1886 Jorgensen Bird's-Eye View of Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Island, Maine

A rare and highly unusual 1886 Charles E. Jorgensen bird's-eye view of Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Island, Maine - illustrating the town at the height of Mount Desert Island's gilded age. This view was published to publicize the rebuilding of the Green Mountain Hotel (following a fire) and the inauguration of the Green Mountain Railroad - here visible at the summit of Cadillac Mountain.

A Closer Look

The view looks southwest on Bar Harbor from a hypothetical point somewhere above Sheep Porcupine Island. Bar Island appears in the lower right. From a convergence near the old ferry terminal, Bar Harbor's two main commercial arteries (then, as now), Main Street and West Street, radiate outward. Perspective has been exaggerated to emphasize the verticality of Cadillac Mountain, Champlain Mountain, and Eliot Mountain - the three peaks nearest to Bar Harbor. This unusual exaggeration of the vertical perspective also serves to uniquely emphasize the Green Mountain Hotel and Railroad, on the peak of Cadillac Mountain, which, although technically in the background, are clearly the focal point of the entire piece.

Bar Harbor

Bar Harbor is the largest settlement on Mount Desert Island and for most, the gateway to Acadia National Park. The town can trace its founding to 1796, when Englishmen Israel Higgins and John Thomas settle here. It was initially named Eden, after the statesman Sir Richard Eden, but from the early 1800s was colloquially known as 'Bar Harbor' - after the sand and gravel bar, visible at low tide, which leads across to Bar Island and forms the rear of the harbor. (The name 'Bar Harbor' was not officially adopted until 1918.) By the late 19th and early 20th century, Bar Harbor hosted 5 grand hotels and was a rival to Newport, Rhode Island, as an elite summering destination. Titans of commerce vied with one another to build the most extravagant mansions. The 1880s, when this view was issued, can rightly be considered the beginning of Bar Harbor's Gilded Age, which lasted until 1947.

Most of the buildings illustrated here, as well as 10,000 acres of Acadia National Park, nearly half the eastern side of Mount Desert Island, were burned in 1947 when a long drought precipitated an enormous forest fire. While the basic street layout remains the same today, most of Bar Harbor's Gilded Age architecture, as depicted here, was lost, including all 5 grand hotels. The most notable survivor is Saint Saviour's Episcopal Church and Rectory, at 41 Mt. Desert Street - evident here and famous today for its glorious Tiffany stained glass windows.

Bar Harbor Described in 1886

An article in the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier (June 2, 1886) captures the gilded age of Bar Harbor,

The varied charms of sea and shore through which this spot has endeared itself to a vast number of persons of wealth and taste renders a residence here agreeable during a large portion of the year….The application for rooms at the various hotels is unprecedented in point of number. Some of the houses are already engaged to the extent of their sheltering capacity. The landlord of the Belmont informed your correspondent that he is endeavoring to secure rooms in adjacent cottages to accommodate the many applicants for quarters. … During the height of the season there are about ten thousand strangers in Bar Harbor. The country around as far as the eye can view, with the varied landscape of mountain, vale and plain, is dotted by costly villas. The general plan has been to respect the handiwork of nature as far as possible, and a fifty thousand dollar cottage will be found surrounded by a wilderness of rocks and chapparal. Excepting Newport no other watering place in America contains so many ornate summer dwelling houses as may be found in a circle of a few miles around Bar Harbor.

Cadillac Mountain

This view prominently displays Cadillac Mountain, formerly Green Mountain, the highest mountain on Mount Desert Island - often called the first place in the United States to see the sunrise. Although today the peak is barren, in the 1880s, there was a hotel, the Green Mountain House, and a specially built narrow gauge railroad, the Green Mountain Cog Railway, intended to carry guests from Eagle Lake to the summit - both of which are visible on this view.

The Green Mountain House and Green Mountain Railway

There was a small weather station and cottage at the top of Cadillac Mountain as early as 1853, but it was not until 1880 that a proper hotel, the original Green Mountain House, was constructed. The hotel was instantly popular with tourists justly impressed by the spectacular setting. The original structure, a grand and multi-story Victorian building, was heavily damaged by fire in 1882. By 1883, the year this view was issued, Francis Hector Clergue built a new if slightly smaller Green Mountain House and inaugurated the accompanying Green Mountain Railroad. On August 2, 1884, both the remains of the old Mountain House and the new Green Mountain House burnt to the ground - an inferno visible from some 50 miles away. Undeterred, in 1885-56 Clergue, again rebuilt, this time the even larger Victorian Gothic hotel present in this view. Moses Foster Sweetser, in his Chisholm’s Mount-Desert Guide-Book, describes the hotel,

The hotel is of modern construction, high-studded and airy, with twenty commodious rooms, broad encircling piazzas, an observatory-tower, and a dining-hall where good meals are served at a low figure. It is several hundred feet from the railway. Invalids are sometimes brought here as to a sanatorium, the clear sweet air of the mountain-top working favorably for their recovery and worn-out men find in the quietude of the place, and its novelties of view and air, much that tends to revivify and strengthen them. (Sweetser, Moses Foster, Chisholm’s Mount-Desert Guide-Book, p. 36 - 37.)

