harbor attracted thousands of summer visitors with the money and leisure to pursue "the simple life on a grand scale," as A. Atwater Kent put it. They came to rusticate, dance, sail, picnic, flirt--and they did it all with style. Many relaxed at Bar Harbor's lavish hotels, while others built even more lavish and fanciful "cottages" for their own summer retreats.

That dazzling era is just a memory now. The Depression and ...