Thankful Cottage boasts no intricate moldings. It has no stained-glass windows. It wasn’t designed by an architect. No heads of state slept here. No historic documents were signed in the living room. No one famous lived here. No one famous died here. It’s the type of house you’d miss even if you were looking for it.

Yet its insignificance may be the very thing that saved it from destruction.

For 150 years, give or take, this tiny Dutch Colonial sat humbly on Cottage Street in Bar Harbor as restaurants and shops sprung up around it. It served as a single-family home for 100 years, then a dentist’s office and apartments, and later it became part of an inn.

In 2003, the cottage was slated for demolition to make way for condominiums. That summer, the developer approached the planning board with a proposal for the site. Sherry Rasmussen, a longtime Bar Harbor resident with a penchant for old buildings, happened to be at the same meeting for a different issue.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s that little cottage I love,” she said during a recent interview at Alone Moose Gallery, which she owns with her husband, Ivan, an artist.

The developer, Bill McFarland, was willing to give the cottage away if someone would cover the cost of moving it off site. But that wasn’t in the Rasmussens’ budget. And it was the height of the tourist season, so they didn’t have time, either.

“We never intended to take it,” Sherry Rasmussen said. “We were just hoping for someone else to take it and no one did.”

The couple knew if they didn’t save it, no one else would. According to a letter from Deborah Dyer, curator at the Bar Harbor Historical Society, the cottage is “the oldest small building in the downtown area.” It was once owned by the Rodicks, one of the town’s prominent families. In January 2005, the home was renamed Thankful Cottage, in honor of Thankful Rodick, a woman who is said to have lived in the cottage in 1850.

Other than that, it is unremarkable, unlike the grand homes on Mount Desert Island that have been preserved and restored.

“These cottages are so rare because they’re so easy to discard,” Ivan Rasmussen said. “No historic event ever took place there. There’s no reason why it should’ve been saved except for luck.”

And luck shined on the Rasmussens. Ivan did the calculations and found that, after adding a stairway to meet fire code, the cottage would just barely fit behind a rental property they own on a lot that fronts West Street and Billings Avenue.

When estimates for moving the house in one piece came out to nearly $10,000, they did a little research and found that in the 1800s, when house-moving was more common, homes were often cut in half and moved in pieces. By separating the first and second floors, they cut the moving cost dramatically because electrical and cable lines didn’t need to be disconnected to make way for the house.

The move was completed in one day: Nov. 19, 2003. Then the real work began. And Ivan has done much of it himself, with help from family and friends.

First, the house needed to be put back together. Then Ivan needed to bring it up to code. He added a staircase. He put in a foundation (the original cottage had a 5-foot crawl space underneath). He raised the roof.

And he marveled at the details he found. Birch bark lined the interior walls as a windbreak. Giant staples held the floor joists to the sill, to prevent shifting. Square-cut nails held the place together.

“I’ve always been interested in recycling,” Ivan Rasmussen said. “The age of the building had something to do with my attraction to that little cottage. I prefer to use natural materials, reused materials. That’s been my philosophy behind getting involved with the preservation of historic buildings.”

From 1984 to 1990, the Rasmussens lived in Bangor, where they restored a building on Main Street, across from the Freese’s Building. They turned the top floor into a soaring loft apartment, and they have fond memories of roller-skating down the ramps at Freese’s. Ivan was also an advocate for preserving Norumbega Hall.

“The other thing about historic buildings, I grew up on the West Coast. Buildings out there aren’t as old as buildings on the East Coast,” Ivan Rasmussen said. “It’s rare to find a building older than 100 years old. Here, you see buildings from the 1600s and 1700s. Here on the East Coast, you’re exposed to a different aesthetic.”

At Thankful Cottage, he saved the hand-hewn beams and floorboards that measured nearly 2 feet wide. He replaced what couldn’t be salvaged. He reconfigured the second story so the master bedroom would have the best view in the house. Coincidentally, the dormer windows on the second story, which he also restored, have an unobstructed view of Bar Island, which was once called Rodick Island.

“I don’t want to take the best spot and put a bathroom there,” Ivan Rasmussen said, laughing.

They plan to replace the asphalt roof with synthetic slate, and a visit from Bill Rodick, whose aunt lived in the cottage, has inspired them to replace the front door with a two-part Dutch door, as it was in the early 20th century.

“People really like the cottage and many, many local people stopped in to thank us,” Sherry Rasmussen said.

“We’ve had people stop in with photographs of someone who used to live in the cottage,” Ivan Rasmussen added.

Though the couple still have their work cut out for them, they’re making progress. They hope to have the renovations completed by December of this year, and while they may eventually live in the cottage, they plan to rent it out for a little while as a single-family home, bringing things full-circle.

“Some family came here before the Revolutionary War,” Sherry Rasmussen said. “A son of that person built a little one-story house for his home. He was probably a carpenter, in the boatbuilding industry, or a fisherman. As this little family became more successful, they put the second floor on. As they became more affluent, they put the bay windows on. This is an example of how ordinary people lived, and to me, that’s just as significant as how the rich people lived.”

The Bar Harbor Preservation Trust will present a slide show and talk about the moving of Thankful Cottage from 11 a.m. to noon on Monday, June 20. Meet at the otter fountain at the corner of West Street and Billings Avenue. For more information, call 288-4229. Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 and kandresen@bangordailynews.net.

Thankful Cottage

Built: circa 1850

Original location: Cottage Street, Bar Harbor

Current location: Billings Avenue, Bar Harbor

Bedrooms: 2

Bathrooms: 2

Distinguishing features: It’s the oldest small building in downtown Bar Harbor.