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A restaurant in Bar Harbor has a spectacular view and a connection to mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart.
By MARGO HAMMOND, Times Books Editor
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 7, 2002
BAR HARBOR, ME. -- The sign on Eden Street said Rinehart Dining Pavilion, directing visitors to a restaurant perched on the hill above. The restaurant, I was told, was named after Mary Roberts Rinehart, the same mystery writer who supposedly had a hideaway in Florida that had become the Cabbage Key Inn and Restaurant. What was Rinehart's connection to Bar Harbor?
It was a mystery I wanted to solve.
The Jessup Memorial Library on Mount Desert Street had the answer (as well as a round oak desk in the reading room said to have once belonged to the writer).
Rinehart, I discovered from her autobiography, My Story, summered in Maine. After staying in hotels and then renting places, she finally bought a rambling old house in Bar Harbor in 1938, one of many mansions in the area on the market after the Crash.
Back then, the Pittsburgh-born writer was as famous as Danielle Steele is today.
In this fishing village where year-round lobstermen have long rubbed shoulders with wealthy summer residents, locals would whisper Rinehart's name as she walked down the street in flowing chiffon and wide-brimmed hats. Guides on sightseeing boats pointed out her house.
And fans regularly wandered onto her property, taking photographs of her fountain, peering in her windows or, in some brave cases, knocking on her door to ask to see the house's "yellow room." In 1945 Rinehart had written a mystery, The Yellow Room, inspired by a room in her house.
In 1947, Rinehart's house was the scene of two dramas, worthy of her hard-boiled prose. Both of the events made "front-page and radio news," as Rinehart put it:
n Rinehart's longtime cook tried to kill her, first by firing a gun in her face (it failed to go off) and then returning with two carving knives. Again, he was unsuccessful. Wrestled down by Rinehart's chauffeur and gardener, the cook was taken off to jail where, the next night, he took his own life.
n Later that year, Rinehart's home burned to the ground in a fire that destroyed nearly 70 summer houses in the area. Luckily, the writer was in her New York apartment, but everything -- from her new Chevrolet stored in the stable to almost 2,000 books -- was lost. She never returned to Bar Harbor.
Today the gazebo-shaped Rinehart Dining Pavilion, which is part of the Wonder View Inn, stands on the spot overlooking Frenchman's Bay where the house, with its fountain-graced patio, once stood. Diners can look out through floor-to-ceiling windows at "white sailboats like butterflies on the blue water," the same view that Rinehart describes in My Story.
A biography of Rinehart is posted at the entrance of the Rinehart Dining Pavilion, but not much else remains of the author in Bar Harbor.
For some locals, the Rinehart restaurant is the kind of place that serves lobster on toast points. In other words: It's for birthdays and anniversaries. And many of them have never heard of its namesake.
When I asked our waitress at the restaurant if she had ever read any of Rinehart's mysteries, she stammered, "I did start one . . . ." The Rinehart Dining Pavilion is not Bar Harbor's only claim to literary fame, though.
In 1887, the Mount Desert Reading Room was launched with the avowed purpose of promoting "literary and social culture." The prestigious club, housed on the shores of Frenchman's Bay in a cedar-shingled structure designed by architect William Randolph Emerson, was frequented by the rich and powerful, including President William Howard Taft in 1910.
After that terrible fire of 1947, however, the club was closed. With most of the accommodations in the area destroyed by the fire, its facilities were turned into a much-needed hotel. Now called the Bar Harbor Inn, the complex still has a Reading Room.
It is a restaurant with a spectacular view.
Rinehart, by the way, never did own a hideaway in Cabbage Key. The Florida property was purchased by her sons, the founders of Farrar Rinehart publishing.
GETTING THERE: Several airlines offer service, with connecting flights, from the Tampa Bay area to Portland, Me., the nearest large airport to Bar Harbor. From Portland, head north on Interstate 95 to Bangor, then take Route lA to Ellsworth. Follow Route 3 into Bar Harbor.
As you enter Bar Harbor on Route 3, the Rinehart Dining Pavilion is located on the right at 50 Eden St., just before West Street.
The Reading Room Restaurant is farther along Route 3 to West Street; turn left to the Municipal Pier at the harbor.