Maine. A land of Capes and cabins. Not exactly known as a hotbed of modern architecture.
So when my now-wife, Tara, added “mid-century modern” to the list of requirements for our house hunt in Portland, I thought the request was implausible. She’d spent much of her childhood in the midwest, where she was introduced to mid-century modern design at the family home of one of her closest friends (the granddaughter of a Mies van der Rohe partner). Yet she had deep roots in, and a deep love for, Maine. Her father’s family had been in Aroostook County for generations, and the years she wasn’t living in Maine she made an annual pilgrimage to the family camp on Portage Lake.
While I resigned myself to making the case for adding modern touches in some sort of colonial style house, she was apparently undertaking a state-wide real estate search based on year built. One late-October afternoon, I received an email from a real estate website saying that a listing had been shared with me: a house built in 1955 in Rockland (80 miles from Portland). Along with the listing was a note: “What about buying this and renting in Portland:)”
I was moving to Maine from Portland, OR (the “other” Portland). Prior to that, I’d lived in Philadelphia and New York. If I was going to make my home in Maine, it would have to be in the biggest city. A city with an airport and Amtrak service. Or so I thought.
The morning after Tara sent me that listing, I woke up in her York Beach apartment (I was on a two-month visit from Oregon) and found her making art at her kitchen table. She looked up and said, “I can’t stop thinking about that house.” A week later, we were meeting a realtor at the house in Rockland. As we entered the neighborhood, Tara started belting out Randy Newman’s, “Feels like Home” (The Bonnie Raitt version, I presume.) I told her not to get her hopes up, and not show too much enthusiasm in front of the seller’s agent. This silenced the chorus of “Feels like home to me!” for about two seconds before it resumed with even more gusto. I couldn’t help but laugh. Five days later we were under contract on our mid-century gem (some of its shine hidden behind a white vinyl exterior, and a variety of carpet colors and wallpaper patterns inside). Thus began our life in the midcoast. We never did rent that apartment in Portland.
