BAR HARBOR'S Vanished Temple To The Arts By Gladys O'Neil S PLENDID absurdities have marked almost every of the building were reproductions of t decade in modern American architecture, Parthenon at Athens. The interior, a especially when they are designed to celebrate the arts, subdued shades of red and light blue, V either ancient or ersatz. Many can recall the early movie by clusters of lights set into forty-five panal "palaces," their interior decor as lushly rich (under dim Three seven-foot panels of glass on the lighting) as Persian hanging gardens or the Moorish walls provided yet another illusion, that extravagances of the Alhambra. doors. Looking through them acros A far cry from such mock grandeur - though manicured turf, while Jose Iturbi exerc classically grand indeed - was the Building of Arts in on the piano or Fritz Kreisler on the Bar Harbor. At the behest of a group of wealthy esthetic experience rarely equalled dur summer residents, Guy Lowell, of Boston, was chosen summers. to design a Greek temple, which was completed in 1907 This $100,000 building, with a seat and sited in a grove of pines behind the fourth green of 400 (surely a magic number among Soc the exclusive Kebo Valley Club golf course. From a included a small balcony with six loges. ( distance it appeared to be made of marble, a grand a lot to know what privileged six amon illusion, since the actual construction was of wood and nabobs of that day held homestead righ stucco, with red roof tiles. Ten wooden columns, boxes. The Vanderbilts, the Pierpont twenty feet in height and three feet in diameter, Robert McCormicks, the Joseph Pulitz supported the roof, their capitals painted in old gold, Opening day, July 13, 1907, was bl dull red, and blue. On the panels on the front and back weather, and the road leading to the cl 54 Courtesy Bar Harbor Historical Society Erected in an opulent era nonumental Building of Arts dancer Ted Shawn, Josef Hofmann, and many others. was later sold for $305 ine opera singer Emma Eames Later there were plays in which many Hollywood and (right) sang at its openi with baritone Emilio De Gorgoza. Broadway stars appeared. Within thirty years, however, what was to have odeum was lined with horse-drawn carriages. The been an integral part of Bar Harbor's cultural life went entire summer colony turned out in full fig to attend the into gradual decline. Attendance fell off; building concert; all were graciously seated by ushers wearing repairs, SO badly needed, could find no support among white satin sashes with a picture of the temple stamped the millionaire colony, and in June, 1941, the temple on them. Christening the event with their incomparable was sold for unpaid taxes at the humiliating price of voices were soprano Madame Emma Eames, Maine- $305.24. It was finally consumed by fire in that born prima donna, and her baritone husband, Emilio everything-in-its-path devastation that struck Maine in De Gorgoza, old favorites at the Metropolitan Opera the rainless summer of 1947. The building was long Company. Described as "the greatest affair of its kind doomed, in any event, and its destruction not greatly in Bar Harbor history," the concert was noted even in mourned. That the high promise of its beginnings could the society columns of the New York Times. not be long realized might be laid to the fact that more With the flushing enthusiasm a new building and opulent diversions - such as lavish entertaining and ambitious plans induce, the music committee worked steam yachts - SO accessible to Bar Harborites in the hard to secure artists of distinction - and indeed it met grand old days proved more seductive than the greatest with considerable success. The list was wondrous: aria or string quartet heard from even one of the six Ernest Schelling, Paderewski, Walter Damrosch, box seats. 55