Mount Desert Island: Shaped by Nature

Text by Betsy Hewlett

Charles Kenneth Savage (1903-1979) had an eye for the intrinsically beautiful natural landscape of Mount Desert Island. He spent part of every day outdoors, walking in the native world around him. He cared passionately about preserving the natural gifts of the island while always enhancing the beauty of his small corner of the Island: Asticou. Whether it be through the lens of his camera while walking on the village trails, artistically developing landscape portraits in the dark room at his Clover Cottage home, drawing small and detailed pencil sketches, or in the constant typewritten discourse about Asticou that he created, Charles kept a vigilant mind and heart turned toward the outdoors of his native village.
Asticou was his world and he knew and loved every corner of it.

Charles was thrown into managing the family hotel business with his mother, Mabelle Strout Savage (1877-1965), at the young age of 19 when he was summoned back to Asticou from his post-high school education in Massachusetts due to the premature death of his father, George A. Savage. Taking the reins of the Asticou Inn was not all surprise for young Charles because of his experiences working alongside his father and grandparents in the hospitality business since childhood. However, the intellectual challenge and opportunities of a college education were stolen and Charles returned to Mount Desert in 1922 as a business man with extensive family responsibilities. It was early in this pivotal time back on the island that Charles began making close friendships with many of Asticou’s summer visitors who were educated, intellectually curious and wealthy “rusticators” with a deep and abiding interest in the natural beauty of the island. These summer visitors learned much about the island through Charles’ eye and youthful energy; he self-educated through engaged participation in their interests, intellect, patrician lifestyles, and outdoor focus – a lifelong give and take that helped shape Charles and he in turn used to shape his Asticou.

Summer at Asticou

Summer at Asticou brought a house and lodging swap for most of the Savage family. Unlike many of Mount Desert’s families who farmed, fished, built boats, or participated in some of all of the year around occupations, the Savages constructed buildings for themselves and others in the off season. Most of their construction was then used as lodging for summer guests who came to the island from urban areas of the Northeast for long term stays from mid-June through Labor Day. Most of the A.C. Savage (1832-1911) relatives took in guests and provided meals while they consolidated their immediate families into a few of the houses clustered further back from the harbor view on Asticou Way. Or, the children moved out of their bedrooms for the summer to bunk in with aunts and uncles while the parents hosted guests in their homes. Most of the Savage lodgings were accompanied by the “American plan” of three meals, many served at the nearby Asticou Inn. The small village transitioned from a place where most of the residents were Savages into a residential community of middle age, wealthy retired summer visitors. Many of these "guests" stayed for a month or more and brought along their ladies’ maids, butlers, and chauffeurs who stayed close by in the lesser quarters at the Inn or in smaller accommodations in the adjacent town of Northeast Harbor.

The summer community bustled with leisure activities such as carriage rides, day hikes, evening lectures, small gatherings for tea and family celebrations, calling on friends, and the weekly dance or social at the Inn. It was a very vibrant scene and young Charles, together with his vivacious mother and later his outgoing wife Katharine Larchar Savage (1905- 2001), was at the center of the scene – orchestrating the day-to-day activities of the large staff necessary to service this affluent transient community while graciously welcoming the summer guests to a very personal and caring place – just as his parents and grandparents had done before him.

Maintaining Asticou

After World War II, more people came to Mount Desert Island than had in previous generations. Acadia National Park was popular, well established, and attractive to a growing and mobile summer population. The 1947 island fire had ravaged Bar Harbor and brought an end to much of the already declining wealthy summer colony there while hardly touching the Western side of the island, including Northeast Harbor and the hamlet of Asticou. Life as usual continued in the residential summer colony near Asticou but more transient visitors came, demanding different services and seeking more short term pleasures. The wealthy, middles age visitors who wanted a long term comfortable and homey stay at Asticou, bringing their domestic help, were fast becoming the minority. Charles began to expand his vision of Asticou at this time – moving into the role of defender of a genteel way of life that was trending elsewhere while also making gestures to attracting a new clientele by developing public attractions and notable destinations. Affiliating with the Jordan Pond House, a public tea house located in Acadia National Park, and participating in other island institutions and committees such as the Max Farrand Association at Reef Point estate in Bar Harbor, Charles sought community partnerships and leadership roles in institutions that upheld his view of Mount Desert.

