Rhonda Kivlin of Westwood, Massachusetts sent in this week’s Tiny House in a Landscape feature. She says:
“I snapped this picture of three abandoned tiny houses while hiking near Wolfe’s Neck Farm in Freeport, Maine. Because there was a fence, I couldn’t get any closer, but I sure wanted to sneak inside and check them out.”
What a shame, all 3 appeared to have been abandoned.I wonder if more information about that property could be obtained..As to what their future might hold.
For anyone who was raised in Maine ,like me ,knows that these are near route one where all traffic flowed until 95 was built and traffic diverted away from these mom and pop motel sites. My husband and I honeymooned in one of these complexes while he awaited his discharge from NAS Brunswick Maine.
Same thing here in Florida. GONE are the great little mom and pop motels along A1A where you could walk across the road to the ocean without getting mowed down by a motorhome, then track sand inside after a day in the sun. And oh boy, a pool was such a big deal! Not to mention the Moms and Pops, Germans who made us apple struedel, or the Florida crackers who took us kids fishing. Now, they’ve all been taxed to death and torn down to make way for wall to wall condos of people with “Private walkways to the Ocean” and la-ti-da chain hotels that offer stale honey-buns for breakfast.
At least I had great times, but I hate for my grandkids to think the Donald Trump “destroy originality and build a mega-hotel” mentality is normal.
I visited Maine in the 70s and LOVED it, even freezing to death in one of those Route 1 cottages at night 🙂 Thanks for posting the pictures, hope someone rescues those little places.
There are a few of these mom-and-pop operations still around; one in Freeport north of where this pic was taken. I have great memories of vacations taken as a kid, staying in these places.
Hey, if those tiny houses are abandoned and not on foundations, they might be easily moved. If I lived in Massachusetts I would be finding out who owned them to see if one could be bought on the cheap, and maybe moved for a reasonable price.
Hi:
I am from Maine and also remember going by those abandoned homes. Have liked tiny homes ever since!
Those buildings are all part of “weekly Summer cabin rentals” not that many years back they were plentiful in Maine. Up and down the coast most have been demolished to make way for larger hotel Motel complexes the point of them was to give you a dry bed a stand up shower toilet and a couple of burners most also were hardly insulated if at all and most had small electric heaters but are charming and the areas were they were originally in Maine were beautiful sadly now most of those vistas etc are closed off by walled “Mc Mansions”.
How sad and wasteful if they are just left abandoned, however this happens all over. In Minnesota, I’d seen lovely little cabins demolished to build the pretentious ‘lake homes.’ Perhaps someday we see things going back the other direction.
We can hope Valerie!
There are remains of such motel wayside cabins along many of what used to be major hiways before the interstate system was built. At least the portions of such hiways in rural areas that havent seen lot modern development.
They tended to be for rent to summer low buck motoring tourists only so not insulated or heated. I imagine many may not had indoor plumbing. From a very different era. Think one step above camping in a tent. I see them different places, still standing here in Arkansas. Still standing but not rented out or used for decades. Even those standing tend not to have been maintained so rotting away into oblivian.
Yes, what a shame that these little houses couldn’t be moved, fixed and repaired, and done over inside. There are many people without any home at all, that would be happy to live in one.