A shingled cottage in Maine inhabited by the same family for over a century
Jim Terry’s earliest memory of traveling to the Big House, the summer cottage his maternal grandparents built in 1917, was when he was seven. On his paternal side, the expat Terry family had been living all over the world, and in 1939 they were in Holland, where they embarked on a boat to America as Hitler was invading Poland.
For the last four decades, Terry and his wife of sixty-five years, Maudie, have been the stewards of this ancestral home, where the century-old walls have absorbed the voices of six generations. And those walls! Terry’s grandmother specified the stain herself—a mix of Prussian blue, yellow ochre, linseed oil, and turpentine—and it has remained untouched since.
Not that the Big House is precious. Its raw beauty was meant to slide seamlessly into its surroundings, a paean to the rusticators of the era. The nine bedrooms—among them the Pink Room, with its secret door to what was once the servants’ quarters—were routinely filled with guests. The great room hummed with raucous dinners and music and art gatherings all summer long. “We would often show up to a full house. If you were lucky, you would get the cot in the nursery, but usually we would go off and camp on the nearby island,” says Terry’s daughter, Elizabeth.
That intrepid spirit was likely inherited. Jim and Maudie have never shrunk from the daunting task of preserving the Big House. “It has really shaped our lives. It was like joining the nunnery of Maine,” says Jim, who was practicing law at the time. There was its jacking up: Jim armed with only belted khakis, pencils, a ladder, and a team of cousins to buttress the sagging house. There was the re-shingling, with family enlisted to dip the cedar planks into paint before fastening them to the exterior. Maudie took care of the interior: stitching slip-covers and curtains, replacing mattresses, painting floors.
The couple’s commitment to the Big House shows up inside and out, but for Elizabeth, it is the aural memories that have kept it alive for her. It is impossible to step onto the sun-set porch and not hear ice clinking in glasses, a cheese knife rattling on china, and the snap of Ritz crackers. “To me, the Big House has always been the crucible of my father’s dreams—of family legacy, of public leadership, and of loving will. But it was my mother’s valor and strength—over countless years of renovation and renewal—that has made this dream truly habitable for the rest of us.”
This is an extract from The Maine House by Maura McEvoy and Basha Burwell, text by Kathleen Hackett. Published by Vendome Press.
Maura McEvoy1/12The kitchen has remained largely the same for more than fifty years.
Maura McEvoy2/12The 'office' at the Big House consists of a rotary telephone and a wall-mounted pencil sharpener in the kitchen; who can work when the ocean beckons?
Maura McEvoy3/12A table and benches tucked into the library serve as the children’s corner and sometimes as a tea nook.
Maura McEvoy4/12A turn-of-the-century rush chair belonging to Terry’s grandparents has endured through six generations of quiet reading and nursing babies.
Maura McEvoy5/12All nine bedrooms are named for a predominant color or motif: the green room for its painted floors, the blue room for its doors, the pink room for its cushions and curtains, and the bird room for an oil painting and the old crows on the curtains. ˛
Maura McEvoy6/12Terry says the house pleases him most when there is music floating through it.
Maura McEvoy7/12The Big House color palette was established from the start, springing from the stained walls in the great room: four different shades of blue-green in varying states of wear never seem to date.
Maura McEvoy8/12Upstairs, the fir walls have remained raw since the cottage was built.
Maura McEvoy9/12A balcony, rimmed by bedrooms, overlooks the double-height great room.
Maura McEvoy10/12Nooks throughout the house over quiet spaces when family members want to take a break from gathering in the great room.
Maura McEvoy11/12The view from the second-floor sunset porch: the family cuddy cabin boat is anchored just off the deep-water dock.
Maura McEvoy12/12The whole Terry family got involved in hand dipping and applying the gray shingles that cover the entire house.
