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
