By Brad EmErson • housE photos By tom CranE 124-131 Fortune Rock.pdf · Wright was working for...

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Nineteen-thirty-seven was a very good year for houses built on rocky sites overlooking water. In Italy, writer

Curzio Malaparte was building a radical house on a rock outcropping near Capri, while just outside Mill Run, Pennsylvania, Frank Lloyd Wright was working for the Kaufmann family (of department store fame) on Fallingwater, a stunning residence cantilevered over a water-fall. And on Maine’s Mount Desert Island, ar-chitect George Howe was creating Fortune Rock, dramatically cantilevered over Somes

Painter Clara Fargo Thomas created canvases to get lost in. Architect george Howe set out to build her a masterpiece to live in.

The result was Fortune rock.By B r a d E m E r s o n • h o u s E p h oto s By to m C r a n E

1 2 6 p o r t l a n d m o n T H l y m A g A z i n e S u m m e r g u i d e 2 0 1 0 1 2 7

c l a s s i c sFrom left: Relaxing on the cantilevered living room gives new meaning to “living on the edge”; floor-to-ceiling windows turn walkways into enticing gangplanks.

Sound, for artist Clara Fargo Thomas.Thomas was a Wells Fargo heiress who had

achieved renown as a muralist and scenic designer in New York City, where she lived in a large, traditional town house with her husband, financier Joseph B. Thomas. “Slim, golden-haired, youthful-looking, mu-ral-painting, party-giving Clara Thomas” was how she was described in an October, 1940 Spokesman Review ar-ticle. Thomas created works that included The Corona-tion Mural at Selfridge’s in London and The World of Steel at the U.S. Steel Pavilion at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair.

Her architect, George Howe, began his career at the very traditional firm Mellor, Meigs, & Howe, famous for their elegantly conceived, understated, and textural-ly rich houses on the Main Line of Philadelphia. After leaving the firm, Howe formed a partnership with modernist architect William Lescaze, with whom he de-signed the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building, considered to be the world’s first International Style skyscraper. In 1934, firmly established as a pioneer modernist and with his earlier design roots far behind him, Howe struck out on his own, and in 1936, Clara Thomas approached him to design her summer com-


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The stripped-down shapes create an almost cubist composition, and the house’s defining feature–a spectacular living room cantilevered on concrete bridge trusses above Somes Sound–gives the house its modernist credibility.

Clockwise from top left: Clara Fargo Thomas may have slept here, in the middle of a living mural; painted gray ceilings “answer the sky”; sliding doors open wide, leaving nothing but a short rail-ing between you and nature; present owner (and Philadelphia tycoon) Charles Graham Berwind’s 240-foot yacht Laurel (shown in Frenchman Bay) spends summers moored at Bar Harbor Regency Hotel. Ranked the world’s 52nd largest yacht by Power and Motoryacht, it cost $139 million to build in 2005.

pound on a spectacular site at the head of Somes Sound, a fjord-like body of water that almost splits Mount Desert Island in two.

Howe’s prior training in vernacular de-sign and his extraordinary feel for materials stood him in good stead for the project. Using the simple shapes and building materials (such as weathered clapboard, granite, and gray shingles) characteristic of traditional

Maine architecture to anchor the house to its rugged location, Howe proceeded to create something new. The resulting stripped-down shapes create an almost cubist composition, and the house’s defining feature–a spectacu-lar living room cantilevered on concrete bridge trusses above Somes Sound–gives the house its modernist credibility. Handsome, veneered plywood was used for all the walls

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I had dinner at Fortune in the 1970s, when Norman Mailer was renting the house from the Thomas heirs. I was in my early twenties and very shy in front of the pugnacious celebrity (who had only a few years earlier punched out Gore Vidal). For readers hoping for literary anecdotes, I have few–this article is about a house. But Mailer was very much as one would expect. Showing off, he considered it inter-esting cocktail hour entertainment to dangle his young sons over the balcony until they screamed. After all other attempts at getting my attention failed, he tried to engage me in a dinner conversa-tion about Pat Nixon and how lovely she was, to which I had little to add. I was too enamored by the house, taking in its amazing spaces, as fresh and modern that day as when first built. I was a poor din-ner guest, perhaps, but when it comes to making small talk with Norman Mailer or taking in every de-tail of an iconic modern house? You tell me.–Brad Emerson

Hanging With Mailer


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and shelving throughout the interior. The ex-terior walls were stained gray, and the under-side of the eaves and interior ceilings were painted a gray blue that answered the sky. In the dining room and entrance hall, a mural painted by Mrs. Thomas, depicted the wreck of the Joseph B. Thomas, a ship owned by her husband’s ancestor. The wreck took place off Fortunes Rocks in southern Maine, thus giv-ing the house its name.

Down a short flight of steps was the liv-ing room, where the lines between structure and nature, indoors and outdoors, were blurred. On three sides, large, floor-to-ceil-ing sliding doors–recalling shoji screens–opened wide, with only a railing at the sides. The walls were mirrored in a grid that seam-lessly echoed the panes of the windows, fur-

ther blurring the distinction between indoors and outdoors. Furnishings were chosen in the modernist style from the best designers of the time.

The house was famous in its day and was featured in a Museum of Modern Art exhibi-tion on modern buildings, as well as in several leading architectural publications. What seemed radical and modern 70 years ago still holds up to scrutiny in the 21st century, and Fortune Rock remains one of the finest mod-ern houses in Maine–and perhaps anywhere.

In the 1980s, the house was purchased by the Berwind family, who undertook a sym-pathetic restoration and redecoration of the house, which by that time was a bit time-worn. Gone, unfortunately, was Clara Thomas’s dining room mural. n

>> For more images, visit portlandmonthly.com.

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The gravity-defying living room reaches past the shoreline. Inset: The house is currently un-dergoing renovations–hopefully the classic design will be kept intact.

By Brad EmErson • housE photos By tom CranE 124-131 Fortune Rock.pdf · Wright was working for...

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