Bar Harbor awash in wealth, fashion

“ITALIAN RIOT IN BAR HARBOR” screamed the headline in the Bangor Daily News on April 30, 1906. “Became Angry Because They Could Not Buy Beer on Sunday … Two Men Were Badly Injured.”

Italian immigrants had been working at Eagle Lake for the Bar Harbor Water Co. The details of what happened are not entirely clear from the newspaper reports, but “about 100 Bar Harbor citizens had left immediately in buckboards for the scene of the trouble.”

This was the last thing hotel owners and shopkeepers wanted to read in the Bangor newspapers as the summer season got under way. It was the last thing the cottage owners, who came to Mount Desert Island to escape the immigrants and other urban problems, wanted to read.

But the veritable tidal wave of wealth and fashion that washed over Bar Harbor each summer would only gain momentum despite such news. By steamboat and train, the fabled summer colonists, or at least their servants, were already on the way. Nothing could stop these Gilded Agers in their quest for fashionable pleasures. Not even the death of little Rip Rap, the $3,000 dog, cast a pall over events.

The summer season proceeded in sequence a century ago. First came the servants. “The domestics of the family of David B. Ogden of New York arrived yesterday morning in advance of the family who will be here next Friday and will occupy their cottage on the Point for the season,” reported the Bar Harbor columnist for the BDN on April 25. Who was David B. Ogden? Why, of course, anyone who was anyone already knew.

Not far behind the servants were the horses. “The first of the palace horse cars containing horses for Bar Harbor summer people were loaded at Portland Wednesday night on the arrival of the Maine Steamship Co.’s steamer from New York and continued on its way to Bar Harbor Thursday by rail,” wrote the Bar Harbor correspondent for the Bangor Daily Commercial on May 24. This was important news. Since automobiles were banned in Bar Harbor, one needed plenty of horses for transportation as well as to show off.

Next came the yachts of all sizes and shapes, powered by sail, steam, electricity and gasoline. “Among the first of the speed launches to put in an appearance in the harbor is the one owned by Edgar Scott of Phila.,” reported the BDN on July 2. “She came in flying last Saturday noon having made the trip from New York at the average speed of 18 miles per hour. She is the latest product of the Gas Engine and Power Works and is built of mahogany, 53 feet in length equipped with a 75 h.p. Speedway engine and can make a speed of 20 miles per hour when she gets turned up.”

Celebrity sightings became common as the season got under way. George W. Vanderbilt was seen May 29, but he reportedly would not open his summer cottage, planning instead to spend the summer in France, the Commercial reported on Page 1. Baron Hengelmuller, the ambassador from Austro-Hungary, had arrived a bit later as had M. Brun, the Danish minister. The Joseph Pulitzers were not far behind. There were rumors that President Roosevelt’s daughter Alice would appear, and maybe Teddy himself.

And what would the summer be without a celebrity wedding to talk about? The daughter of John D. Archbold of the Standard Oil Co. had arrived in mid-June just having married an Irishman who owned a castle. She was “the heiress to a very large fortune,” the Commercial reported somewhat redundantly.

A panoply of hedonistic diversions spread itself before these stylish people and the hundreds more who were expected shortly. On June 20, the Commercial reported, “The Swimming Club is commencing to take on the aspect of summer gaiety … On Tuesday night the water was turned into the pool and the bathing will begin as soon as Swimming Master Burdick announces it to be of sufficiently warm temperature.” Members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra would be providing music.

Some warships from the North Atlantic Squadron were expected to make a visit to the harbor in July, an event that caused great excitement as the officers and sailors mixed with the community. The annual dog show was scheduled for mid-August, and the annual horse show a week or so later.

All in all, it looked like a good season ahead, according to the hotel owners and shopkeepers. Of course, there were a few wrinkles. The publicity from the riot hadn’t helped the town’s image a bit. Then, as the summer reached its first crescendo, the Fourth of July, Rip Rap, the $3,000 dog, died. For three consecutive years, the famous 11-year-old pointer owned by C.B. Pineo had won the “national field trial championships,” said a front page story in the BDN. “Not many years ago his owner refused an offer of $3,000 for him. Rip Rap was generally considered the finest dog of his class in the country.”

The death of Rip Rap appeared on the front page of the paper along with stories about the slaughter of Zulu warriors by British forces in Durban, Natal, and demands by New York plumbers for a raise from $4.75 to $5.25 a day. Eleven men in Altoona, Pa., had been killed by a runaway railroad car. But none of these events or others like them could slow down the gathering juggernaut of frenzied fun that was floating toward Bar Harbor like summer thunderheads.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.