From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
Reading Room at Belvedere Inn, Lake Maranacook, Maine D5C3
Interior of the Reading Room at the Belvedere Inn. Much like the housekeeping cabins, this public space at the inn is decorated to evoke comfort and leisure. Overstuffed seating and curtains in striped and floral fabrics, a mounted deer head, a braided rug on the carpet are arranged before an imposing stone fireplace. French doors and an arched opening lead invitingly to other spaces on the ground floor. 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.
