Halls decked for the Holidays Orono’s historic homes opening for historic walking tour

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Admit it.

Every time you drive down Main Street in Orono, you can’t help but wonder what those big, beautiful homes look like inside.

Don’t worry. Everyone does it.

But next weekend, you’ll have a chance to actually walk through the front door (and not peer into the windows) of 10 of the town’s most talked-about properties. From noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16, eight homes and two churches in Orono’s historic district will open for a holiday walking tour, the finale of the town’s bicentennial celebration.

“I really think this will give people a sense of the history of the town, which really goes back further than the University of Maine,” said Jean Carville, the event’s organizer. “I haven’t been in most of these homes and I’ve been here 40 years.”

This is the first such tour in Orono in more than a decade, and each stop is unique. One of the oldest residences, an 1829 Federal owned by Ted and Rosemarie Curtis, boasts a vaulted leather ceiling and leaded-glass fanlight in the entryway. The youngest, a sweeping 2001 farmhouse owned by Arthur and Betty Comstock (former owners of the adjacent Highlawn property), has been dressed to the nines in holiday finery and cherished antiques.

At the Israel Washburn House, a grand Greek Revival owned by Beth Boisvert and Orin Buetens, an actor portraying Washburn will be on hand. Kerck Kelsey wrote the biography of the late, great Maine governor who built the house in 1840.

Even without actors, each home has a story to tell, and boy, can these walls talk.

Take, for instance, the 1836 Nathaniel Treat House, a big brick beauty with a fireplace in every bedroom and a glassed-in sunroom that looks like something out of Architectural Digest. That’s where owners David and Rebecca Chase host dozens of family and friends for holiday feasts. But the real excitement here is the door knocker, a voluptuous mermaid that is rumored to have once been owned by Marie Antoinette.

Becky Chase says the home has many “funny little features,” including the cookstove and window seat in the original kitchen, and a few big features, such as the graceful flying staircase in the foyer. A home like this runs the risk of becoming imposing, but the Chases have created a place where their three children, Lauren, Sam and Lydia, and their dog, Radar, can feel comfortable.

“We really live in this house, and we want it to be that way,” Chase said over coffee on a recent afternoon. “We want people to come in and put their feet up.”

Well, maybe not during the tour. But you get the picture.

The Chases, like many of the people who have opened their homes for the tour, have respected the architectural integrity of their home while adding their own thumbprint. Take, for instance, the Widow Hamlin House, a Queen Anne that Kenneth and Barbara Nichols renovated extensively when they bought it in 1996.

They kept many of the best original features – ironwork railing on the roof, a lovely tiled fireplace surround in the parlor and a banded border on the hardwood floors downstairs. But a few of the not-so-savory aspects – a few small, closed-in rooms and the fact that it had been separated into two apartments – were remedied in the renovation.

And the couple have truly made the home their own. Today, a modern kitchen with Deer Isle granite countertops is the centerpiece – Barbara is an excellent and avid cook. Upstairs, the master bath is fit for a king. Its tub-side mural painted by Orono artist Stella Ekholm, along with a modern stained-glass window in the foyer by artisan Lisa Raven, reflects their love for fine art.

“I wouldn’t be comfortable in a house that was just period-style,” Barbara Nichols said. “This is our life.”

James Gerety and Melissa Current could say the same about the 1829 Federal on Main Street that they call home. Gerety’s parents and two sisters moved to Orono when his father, Col. John Gerety, became head of the University of Maine’s ROTC program, but James left town after college.

“Like many other UMO grads, I went south to seek fame and fortune,” he said, laughing.

James Gerety returned in 2002, after his father passed away, and since then, he and Current have made it their mission to maintain and restore the home. Any changes, whether paint color or wallpaper pattern (the vibrant bird theme in the entryway is a bone of contention between Gerety and Current), are made by committee.

“It is the family house,” Current said. “Every time I want to do something I call his sisters and ask, ‘Is it OK?'”

Ted Curtis knows all about family houses. He, too, grew up in an 1829 Federal, located a few doors down from Gerety’s. When he and his wife, Rosemarie, took over the homestead in 1988, they combined a room and a pantry to form a large, open kitchen with cherry floors, cabinets and counters.

In the front parlor, an ornate fireplace is flanked by gilt-framed portraits of Ted Curtis’ ancestors. The dining room, with its brick hearth (a fool-the-eye reproduction) and paneled wood molding, painted deep Williamsburg blue, has a Colonial feel. Family heirlooms, antiques and pieces collected during Ted and Rosemarie’s travels accent the rooms.

The couple made many structural improvements, and while they tried to maintain the home’s architectural integrity, for the most part, in some instances they modernized. Rosemarie says she’s not sure if she’d do it again, but she loves the house.

“We were happy with it – when it was finished,” she said, smiling.

Anita and David Wihry live in one of the newest houses on the tour, a shingled foursquare built in 1913. Its dark wood beams and woodwork give the home a warm, Craftsman-style feel that’s especially welcoming at the holidays.

Though they added a modern bathroom, Anita Wihry believes the home looks very similar to the way it did when Charles Barto Brown – a civil engineer – moved in.

“It’s just a comfortable house,” Wihry said. “It’s not elegant, and there’s nothing astounding in terms of its appearance, but the craftsmanship is wonderful.”

In other words, it was built to last. Like all of the homes – and the two churches – on the tour. They’re all worth a second look. And a third. So go take a peek.

You know you want to.

The self-guided tours begin and end at the Church of Universal Fellowship, 82 Main St. in Orono, and refreshments will be available at the church. Tickets, which are likely to sell out, cost $15 each or $25 for two and are available at Orono Pharmacy, Pretty Woman, Ampersand, Degrasse Jewelers, Judy’s Scrappin’ & Stampin’, the town office and public library, all in Orono; Rebecca’s and The Grasshopper Shop in Bangor; or by contacting Lianne Harris at 866-2456 or lharris@nehs.net.