The Cries are one of those old midcoast families whose name you can find everywhere if you know where to look, from the downtown Rockland block named for family’s old hardware store to the offshore island of Criehaven, to present-day descendants who, among other things, run the Maine Lobster Festival.
In 1895, about a mile from H.H. Crie & Co., which supplied shipbuilders, fishermen and quarry workers during Rockland’s industrial height, the family built a gracious Victorian with a large, attached barn at 147 Talbot Ave. in Rockland. The store has since been sold and closed and Criehaven Island has long since been (mostly) abandoned, but the house on Talbot Avenue stayed in the family for the next 130 years — until now.
The 3,235-square-foot home is now on the market for $589,000, after steep price reductions have taken more than $100,000 off the price since it was first listed in August.
The three-story, turreted home needs some work, to say the least, which has perhaps scared away potential buyers, but it retains undeniable charm and elegant proportions that help it stand out among Rockland’s Victorian gems. Entry is through a grand oak front door into a high-ceilinged hallway featuring, like most of the house, original wood trim. Working pocket doors slide open to a front parlor or drawing room, recalling a more formal era. The first floor unfolds with a large kitchen — the product of an earlier renovation and now very dated — along with a small formal dining room and, to the east, a sunny breakfast area. A den, living room and mudroom round out the practical spaces.
The interior details — vintage wallpaper, stained glass windows, green tilework fireplace with carved columned mantle — feel out of a children’s book. And the well-maintained exterior, of both the white main house and red barn, has the characteristic gingerbread house flourishes of a grand Victorian.
Upstairs are three bedrooms, one with large bay windows overlooking the street, along nooks and smaller rooms that could be used for an office or reading area. Above that is a full-sized third-floor attic, expansive and filled with sunlight thanks to plenty of windows, offering a huge range of options for a buyer with an equally sized budget.
And while the house is barely outside Rockland’s downtown core, it features an enormous two-story attached barn, with a giant sliding door, original horse stall and cupola roof. With its exposed historic woodwork, soaring vaulted ceiling, unique pentagonal windows and hundreds of uninterrupted square feet over two floors, the barn alone is enough to get any old home romantic swooning.
It was in that barn last year where workers discovered, hidden in a trunk, a 150-year-old baseball uniform from the team sponsored by the Crie family hardware store. Celia Crie Knight, the president of the Maine Lobster Festival, was shocked to discover the wool uniform and leather-trimmed cap in seemingly perfect shape, free of moth holes, which she posed with for the cover of the Midcoast Villager last year.
Knight has fond memories of large family gatherings in the home, which had tall enough ceilings to accommodate “a very big” Christmas tree and enough space for kids to roam while their parents gathered elsewhere.
“In the summertime, the attached barn made having birthday parties easy and a good breeze always blew thru it,” she said. “We even had swings inside of it when we were kids.”
Her personal favorite feature of the house is the stained glass windows over the stairs. “When I was a baby, my mother would carry me up to bed and always let me look through the pretty colored panes, and carefully touch them,” she said. “I am very proud of the house and it is my hope that a new family will love it like mine did.”
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.
