Somes House. Mt. Desert Me. 75.

Somes House. Mt. Desert Me. 75.

Somes House. Mt. Desert Me. The Somes House was a summer hotel that operated from the late 1800s until the 1920s, when it became a summer residence. The 18th-century Abraham Somes house (the building with five windows on the second story) with its later addition and the house on the right were part of the hotel and cottage complex. The buildings had a sweeping view of Somes Sound. The hotel accommodated many notable guests, including Louis Comfort Tiffany, Alfred Vanderbilt, Joseph Pulitzer, J. P. Morgan, Mary Cassatt, and William Howard Taft. Abraham Somes and his family were the first settlers on Mt. Desert Island of European descent. In a letter published in The Living Past by Virginia Somes Sanderson, he wrote that he "came down immediately after the War was over and peace ratified between Great Britain and the French and Indians-so that I could be safe in moving into the Wilderness; I came to this place which was in the autumn of the year 1761 and made a pitch on this Lot [where] I now live and in June, the year following, I moved my family and settled on the same lot and have occupied the same ever since." His house is still standing.