Appledore Island, Maine, one of the Isles of Shoals located ten miles off the Maine/New Hampshire coast, is best remembered for the artists salon that thrived there in the late 1800s, before the advent of artists' colonies as we know them today. Celia Thaxter reigned over an impressive group of friends who were also the leading artists, musicians, and writers of the day. These included Edward MacDowell and his wife; American pianist William Mason, son of Lowell Mason, who played the grand piano in her salon daily; and John Knowles Paine, America's first serious composer of note. Childe Hassam painted Celia's magnificent garden in a style similar to Monet's Giverney paintings. This rarefied atmosphere ended with Thaxter's death in 1894 and the hotel burned in the early 1900s, bringing down the final curtain on this heyday in American arts. A charming small original daybook from this time period was re-published in part, in 1992, titled The Isles of Shoals Remembered, by Caleb Mason.

Today, the island is home to Shoals Marine Laboratory, run cooperatively by Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire. Appledore Island is owned predominantly by the Star Island Corporation.

The most prominent feature of the is a tower built to hold a World War II radar installation. The dome, which would hold the radar, is no longer present and no actual radar unit was ever installed in this tower.

External links

• Shoals Marine Laboratory

Islands of Maine