Before the fire

A view of Bar Harbor, Maine in the early years of the twentieth century, when it was already a popular tourist destination, especially for the wealthy. This image was probably captured from one of the islands in Frenchman Bay. Much of this terrain was altered in 1947, when a wildfire wiped out much of the forest cover on Mt. Desert Island, along with a large number of hotels and private homes in and around Bar Harbor.

The recipient of this card was William B. Chase, music critic for the Evening Sun, and it was mailed to his office in New York City on August 14, 1906; Chase later moved on to the New York Times. At a party for his seventy-first birthday, in 1943, he was serenaded by a composition written in his honor by the composer Nikolai Lopatnikoff, entitled "Arietta on the Name C-H-A-S-E." Chase's father, Austin C. Chase, was a farmer, piano manufacturer, postmaster of Syracuse, real estate developer, and lieutenant-colonel in the National Guard; the Encyclopedia of Biography of New York notes that among his many other accomplishments in 1882 he became president of the Chilled Plow Company, "when that institution was in very straightened circumstances and its affairs in a very unsatisfactory condition," and quickly put it to rights.

The unidentified sender of the card was staying a few miles away in Seal Harbor at the Seaside Inn, which escaped the 1947 fire but was later torn down.

On Jordan Pond?

This card doesn't bear the Rotograph name or any other identifying markings, but the typography and layout are recognizable enough to classify this as a likely "cryptorotograph," possibly commissioned by a local merchant. I haven't noticed the bizarre capital "H" elsewhere, however.

Jordan Pond (the possessive, if it was ever used, has been dropped) is located on Mt. Desert Island within Acadia National Park. I've stopped there many times to eat popovers on the lawn of the Jordan Pond House, one of the few dog-friendly restaurants in the area. (It draws tourists by the busload but is worth a stop anyway.) The original structure, dating from the nineteenth century, was replaced after a fire in 1979.

But the postcard above is incorrectly captioned. Compare the prospect shown below, identified by the U.S. Geological Survey as Little Long Pond, which is a bit further to the south of Jordan Pond. According to the accompanying information on the Maine.gov website, the building on the left, which no longer stands, was at one time the Seal Harbor post office.

The two low hills in the center distance, which are known as the Bubbles, appear much closer and higher when seen from Jordan Pond, as below: