Name/Title
Arthur L. Stewart House | Main Street, Cherryfield, Maine | Cherryfield Historic DistrictDescription
Cherryfield, Maine
From Sunrise County Architecture (2nd revised and enlarged edition) 1996, p.89:
ARTHUR L. STEWART HOUSE
Arthur Stewart had this Mansard house built on Main Street. The ell behind the house was the first part to be built, and may date back to the 1850s when Freeman Jackson had a home standing on this lot. The main part of the house has fishscale shingles above the bay windows and along the roof. This massive residence has a bracketed cornice, comer pilasters, and a flat- roofed portico over the entryway. The mansard roof was added in 1891, and the work was done by Charles Allen of Cherryfield. The Stewart House is presently known as the Black Shutter Inn. AFN
From National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet,
Section number 7, Pages 16- 17:
39. Arthur L. Stewart House, c. 1850, 1891 - C Main street
Charles A. Allen, Contractor for Remodelling
Composed of a highly ornamented Second Empire style front block and what is believed to be an earlier ell, the Stewart house is three stories in height and a wide three bays in width. Its picturesque facade features a central entrance that is sheltered by a flat roofed porch and three-sided bay windows that rise through two stories to the bracketed cornice. Shingled skirting separates the lower and upper levels of these bays which are also ornamented with brackets. The trio of dormers that punctuate the patterned shingle mansard feature segmentat and pedimented hoods. These dormers are repeated on both side elevations where the' lower windows have bracketed hoods. The house is sheathed in weatherboards with the exception of shingled panels above the front windows. . The, mansard roof, bay windOWS, and porch were added by local builder Charles A. Allen in 1891 as described in the June 16, 1891, edition of the Machias Union.
Arthur L. stewart was among Cherryfield's leading businessmen. His numerous enterprises included a general mercantile firm, a stove and tinware manufactory, and a blueberry canning operation. In this latter business he is believed to have been the first commercial canner of this crop which assumed increasing importance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.