Adaptive reuse
This is a McMansion built atop "Battery Cravens" on the northeastern side of Peaks Island (click the photo to enlarge and read the inscription on the entrance to the battery). Built in 1942, this battery was one of several on the Peaks Island Military Reservation. It was intended to defend Portland Harbor and its wartime shipping traffic against U-boat attacks. Sixty-five years later, post-9/11 paranoiacs have seized this and other island fortresses as the ultimate defensible vacation retreat.
Nevertheless, these defenses proved useless against an architectural kitsch bomb packed with "New England coastal vernacular" shrapnel. Such senseless destruction... but Battery Cravens survives.
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I was telling Susan about our bike ride on Peaks Island and how much fun it was and how the rich people seemed to do a good job of focusing on a houses' details rather than its square footage; that is, all except for this one house... and she said, "oh yeah, the one they built on top of a battery, there was some big controversy over that and another house that developer built."
Nevertheless, these defenses proved useless against an architectural kitsch bomb packed with "New England coastal vernacular" shrapnel.
That's worth the price of admission all by itsself.
i'm not sure which photos are more depressing: the one attached to this post or the post above it . . . .
Over the summer, I stayed in this house. The inside of the place is beautiful and the island itself is amazing. I actually got to go into the bunker under the house, which consists of dark rooms where people have put items such as a rusty pool table, a TV, and even a cough in here. It was really dark and cold, and rather spooky. The house itself has a lot of deck space and the interior is beautiful.
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