About ten years ago, the Mount
Desert Historical Society, in Mount
Desert Island, Maine, decided to construct
an archive building in
Somesville. The design they finally
approved—the project of a local
design class I was teaching with an
associate—was a small building in the
style of the local houses. It was to be
built on the village millpond opposite
another tiny building that held the
first town office. The two buildings on
the small pond formed a complex that
was almost, but not quite, perfect.
When one of the Society members
came by to see the construction drawings,
he looked at the site plan, and
said, "Wouldn't it be nice if there were
a footbridge across the millpond