The Green Mountain Railroad, which provided access to the hotel, was a 2-car cog railroad from the shores of Eagle Lake to the Summit of Cadillac mountain - a distance of 6,300 feet that gained 1,258 feet in elevation. Passengers enjoyed breathtaking views while ascending at the stately pace of two miles per hour. The single car held eight wooden benches capable of holding roughly 50 passengers. The Green Mountain House and The Green Mountain Railway shut down in 1890. The trains, tracks, and cars were old to the New Hampshire White Mountain Railroad.

Acadia National Park

Mount Desert Island, so named because of its many bald rocky mountaintops, has been a tourist destination since the mid-19th century, when it was discovered by outsiders, artists, journalists, Hudson River School artists, and other patrons, known collectively as the 'Rusticators.' Undaunted by crude accommodations and simple food, they sought out local fishermen and farmers for accommodation and guidance. Summer after summer, the rusticators returned to renew friendships with local islanders and, most of all, to savor the fresh salt air, scenery, and relaxed pace. Soon the villagers' cottages and fishermen's huts filled to overflowing, and by 1880, 30 hotels competed for vacationers' dollars. Tourism was becoming the island's primary industry. Drawing the attention of the wealthy and influential, the island was designated as Sieur de Monts National Monument by President Woodrow Wilson in July 1916. In February 1919, the area's status was officially changed from a National Monument to National Park, making it the first National Park east of the Mississippi River. With the change to a National Park came a name change, to Lafayette National Park. It was not until January 1929 that the park was given its current name, Acadia National Park. Acadia is unlike most other National Parks as its creation was encouraged by numerous private individuals. One, John. D. Rockefeller, purchased a summer home in Bass Harbor in 1910. Rockefeller began buying up land on the island with the goal of creating a system of carriage roads to make 'one of the greatest views in the world' accessible to all visitors.

Rare Even in 1922

According to an article in the Bar Harbor Times (September 13, 1922), this view was rare even in the 1920s!

A series of interesting photographic views of old Bar Harbor and its vicinity have recently been donated to the Belmont Hotel....Two birds-eye views, taken from an elevated position on Bar Island, respectively dated and issued in 1880 and 1886, and photographed from the engravings, are most interesting, as a careful comparison of the pictures is valuable, showing the rapid growth, and many notable changes that took place during the intervening years, and indicate also a period of great prosperity and development. The signature of A. F. Poole as artist appears on the earlier engraving, it being published by J. J. Stoner of Madison, Wisconsin, and lithographed at Milwaukee. In the margin are inserted pictures of the Hotel des Isles, Grand Central, Rodicks and the West End, also the Bradley Block, and St. Saviours’ Church. The later engraving fills a larger space in order to contain the many additional buildings erected, being published by G. W. Morris of Portland, George H. Walker of Boston being the lithographer. It is believed that few of these remain, and it is therefore fortunate that the originals were accessible, and that copies could be obtained, as they give what is probably a correct representation of Bar Harbor and its surroundings in former days.

American Bird's-Eye City Views

The tradition of the bird's-eye city view emerged in the United States in the middle part of the 19th century and coincided with the commercial development of lithographic printing. While before the rise of lithography, the ability to own and display artwork in the home was largely limited to the extremely wealthy, lithographic printing made it possible for everyone to own visually striking artwork. A robust trade developed in portraits of political leaders, allegorical and religious images, and city views.

City views were being produced in the United States as early as the 1830s, but the genre exploded after the American Civil War (1861 - 1865). Bridging the gap between maps and pictures, most 19th century American Bird's-eye views presented cities to the public high vantage points. Some were imagined, but others were drawn from hot-air balloons or nearby hills. The presentation, combining high elevation, commercial interest, and new printing technology created a uniquely American art form, as described by historian Donald Karshan,

Some print connoisseurs believe that it was only with the advent of the full-blown city-view lithograph that American printmaking reached its first plateau of originality, making a historical contribution to the graphic arts. They cite the differences between the European city-view prints and the expansive American version that reflects a new land and a new attitude toward the land.

The vogue for bird's-eye city views lasted from about 1845 to 1920, during which period some 2,400 cities were thus portrayed, some multiple times. Although views were produced in many urban centers, the nexus of view production in the United States was Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The major American viewmakers were Stoner, Wellge, Bailey, Fowler, Hill, Ruger, Koch, Burleigh, Norris, and Morse, among others.

Publication History and Census

A variant of view was originally drawn in 1879 by A. F. Poole and published by J. J. Stoner in 1880. This second edition was fully redrawn by Charles E. Jorgensen and subsequently reissued in 1886, as here. This view was prepared by George W. Morris of Portland and published in Boston in Boston by the lithographic firm of George W. Walker. This view rare with but six examples known. These are held at the Library of Congress, the University of Pennsylvania, the Bar Harbor Historical Society, and elsewhere. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.