Wedding Cake House
The Bourne House
The 19th Century ship builder George Washington Bourne brought his newlywed bride Jane in 1825 to his new brick home at Kennebunk, Maine. In 1852, Bourne started decorating his existing Federal styled house, inspired by the Gothic Cathedral of Milan. Using only hand tools, he completed the work in 1852, four years before his death in 1856. By the end of the 19th Century, the House came to be known as “Wedding Cake House”. The house continued to be owned by the descendants of the Bourne family till the 1980s when the Burnett family took it over and restored it in 1983-84.
The Renovation Story
There are conflicting stories about the “Wedding Cake House” with one romantic tale contending for a place with the other story of house renovation and improvement. The latter story says that George Bourne constructed the brick house for his bride Jane in 1826. The house was built in line with federal architecture, simple and rectangular. It was first painted white and then the color was changed to yellow. In 1852 the barn of the house connected to it by a shed caught fire and to save the house, the shed was torn down. Bourne who was by that time retired had enough time to not only reconstruct the barn and the shed but to remodel the house with pinnacles to resemble a Gothic Cathedral.
The Romantic Tale
The romantic legend started circulating towards the end of the 19th Century long after the death of Bourne in 1856 with the publication of a postcard by a local businessman with the title “The Wedding Cake”. It was said that the carvings of the house had been designed by a sea captain during his forlorn hours of sea voyage away from his new wife whom he had to leave soon after marriage. The romance in the legend was that he did not have even time to eat the wedding cake from his wife’s hand.