Seawall Road · Southwest Harbor, Maine

Homes on the quiet side of Acadia.

Color, whimsy, and a little salt air. Four one-of-a-kind homes on Seawall Road, a block from the harbor.

328 guest reviews · 4.98 average · Superhosts

Granite walls spilling catmint, a fern-ringed fire pit, a stone terrace for long dinners, and a basketball half-court. The gardens tie the houses together, and after dark the birches light up.

For saleSouthwest Harbor, Maine

Land at 217 Seawall Road

A mature, wooded building site near the village of Southwest Harbor, minutes from Acadia National Park. Public water at the road, with public wastewater lines extendable to the lot. Architectural plans drawn during our ownership are available to the buyer.

Price

$249,000

Acreage

1.7 acres

Zoning

Zone B

Water

Public

Listed with Laura Pellerano, Legacy Properties Sotheby's International Realty · MLS #1684858

About

Brownstone & Birch

DSG Inc · Harlem & Maine

DSG is a small, family-run design and property company led by Catherine Baker-Pitts. We restore and reimagine homes in two places we love: the brownstone-lined streets of Harlem and the birch-filled shores of Mount Desert Island, Maine. Working with architects including Wake Design and Garnett DePasquale, we bring old houses into new chapters, furnishing each one ourselves, down to the light fixtures, vintage finds, and local art.

Attention to detail—and a willingness to roll up one’s sleeves—runs in the family.

Catherine’s grandfather worked in a hosiery mill by day and laid floors by night. When her father graduated from high school, his daddy’s gift was a house they would restore together, and whatever it sold for was his to keep. Her parents rescued discarded furniture from the roadside, stripping away layers of varnish to reveal the beauty underneath. Her father could happily lose an afternoon hunting for the perfect brass sconce in an antique shop. Her mother has spent a lifetime giving original art to her four daughters, with reframing among her favorite pastimes.

After careers in academia and Democratic politics, her parents turned their attention to a rambling Victorian overlooking the water in Bass Harbor, Maine. The house became the family’s gathering place—and, eventually, the inspiration for the next generation to take on houses of their own.

The family’s love of homes reaches well beyond Maine. Academic salaries never kept Catherine and her sisters from seeing the world; her parents had a gift for elaborate swaps of houses, cars, dogs, and occasionally even jobs. Long stays in Europe and a stint in Australia meant settling into other people’s homes and, for a while, other people’s lives.

Her parents made a small nook of the world feel big. The doors stayed open, the guests kept coming, and nothing, inside or out, was allowed to settle into stuck. Welcoming guests into her own homes is Catherine’s way of returning the favor.

Catherine and her three sisters—Christina, Cynthia, and Clara—share a running conversation about architecture, furniture, and art. All four maintain homes in Maine, with Clara overseeing the family properties. Furniture migrates between houses, design samples accumulate, and opinions are freely offered.

Maine summers bring a revolving cast of family and friends, long meals, and everyone pitching in with the cooking. But while her sisters are happiest lingering over simmering pots or gathering around the kitchen island, Catherine is forever trying to usher them into the other rooms—or out onto the porch—away from the chopping and into the spaces they’ve spent so much time making beautiful.

It’s a family habit, this business of evolving, changing, reworking our insides and our environments alike.

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