BAR HARBOR — A local inn made a quick appearance on the NBC comedy sketch show, Saturday Night Live (SNL) on Saturday.
The short begins with a shot of the Bar Harbor Inn, which overlooks Frenchman Bay and the Porcupine Islands. The iconic hotel’s yellow umbrellas are out in the shot. People stroll along the first section of the Shore Path, and then there’s a quick fade transition to the skit, titled “Babymoon.”
According to the skit’s description on YouTube, “A group of friends (Charli xcx, Heidi Gardner, Ego Nwodim, Sarah Sherman) sing a song about their babymoon trip at their friend’s (Chloe Fineman) baby shower.” It continues the storyline of Kelsey and Domingo, which began in another SNL episode.
According to the inn’s general manager, Jeremy Dougherty, it wasn’t something the inn had planned and it seemed to be a random selection.
”It’s an old video clip of the Inn dating back to at least 2017 or earlier based on the Terrace setup in the image,” Dougherty said. “Likely they were just looking for a quintessential New England inn image to portray a location where a babymoon would take place, which they succeeded in doing! Otherwise, it seems to be a quite random inclusion and now a fun blip on the extensive history of the Bar Harbor Inn!”
A video of the skit was released on YouTube Nov. 17 and had received over a million views within its first 24 hours.
The video used of the Bar Harbor Inn likely came from Getty Image’s stock footage, which has the 6-second clip that was created by Bill Bachmann and uploaded in 2015. Bachmann was a world-renowned commercial photographer originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He died in 2017 after a battle with cancer. He’d been an author as well and had created Bachmann Tour Overdrive, a travel group. According to his obituary, he’d “traveled 8 1/2 times around the world, a total of 214,000 miles.” His work appeared in multiple top periodicals such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Sports Illustrated, People, and Time.
After a duo of storms last winter, the inn had to renovate its portion of the town’s popular and heavily damaged Shore Path, a gravel pathway through multiple private properties. The repairs cost over $1 million.
The front portion of what is now the Bar Harbor Inn was first built in 1887 as the Oasis Club’s clubhouse, known as the Mount Desert Reading Room, with a grand celebration on Aug. 3, 1887.
According to the inn’s website, “The avowed purpose of The Oasis Club was to promote ‘literary and social culture.’ The handsome new cedar shingled structure, designed by architect William Ralph Emerson, became the center of social activities during the summers before World War I.”
In 1902, the business erected a steel pier on the site. Other improvements and expansions followed. When President William Howard Taft visited town for three days, he received a grand reception at the Reading Room. In 1921, it was opened to the public, and the next year it was sold. During World War II, the building was leased to the U.S. Navy. It housed Red Cross volunteers during the fire in the 1940s. Purchased by David J. Witham in 1987, the hotel property has been expanded and renovated since then.
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