The Name of the Rose

BY Colin Sargent

Before you reach Fort Williams on Shore Road in Cape Elizabeth, turn left and follow Surf Road toward the sea until you run out of road.

Up until now, you thought there was no way to Mapquest the subconscious.

Here, atop a granite outcropping facing the mouth of the Portland ship channel, is the rose cottage of your dreams. Vivid ruby roses climb joyfully around the arbor before you while just feet away the harbor lapses, sighs, and sifts through stones below a wall defending the cottage’s 1924 design.

Gulls wheel and call as you draw closer. The blossoms are so alluring you don’t dare take a step further without asking their name.

“Gateway was the first residence built out here when Cape Cottage Park was subdivided,” says listing agent William Davisson of LandVest. “Maud Wood Park, the prominent suffragette, commissioned John Calvin Stevens to design it on this site.”

Maud Wood Park (1871-1955), a Bostonian, had spent the summer of 1924 at a nearby rental cottage, convalescing from strep throat after years in Washington as the head lobbyist for the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, tirelessly exhorting the successful passage of the 19th Amendment. So adroit and persistent had she been that Washington insiders had nicknamed her “the lady who made lobbying respectable.”

The author of Front Door Lobby, a book on the landmark legislation, she was named the first president of the National League of Women Voters in 1920 and reelected three times before declining a fifth year due to her health. She came here for the breath of fresh air and peace she’d dreamed of for so long.

A former English major while at Radcliffe, she no doubt delighted in, or likely requested, the quote from Geoffrey Chaucer that architect Stevens engraved onto her 32-foot living room’s paneled fireplace mantel as a finishing touch, a modernization of which is, Free yourself from the crowd and dwell with truth. Be satisfied with your worldly goods, though they be small. Great peace resides in limited activity. Beware of kicking against an awl.”

Not to say Park would follow Chaucer’s Zen-like advice. As head of the U.S. delegation attending the International Suffrage Alliance Congress summit in Rome, she summoned the guts to stare down Mussolini in 1929–certainly akin to kicking a pointy awl–when he refused to stand and honor a colleague of hers, alliance president Carrie Chapman, when she rose to speak. The Italian leader was later floored when, alone among the audience, Ms. Park refused to stand when he took the stage.

So perhaps the name of the rose that grows here ought to be Maud Wood Park, still so revered that League of Women Voters visitors drive up occasionally just to visit this house. But it is not.

Working with Stevens, Park watched the house take shape on the most desirable point of land directly in front of the old Cape Cottage Casino. The world-traveled lecturer must have enjoyed the curved, floral stone walls and sea stairs that dropped down to meet wavelets cavorting around her 350 feet of bold coastline. In certain lights, the waves took on the lapis and azure hues of the Blue Grotto of Capri.

“Five lighthouses are visible from this spot,” LandVest’s Davisson says, “with a 260-degree sweep that takes in Portland Head Light, Ram Island Light, Halfway Rock, Seguin Island Light off Popham Beach, and Spring Point Light.”

He looks down at the waves, then back toward the Portland skyline. “This place is magic at night.

“Dr. Stephen Monaghan has lived here for 40 years and has taken great pride in developing these gardens. The distinctive, brushy trees are Japanese pines. Once he offered to trim the large one, original to 1924, to give the neighbors up there a better view, but they objected.” Like the tree of Naples, this striking tree is part of the view.

Years ago, the original Stevens design was carefully expanded toward the sea to capture and actually swallow a gazebo that pre-dates the house. The gazebo guest suite, with its captivating views of the ship channel and rocks to the north, makes you wish you were a family friend.

In all there are 12 dreamy rooms in Gateway, many of them lit by vast picture windows full of islands, rocks, and sea. There are “five bedrooms, three baths, and a walk-out lower level with workshop and family room.”

The kitchen was completely redone in 2004. French doors open out to an intimate deck, while inside, original pine paneling shines with Stevens craftsmanship everywhere. “Look how the changing pattern repeats itself every fourth board,” Davisson says of the exquisite carpentry.

“Over there, do you see that ancient iron pan on the rocks? That’s where lobster bakes have been hosted for lucky guests every year on July 4,” a practice perhaps dating to Park.

“They also used to do a Twelfth Night Tree Burning in December for many years here, I understand.” And why not? The house was finished on December 2, 1924.

Even dreams need parking sometime, so there’s a separate two-car garage a block away. There’s also a permanent mooring for your Egg Harbor cabin cruiser or luxury Alden schooner.

One boy and six girls have grown up here with Dr. Monaghan, so perhaps they’re the roses, too. But truly, what is the name of the dark red rose that cascades over the arbor, beckoning to you–perhaps more persuasively than the house’s annual taxes of $17,544?

Davisson reaches Dr. Monaghan by cell phone and holds up his hand as if to silence the ocean and gulls. “The rose along the fence is Blaze, an old rose from Jackson Perkins. But this one rising above the others is the Dr. Selby Rose, dark pink, from Nova Scotia,” he says. “This plant is over 60 years old. It’s bred for the icy northern climates.”

If you stop to smell this rose, you may find it impossible to leave.