The House of THE SPIRITS

Restoring a home that's been in your family for five generations? Here's a little advice: Make peace with your most interesting and opinionated ancestors.

- BY NORMAN VANAMEE PRODUCED BY WILLIAM LI PHOTOGRAPHS BY DEAN KAUFMAN STYLED BY WILL KAHN

Ruth Bird was obsessed with George Washington. When she and her husband, New York City businessman George Bird, decided to build a summer home on a small island in Maine 126 years ago, her only request was that it look like Mount Vernon. The couple hired Edward Glover of W.H. Glover in Rockland, Maine, to design and build them a nine-bedroom house on the water. Construction of the Colonial Revival “cottage” with its columned entrance and symmetrical windows, was completed quickly, and in May 1901 a New York Times article titled “What Is Doing in Society” announced that “Mr. and Mrs. George Bird are going in a few days to Maine. They will spend most of the Summer at their country place there.”

The Birds were not the first out-of-staters to set down roots in this part of Maine. Starting in the mid-1800s, titans of publishing and other industries flocked with their families to the state’s picturesque coast from cities all over the East Coast and Midwest. Colonies of grand estates began sprouting in places like Camden, Mount Desert Island, and North Haven. Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Roosevelts came from late June through August for respite from city heat and to “rusticate” in a social scene slightly more relaxed than the one in Newport.

Many of those original homes have been torn down and the land sold off by the owners’ descendants. But Bird Cottage, located on Penobscot Bay, still stands, and three years ago its current owner, Ruth Bird’s great-great-granddaughter and the fifth generation of women in her family to own the house, decided it needed some work.