Hope’s House> A sprawling pink home on Bangor’s Kenduskeag Avenue is an eclectic mix of style and substance. “I’m mad for the unusual,” says owner Hope Hutchins Benton.

High above the Kenduskeag Stream on the edge of Bangor’s Little City section sits Jay and Hope Benton’s house. It is a sprawling, pink, out-of-place monstrosity, some say. Others passing by simply shrug their shoulders and wonder how a Florida house ever got transported to a place where it is winter most of the time.

Yet those who grew up with “Hopie” Hutchins Benton were not surprised when she built the unusual home on Kenduskeag Avenue, one of the city’s most traveled residential streets. After all, she built it next to the house where she was raised by her parents, Curtis and Ruth Hutchins, on land where Hope, her sister Hilda Hutchins McCollum and brother Christopher Hutchins played as children, while their father ran the family business, Dead River Co.

No matter what passers-by think of the unusual house, inside and out it is pure “Hopie” — an eclectic mix of style and substance. Priceless antiques are mixed with thrift shop bargains, famous paintings hang above the sculptures of schoolchildren, nautical stanchion wire serves as railings on stairwells and “every single thing has a meaning,” according to the house’s owner.

Even the huge boulder resting at the end of the circular driveway is symbolic.

Benton had it wrenched from the rocky cliff that juts down toward Valley Avenue when the tree-filled lot was excavated for the house. Then she had a stone cutter carve “EN FAMILLE” across its face. That simple French phrase, meaning “in family,” explains a lot about Hope Benton and her house.

“My mother always used to say, `We are going en famille,”‘ explains the mistress of the house and the rock. “Every Thanksgiving, my mother took us on a trip. We went to Africa, India, the Middle East, everywhere. Now, I take my children and their children. … Family is everything in the world to me.”

In the crook of a small tree, a statue of St. Francis watches over the carved rock. Twine, wrapped around his waist and tied to the tree’s branches, keeps him from tumbling out. Other stone figures and pots come and go with the seasons at Benton’s whimsy. Last winter, pink plastic flamingos, sporting tiny red Santa hats on top of their heads and holiday wreaths around their necks, stood watch in snowbanks and during ice storms while the Bentons were in Florida.

Benton’s mother collected wooden carousel horses, a tradition Benton continues. Anchored in the lawn at the center of her circular drive is a metal horse painted in vibrant pastels. A two-car garage is attached to the southern part of the house. Three archways of smooth white stones are centered in its pink, stucco-like front. The northern side of the well-manicured lawn is strewn with swing and play sets, installed for the grandchildren.

Jay Benton designed the house, according to his wife, to be similar to their winter home in Boca Grande, Fla.

“The house there is very open,” says Hope Benton. “We got so used to that, we just augmented that design here,” including the facade and large archways across its front.

There are few walls on the main floor — the kitchen flows into the dining “room,” which is next to the TV “room,” which abuts the entryway. This large space is the heart of the house, its weight supported not by the usual structural beams, but by a massive cedar post that rises 27 feet to the open-beamed ceiling.

In the northwest corner of the room is the kitchen, its white cabinets and fixtures startlingly plain, except for the knobs on the drawers and doors. They are round, ceramic balls, one striped with cobalt blue, another awash in pastels, no two alike. A large island surrounded by tall stools separates the kitchen from the rest of the huge room.

Across the tall windows in the northeast corner hang curtains made from ones that once hung in the Hutchinses’ New York City apartment. In front of the window sits the sofa that Benton bought at a Salvation Army thrift store and had reupholstered for this spot. A shiny, cream-colored coffee table, made of pine and covered with automobile paint, is at the center of this sitting area.

“I saw a table like this on display in the Polo shop in New York,” recalls Benton. “My mother told me if I ever have to hesitate over something for more than 10 seconds to move on down the road.

“It either speaks to you or it doesn’t, she said. Well, it was like that with this table. I wanted to buy it, but they said it was not for sale because it was part of their display. I thought, I may not be able to buy it, but I can copy it.”

In the dining area is a large bookcase atop a black cabinet, its shelves filled with coverless volumes, knickknacks and bric-a-brac collected during the Bentons’ many travels. On top of these tall shelves rest portraits of Hope and her mother. At its center is an original print of Picasso’s famous dove flying above an unusual trio of ceramic animals made years ago when Hope Benton’s children, Julie and Alexander, were in school.

Also on this floor, but off the big main room, are a pool room and the office used by Jay Benton, a retired brigadier general, who served as commander of the Maine Air National Guard’s 101st in the 1970s.

Between the dining area and the TV area, a wooden spiral staircase leads to a loft that is the master bedroom suite.

“Ever since I was a little girl, I always wanted to live in an attic, and now I do,” says Benton with a laugh. “Except, it’s all wide open.”

Although the house appears from the road to be two stories, it actually is three stories high. On the back side of the house, the lower floor opens onto a wooden deck that runs the length of the outside wall. Downstairs is an apartment Alexander used before he moved to Portland, a bedroom suite for Julie to use when she visits from her home on Mount Desert Island and a room with four built-in bunk beds for the grandchildren and their friends.

Separating her children’s sections of the house is what Benton calls “my Hollywood TV room,” complete with a huge projection screen and a massive sectional couch.

“I’m mad for the unusual,” declares Benton, and everything about the house inside and out reflects her statement. The sink in one bathroom looks like an art-deco fish, its ceramic head and tail flopped up over the counter top. Above the linen closet in the master bathroom is a cozy space where her grandchildren can climb “to get away.”

Benton also had a bathroom wall knocked out and dead space turned into a play area so they can be with “Gigi,” as the grandchildren call their grandmother, while she soaks in a hot bath.

Just inside the front door of the residence rests Ruth Hutchins’ Steinway baby grand piano. Picture frames litter its shiny cover. Hope and Jay Benton’s wedding day. Alexander dancing with his mother. Julie with her children. Mother, father, brother, sister, nieces, nephews — they are all there — en famille — inside the pink house, high above Kenduskeag Stream.