The Abbott Graves House is a historic house at 86 Ocean Avenue in Kennebunkport, Maine. Built in 1905 by

Abbott Fuller Graves Abbott Fuller Graves (1859–1936) was an American painter and illustrator who specialized in decorative open air garden paintings and floral still-lifes. His use of thick brushstrokes, bright colors, and natural light shows the influence of Euro ...

to his own design, it is one of only two known examples of the

Prairie School Prairie School is a late 19th- and early 20th-century architectural style, most common in the Midwestern United States. The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in ...

of architecture in the state of Maine. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

Description and history

The Graves House is set on the east side of Ocean Avenue at number 86, south of the village center of Kennebunkport and facing west toward the

Kennebunk River The Kennebunk River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed June 30, 2011 river in York County, Maine in the United States. It drains a settled rural area southwest of Po ...

. It is a two-story wood-frame structure with a broad shallow-pitch hipped roof, and a white stucco finish. It has a central section flanked by projecting sections, with a single-story shed-roof porch extending between and slightly forward of the projecting sections. Single-story wings project to the north and south. The symmetry of the building is deliberately disrupted by differing window arrangements in the projecting sections: one has three windows above two, the other two above three. The house was built in 1905 to a design by the artist

, who had summered in Kennebunkport since 1891, and built this as a permanent year-round residence. Graves was clearly influenced by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose first Prairie-style house was built in

Kankakee, Illinois Kankakee is a city in and the county seat of Kankakee County, Illinois, United States. As of 2020, the city's population was 24,052. Kankakee is a principal city of the Kankakee-Bourbonnais-Bradley Metropolitan Statistical Area. It serves as an ...

just five years earlier. This house remained Graves' home until his death in 1936. It is one of two Prairie-style houses in the state; the other is the

Ward Hinckley House The Ward Hinckley House is a historic house in Blue Hill, Maine. Built in 1916 for Otis Ward Hinckley, a Chicago businessman with roots in Blue Hill, it is one of only two documented examples of the Prairie School of architecture in the state o ...

(also listed on the National Register) in Blue Hill.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Graves, Abbott, House Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine Prairie School architecture in Maine Houses completed in 1905 Houses in York County, Maine Buildings and structures in Kennebunkport, Maine National Register of Historic Places in York County, Maine 1905 establishments in Maine

Description and history

See also

References