Of particular note is Charles's passionate campaign to protect the road entering Northeast Harbor from "unsightly intrusions."

"Before we got through with this matter I could count about 70 poles which were taken away. Even if the general public may no longer recall that these disfiguring lines formerly existed, I can still see in my mind's eye their unsightliness, and often recollect how the accident of a situation contributed to their elimination."

Charles worked with the utility companies to remove poles and wires along the corridor, proposing that many lines be put underground and where necessary, concentrating all lines on one string of poles instead of two.

A close working relationship with summer resident John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was forged in 1953 when Charles learned of the clearcutting of trees near Hadlock Pond above Asticou and on land bordering Route 198. Aghast at the prospect of a logging operation along the main road into Asticou and Northeast Harbor, Charles travelled to New York City in the night to meet with JDR, Jr., convincing him to purchase the acreage under logging threat, participate in an adjacent land exchange with Savage, and swap land that resulted in permanent protection of the road corridor from Brown Mountain gatehouse (Acadia National Park) to the entrance to Asticou at the junction of Routes 198 and 3.

To read the original manuscript describing these events, click here. 

During the late 1950s, Charles waged a personal campaign to curtail the number of utility poles and transfer stations leading into Asticou. He peppered electric and telephone company officials with visits, questions, and personal correspondence providing alternatives to their unsightly plans to extend utility infrastructure down the highways into Asticou.

When the telephone company wanted to buy a corner of his personal property for a utility building, Charles made another urgent journey to New York City to enlist a land swap with JDR, Jr., that enabled the proposed utility building to be relocated across the road to a less visible location on Rockefeller land. The open and scenic vista from the road, out across the field to the adjacent harbor and views of Asticou Hill, was saved. Again, Charles's aesthetic prevailed.

It was also during this time that Charles created two public gardens to enhance the natural attraction of his community. In his role as Trustee of the Asticou Terraces Trust, Charles designed and built the English style border gardens in the existing orchard at Thuya Lodge and designed and formed the Japanese inspired Asticou Azalea Garden. Both have become world famous for their unique blend of natural habitats, unique design, stone hardscapes, and hand craftsmanship.

Ever vigilant of the natural landscape while not losing sight of furthering the commercial attractiveness of Asticou, Charles came into his own during the 1950s with many like-minded community partners and summer friends who shared his vision and tastes.

Natural Partnerships with Three Summer Residents

Among the earliest of the Boston rusticators to retreat to Mount Desert Island each summer was landscape engineer Joseph Henry Curtis (1841-1928). Curtis purchased 40 acres of land on the Eastern bank of Northeast Harbor, built three houses by the time of his death, and forged a close relationship with the Savage family through stays at Harbor Cottage during the 1880s. Curtis was also a regular at the Asticou Inn dining table, taking evening meals at the Asticou Inn many of the nights he was at his cottage until his death in 1928. Young Charles was no doubt friendly with the eccentric Curtis both at the Inn and on the hiking trails at Asticou. Upon Curtis's philanthropic bequest of all of his local property to the town of Mount Desert, Charles was appointed the sole trustee of Asticou Terraces Trust which oversaw the lands and their endowments and remained so until he resigned in 1965. Charles carried out Curtis's vision to preserve his hillside with trails and outlooks. The crowning jewel of Charles's partnership with Curtis resulted in the creation of the Thuya Garden in the late 1950s and a small library of rare botanical books for Thuya Lodge.

