We are writing regarding the question of whether the design of the Rockport Harbor Hotel is in harmony with Rockport village.

Our firm, Scholz & Barclay Architecture, has years of experience rehabilitating and adding to historic Maine buildings, including the Camden Public Library, the Belfast Free Library and Rockport’s iconic Beechnut stone house, winning state and national awards in the process.

Meg was formerly the chair of the Camden Historic Resources Committee and currently serves on Camden’s Design Team. Our opinion of this project is professional and grounded in experience with the aesthetic and cultural problems raised by design changes in an historic context.

The new hotel lies in the Rockport Historic District, enrolled in the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The hotel’s adjacency to the Martin and Shepherd blocks means that applying the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation is appropriate in evaluating its design.

The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation & Illustrated Guidelines for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings recommends:

• New additions should be designed and constructed so that the character-defining features of the historic building are not radically changed, obscured, damaged, or destroyed in the process of rehabilitation. New design should always be clearly differentiated so that the addition does not appear to be part of the historic resource.
  
  
• Considering the attached exterior addition both in terms of the new use and the appearance of other buildings in the historic district or neighborhood. Design for the new work may be contemporary or may reference design motifs from the historic building. In either case, it should always be clearly differentiated from the historic building and be compatible in terms of mass, materials, relationship of solids to voids, and color.

The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation & Illustrated Guidelines for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings specifically recommends against:

• Duplicating the exact form, material, style, and detailing of the historic building in the new addition so that the new work appears to be part of the historic building.
  
  
• Imitating a historic style or period of architecture in new additions, especially for contemporary uses such as drive-in banks or garages.
  
  
• Using the same wall plane, roof line, cornice height, materials, siding lap or window type to make additions appear to be a part of the historic building.

Based on the Secretary of the Interior’s standards, an infill structure between the two historic brick blocks in the Rockport Historic District could have had a modern façade, crisply delineating the new from the historic.

The hotel design has chosen the alternate path to delineation from the historic fabric. While the design references adjacent historic design motifs (brick skin, decorative cornice, granite lintels, arches and a slate mansard roof) it uses strong visual clues such as setbacks from the street plane of the historic structures, changes in cornice and roof heights, balconies and contemporary windows to distinguish it from its historic neighbors.

Our opinion is the hotel design fulfills the national standard for additions to historic buildings while honoring the beauty of Rockport’s historic commercial buildings. Claims to the contrary are based on personal opinion and not an objective standard.

Meg Barclay and John Scholz live in Camden