Main Street, as it appeared before Thompson & Heywood—and before Dutch Elm Disease |
We also have artists, and world class cooks. Over the next few months, I’m going to mention a few of each. Today’s post is a tale that combines the two.
The Arnold Wolfers House, 1947, by Walter Gropius & TAC |
In the 1940s, architect Benjamin Thompson, as a young member of The Architect’s Collaborative, was in the area working with Walter Gropius on a project for international affairs specialist Arnold Wolfers (for more about that project, click HERE). Thompson’s mother Lynne, a Midwesterner gone New York, was looking for a quiet place to write and came up to have a look, and stayed.
Maine Street after Thompson & Heywood, with Pavilion at center. For the story of the blacksmith shop at right, click HERE |
Soon, she and her partner Dorothy Heywood, heiress to the Chester Shoe Company, had purchased a traditional French style manor house along the shore, at happily depressed post-war prices. They had Thompson’s son Ben, not yet the famous architect he would become, remodel the house, until it was no longer traditional or French. Mrs. Heywood had worked for the Betty Parsons gallery, and she and Mrs. Thompson had assembled a fine collection of modern art, including works by Picasso, Rothko, Motherwell, and Klee.
Thompson & Heywood, as they were known in town, offered to show their collection of modern art at the library as a fundraiser the likes of which the town had never seen. To temper the radical art, home-baked blueberry pies were offered as refreshment, lest the sight of all that modern art offend too many. Mrs. Thompson was an enterprising sort, and decided that it would be jolly if she were to air-freight one of the pies to Picasso (‘a rising Spanish artist who is becoming well known’) in France, that he might partake of it even as one of his works was being unveiled in little Blue Hill, Maine. History doesn’t record if he did so (and trust me, idle curiosity has led me to check the index of more than one Picasso biography), or if the pie, more likely, arrived smashed and runny, but one is amused to ponder Picasso’s reaction.
Architectural Drawing for the Pavilion, shows the complexity of Cooper Milliken’s design. |
The pair purchased an old storefront on the village Main street, and added to it one of the most radical buildings of its day in Maine. The effect on the village was electric. People either loved, or (mostly) hated it. The architect was Cooper Milliken of Eaton Tarbell and Associates and The Pavilion, as it was called, gave yet another aesthetic jolt to a village hitherto known best for its simple 19th century white houses. Neither woman cooked, but Thompson learned, and took to it as a duck to water.
The Pavilion under construction. The frame was entirely mortised, Japanese style |
Whether they made money, ever, is doubtful, but their restaurant was a critical success, and everyone came, even the New York Times. I remember the place well from childhood — it was like catnip to me, so exotic and unlike anything else in our world.
Interior view under construction |
I remember the scent of the exposed wooden rafters, cool slate floors, a wall of glass overlooking the harbor, the wildly distorted slopes of the walls, the smells of good food, the paper shades hanging from the ceiling the big handmade jewelry worn by the owners.
1950 newspaper photo of the recently-opened Pavilion. |
Only later did I learn that those shades were by Noguchi, and came from Design Research, the famous home design business started in 1955 by Lynn’s architect son, or that the very plates on which one took afternoon tea of lemon cakes were from Denmark. The art was modern, consigned from the Metropolitan Gallery in New York, the sleek home furnishings for sale were consigned from Design Research, and all of it was unlike anything sold up here before.
A letter from Lynne Thompson to her architect, announcing the arrival of new goods (from son Ben Thompson’s new Design Research store in Cambridge. |
Thin cut peel of one lemon
Small amount of tangerine rind
Small stick cinnamon
½ cup sugar
4 cups blueberries
2 tbs. cornstarch
Simmer the blueberries, lemon rind and tangerine rind in the 2 ½ quarts of water until the berries are soft.
Strain and put the berries through a sieve or puree them finely in a blender. Return to strained juice. Mix the 2 tablespoons of cornstarch in about 1/2 cup of water and add to mixture.
Simmer 5 minutes.
Chill to iciness and serve with whipped cream which has been sweetened to taste. Dust the cream lightly with cinnamon.
Note: This Ambrosia belongs to the scandinavian Fruit-Soup family and can be made from several varieties of fresh, canned or frozen berries. Naturally the amount of sugar added will depend whether or not the fruit base has been pre-sweetened. Freezes and keeps.
Serves 20 — when served from a punch bowl in small cups. As cold soup, serves. 20.
CHAMPIGNONS FLAMBEES (Burnt Mushrooms)
1 lb. mushroom caps
Salt
6 tbs. butter
1 cup sherry
2 tbs. brandy (or a little more)
¼ cup heavy cream (a little more)
Season carefully, washed and trimmed mushrooms, with plenty of salt.
Saute in a chafing dish in butter until brown.
Pour in Sherry and simmer until nearly dry.
Pour brandy over mushrooms and light.
When flame has gone out, stir in cream.
Serve with a green salad.
Note: If sherry does not cook down fast enough, pour off, and add again after brandy has burned off. Serves four.
COUNTRY WEDDING CAKE
(Recipe from Mrs. Lawrence Pickering, Deer Isle, Maine). To our way of thinking, the best and most satisfactory cake we have ever tasted IN OUR WHOLE LIVES!)
1 ½ cups sugar
¾ cup shortening (1/2 cup better and ½ cup vegetable shortening A MUST1)
3 eggs
2 ¾ cups cake flour
2 ¾ tsp. baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla
½ teaspoon lemon extract (more if your extract is old)
Cream shortening.
Add sugar slowly, and beat until light.
Add sifted dry ingredients alternately with milk starting with flour and ending with flour. (the hard and fast rule here is that you add one-third of your dry or your liquid each time, mixing just enough to moisten before the next addition).
Mix as little as possible.
Bake in a tube pan for about an hour.
Oven set at 350 degrees.
Or, this recipe fills two ½ lb. pans.
Cool on rack, and powder with powdered sugar.