Charles's collaboration with John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874-1960) started as members of the local church congregation in Northeast and Seal Harbors, perhaps as early as 1935. Charles carefully watched Mr. Rockefeller’s work on building the islands network of carriage roads. He saw in JDR, Jr., a kindred spirit who not only loved the natural, wild parts of the island but also could financially assist Charles in furthering his passion for many of the same things. The most public of their many collaborations resulted in the expansion of the Asticou Terraces Trust to include another 100 acres on Eliot Mountain and the unique design and completion of the Asticou Azalea Garden. Lesser known, perhaps, is the aforementioned 1953-54 story of Charles, boarding the overnight train for New York City, to enlist the support of JDR Jr. to stop logging on land near Lower Hadlock Pond and adjacent to Route 198 that culminated in the conservation in perpetuity along a two mile corridor of Route 198, extending from Brown Mountain gatehouse into the town of Northeast Harbor.

A third important friendship that Charles developed was with renowned landscape gardener and Bar Harbor summer resident Beatrix Farrand (1872-1959). The friendship of these two garden and landscape designers – one a highly trained patrician leader in an elite world, the other a self-taught and experimental Maine native – was a professional one.

When Ms. Farrand was converting her Reef Point estate into a horticultural research library and created a non-profit foundation, she asked Charles to be on her Board of Directors and included him in her annual meetings, correspondence, and planning. Through this association, Charles became more intimate with Farrand’s designs and in time, casually incorporated her ideas and principles into his own developing plans for the Thuya and Asticou Azalea gardens. When Reef Point was dismantled and the research center abandoned in 1956, Charles purchased many of the large plants at Reef Point (including the extensive collection of rhodora) and incorporated the Farrand collection into his visions for the Asticou pond area and the garden at the top of the Thuya property.

For more information about the two Savage designed gardens, click here.

Charles was able to listen, support, and encourage these three Mount Desert island visionaries from away while they provided him with both financial and intellectual resources to expand his love of the native landscapes of the island, in particular those at his beloved Asticou. This meeting of the minds and tastes of island summer residents with Charles's dedication to detail have stood the test of time and left an enduring legacy of uninterrupted native beauty in Asticou.

The Later Years

By 1965 when Charles neither owned the Asticou Inn nor managed the Asticou Terraces Trust, much of his impressive conservation and preservation work along the eastern end of Mount Desert Island had been completed. The remaining 15 years of his life were spent creating many luscious hand carved signs and placques, often commissions for summer residents, local churches, the Northeast Harbor Village Improvement Association trails, and the Northeast Harbor Public Library. He continued writing, creating many detailed and illustrated personal letters with his observations and analyses of local issues while also maintaining close personal friendships from his days as an Inn owner and local conservation advocate and activist. He served as Manager of the Jordan Pond House, a Trustee of the Northeast Harbor Public Library, the Acadia Corporation, the Union Church, and other community affiliations until his death in 1979. Several of his commissioned writings and hand illustrated books are among the archives in the public library and many of his carvings are treasured in private collections in addition to those located in Asticou public spaces.

To see photographs of Charles K. Savage and his family, click on the photo below.

Resources

Private Collections: Many original writings, images, and other archival materials located in collections of access to the Mount Desert Island Historical Society were used to develop this history. Of particular importance are materials and memories from the collections of Samuel Savage McGee and C. Kenneth Savage, Jr.

Public Collections: Mount Desert Land & Garden Preserve, located in Seal Harbor and Northeast Harbor, maintains a small archive of historic materials related to Charles Kenneth Savage and his relationships with the Asticou Azalea Garden, Asticou Terraces Trust, and Thuya Garden. Several images and background materials were used in conjunction with this history. The original materials were used herein with the permission of the organization. Use of these archives is by appointment only, contact: info@gardenpreserve.org.

Other Resources: C. Kenneth Savage Jr. and Samuel Savage McGee have been exceedingly generous with their time, family archives, and support in the writing of this history. Mary Ann Savage Habib and staff of the Mount Desert Land & Garden Preserve and the Northeast Harbor Public Library have participated and encouraged this community history exhibit.