Historic Cape home regains its profile

CAPE ELIZABETH — On Two Lights Road in Cape Elizabeth, just past the entrance to the state park, there’s a home under renovation, and you might be forgiven for thinking the owner is adding a church steeple.

It’s not a bad guess, in part because the home is more historic than you’d think, and many a sailor, or stranded ship’s passenger, has prayed to the building and its occupants.

Of course, at that time, the building was located on the shore, near the parking lot to the Lobster Shack. Look closely there, and you can see its original foundation.

Built in 1886 by the federal government, the building was originally the Life Savings Station, one of 290 such structures across the nation, including nine that went up in Maine. The station was eventually closed, and the building moved and turned into a residence. The owner is now restoring the station to its original condition, complete with a new observation tower.

The Life Savings Station once played a prominent role in the area’s seafaring culture. From its place at the mouth of the cove, a seven-man crew who lived and worked in the station would pull rowboats out of bay doors on the main floor, and rush out to rescue people from ships that broke apart on the rocks just off Cape Elizabeth. Think of it as an aquatic fire station.

“The Live Savings Stations got their start in the 1800s when people were coming over from Europe in droves,” explains the building’s owner, Don Kennel. “They’d get really close, like a couple hundred yards off the coast, and their boats would crash all over the place.”

Maine’s rockbound coast of Cape Elizabeth is notoriously tricky, hence the Head Light, and even today troubles are not unheard of.

After discovering that volunteers were not much interested in braving the surf on altruistic principle alone, the federal government created the Live Saving Service. While the Coast Guard of that era concentrated on catching smugglers trying to bypass tariffs at port, the Life Savers did just what their name implies. Their motto for every wreck, said Kennel, was –“You don’t have to come back, but you have to go out.”

Kennel fell in love with the building in 2005. 

“I was renting in Cape Elizabeth and looking for a place to live,” recalls Kennel. “At that time, the house was nowhere near in as nice a shape as it is now, but for some reason I kept coming back to it.”

By that time the station had been long since decommissioned – done when the Life Savers were merged with the Coast Guard in 1920s – sold off, and, in 1952, moved up Two Lights Road to its current location, where it was retrofitted to become a two-family home.

“Oh, they used to move buildings around all the time, much more than they do today,” said Wayne Brooking, who still lives at the end of the road and witnessed the move.

Brookings great-grandfather, Captain Sumner Dyer, was head-man, or Keeper, of the station.

With advise from Brooking, a longtime member of the Cape Elizabeth Historical Society, Kennel has amassed a collection of artifacts related to his home, including copies of the original design plans.

As he set about to restore his home to its original condition – at least as close as is possible while maintaining its current function – Kennel uncovered few items, apart from one log book of Captain Dyer’s found inside a wall that has since joined its sibling volumes in the National Archives.

“There wasn’t much else to find,” said Kennel. “The place had been picked pretty clean. But really, the house itself is the artifact.”

Over the years, Kennel has filled his home with many implements of the Life Savings trade, including manuals, books, oars, pictures and even ropes and pulleys that were part of the “breeches bouy” system fired from Lyle cannons on shore in the rigging of a wrecked ship.

One item Kennel has is a weighted board fired from the cannon. On it are instructions for how to attach the pulley ropes, so that people could he hauled to shore, bouncing and bounding over the waves and rocks in a pair of pants sewn onto an early life preserver.

“Can you imagine?” Kennel asks, with a twinkle in his eye.

Kennel’s latest project, the restoration of the buildings original lookout tower, has been done with help from the town, which allowed the staircase to be built to its original two-foot-wide dimensions.

Given his job at Idexx Laboratories in Westbrook, Kennel’s interests run the gamut from high tech to early tech. It’s not uncommon for prospective Idexx customers to be taken on a complimentary trip to the Lobster Shack. As often as not, Kennel’s home ends up on the itinerary.

“People are sold no doing business here because it’s ‘The way life should be,” said Kennel, quoting the state’s famous tagline. “But I really enjoy showing them how it really used to be.”