From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
East Side of Lobby at Belvedere Inn -- Lake Maranacook, Maine D504
Image of a hotel lobby and dining room with 1950s vernacular styling. The long, narrow room is broken up into two areas, the carpeted sitting area in the foreground, and dining booths and tables beyond. The sitting area, or lobby, has upholstered armchairs and a sofa; standing ashtrays (indicating the social acceptablility of public cigarette smoking), and a deer head mounted on the wall. A chandelier hangs from the low ceiling, and awnings hang on the inside of the windows. The Belvedere and other large hotels, including the Elmwood Hotel, and The Martha Washington, served by the railroad stops at Readfield Depot and Maranacook, sprang up around scenic Lake Maranacook beginnning in the 1880s and flourished until the 1950s, when automobile vacations allowed more options for travel. Located on the western shore of the lake three miles from Winthrop, the Belvedere and its housekeeping cabins and cottages offered "commanding views of picturesque Lake Maranacook", according to a 1950s brochure. By then, the establishment advertised itself as a "resort" with a "swimming pool and diving board, woods trails, boating, canoeing, fishing (the lake was stocked with salmon), tennis, ping pong, shuffleboard, badminton," and "bowling and riding and golf...in Augusta," 12 miles away. In the 1930s the hotel was a favorite of Maine Governor Lewis O. Barrows.
