Picture this 41-room brick mansion at 127 West Street, now home to Bar Harbor's Historical Society. This organization is the principal historical society of Bar Harbor, Maine, and Mount Desert Island, and its story is woven into this very house. The society was founded on August 19, 1946, and began in a small room under the stairs of the Jesup Library.
In 1997 the society purchased 33 Ledgelawn Avenue, the former St. Edward’s Convent, and for years displayed a seasonal museum on that building’s first floor. In 2019 the society purchased La Rochelle — a 41-room, 13,000 square foot brick estate built in 1902 for George Bowdoin (1833–1913), by architects Andrews... — and in early 2019 the Historical Society moved its archives and collections here from Ledgelawn.
Stand here and imagine the careful work of moving decades of local history into these rooms, the growth from a tiny space beneath library stairs to a grand brick mansion on West Street. From a room tucked under the Jesup Library's stairs in 1946 to this 1902 mansion, the society finally brought its collections home to you in 2019.