Imagine this nineteen-room inn as Orlando Ash's 1864 summer cottage on Mount Desert Street in Bar Harbor, Maine. Now a nineteen-room bed and breakfast, this house began life as a summer cottage built in 1864 by Orlando Ash, a prominent member of the resort town and the son of Captain Benjamin Ash. Imagine the era when it served seasonal guests; its bones date to that moment and carry the Victorian confidence of proportion and style.
In the summer of 1947 a fire nearly threatened to burn the entire town; the Mira Monte Inn was unharmed while 397 other seasonal cottages were irreparably damaged. The building's role shifted again when Marian Burns (1927–2015) set it on a new course in 1980, opening it as a bed and breakfast. Members of her family continued to run the inn until 2019, when it was sold to new owners and incorporated as Mira Monte Inn and Suites.
Stand here and let that sequence of lives and changes settle: a cottage born in 1864, resilient through the 1947 fire, reborn in 1980, and carrying on into its present incarnation. This survivor of the 1947 fire still welcomes you along Mount Desert Street.