Nannau, a historic summer estate house in Bar Harbor, sits in front of you. Built in 1904 for David R. Ogden, a New York City lawyer, it was designed by the Boston firm Andrews, Jaques and Rantoul, the architects responsible for a number of Bar Harbor’s finest summer estates. In 1906 it was praised as "an excellent example of shingle work" and the house was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
Take in the building’s two-story rectangular main block, oriented northwest to southeast, with projecting ells at both ends. A steeply pitched hip roof crowns the house, broken by projecting two-and-a-half-story gable sections on the landward facade that flank a smaller single-story entry portico. That portico carries its own steeply pitched hip roof with a distinctive flared edge. The walls are finished in wood shingles, the very material praised a century ago.
You stand on the south side of a private drive, south of the main village, with the house set between Maine State Route 3 and overlooking Compass Harbor, an inlet off Frenchman Bay. Beyond the flared portico roof, the shingles give way to Compass Harbor and the road running past.