Name/Title
Dorothy Waide Playhouse | 26 Middle Street | I7-0C3-15 | District #151Entry/Object ID
151Description
This full size Gothic style children’s playhouse dates to about 1900. A then mayor of Eastport, Maine, Edward S. Waide (1867-1944), and his wife and artist, Martha “Mattie” Waide (1857-1929), had the playhouse originally built for their daughter, Dorothy Waide (1894-1974). The playhouse is appoximately 12 feet high, nine feet long and six feet wide. It has a door on each of the long sides and two Gothic arched windows at each end with a triagle shaped window above. For many years the playhouse stood on the lawn surrounding the Waide’s large historic Hayden house home in the center of Eastport at 17 Boynton Street. It stood in front of part of an attached barn to the house. In the early 1940s, the playhouse was removed to be next to a house at the outskirts of Eastport. The playhouse was gifted to TIMA in 2017 by Sheila and Ronald Sullivan (1935-2016) and family and moved to a temporary location next to TIMA’s GAR Civil War Veteran’s Hall building. Sheila grew up and lived at the house on the grounds where the playhouse had been moved to in early 1940s by her father, Leslie Grant (1907-1971). Ronald Sullivan’s grandfather, Guy Sullivan (unknown-1944), built the playhouse in the late nineteenth century for the the Waide family with help from his son, James Sullivan (1895-1965), Ronald’s father. In the summer of 2025, the restored playhouse will be moved to the rear of TIMA’s Central Meeting House where TIMA is developing a small contemplative park. The playhouse will then be a half block away from where it originally stood.
