House and Garden 
Vo!. VII 
April, 1905 
THE GARDEN AT “BLAIR EYRIE” 
No. 4 
THE ESTATE OF DE WITT CLINTON BLAIR, ESQ., BAR HARBOR, ME. 
By I. Howland Jones 
Designed by Andrews, Jagues & 
UR ROUNDED by the raw, majestic 
nature characteristic of the Northern 
coast, the problem presented by the “Blair 
Eyrie” garden was a difficult one. In its 
essence, the question was how best to mediate 
between art and nature; how to use the stern 
virility of the place and gradually absorb it 
into an artificial cultivation without a shock 
to one’s sense of the fitness of things. I he 
very real artistic worth of the rugged unyield¬ 
ingness of the Maine hillsides is too interesting 
Rantoul, Architects 
to be swamped by the artificialities of a 
wholly formal treatment. Nature should 
he let alone when she is so pre-eminently 
distinguished by her own wildness. No 
architect can create the magnificent gaunt¬ 
ness of a New England setting, though he is 
justified in its invasion and may convert it 
into a mise en scene for gentler artificialities. 
From every point of attack the problem 
seemed to bristle with unusual difficulties, 
but aided by the especially propitious climate 
VIEW TOWARD THE TEA-HOUSE 
171 
Copyright, 190s, by The John C. Winston Co. 
