The Bar Harbor Club: By the Numbers
The Bar Harbor Club, adjacent to the Harborside Hotel, Spa & Marina, may be steeped in history as the leisure club of the likes of Rockefellers and Pulitzers, but its age isn’t the only number that speaks to its allure today.
Some 20 years ago, the crumbling Bar Harbor Club that overlooks Frenchman Bay looked more like a deteriorating skeleton than a luxury headquarters where people with last names like Rockefeller frequented to languidly lie by the pool. These days, thanks to a thorough nine-year restoration that finished in 2009, the club is back to its original state of grandeur, including a new 75-foot pool and 11,000-square-foot Poolhouse, and guests staying at the marina resort that is the Harborside Hotel, Spa & Marina are granted access with their room stay. But the new amenities aren’t the only testament to its reinstated luxury; dig a little deeper, and you’ll find a slew of stats that tally what the club has to offer.
23 Days it took to raise $246,000 for the club’s original renovation in 1929. Of the 112 people who became members by donating, notables included philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. and world-famous publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who later sat on the club’s first board of governors.
18,200 Number of locally harvested lobsters the club sells in a season. Maine’s favorite crustacean is found in creative ways on the menu, including bisques, cakes, and risotto, but the most popular presentation is undoubtedly its most classic: steamed in ocean water and served piping hot alongside drawn butter.
75 Length in feet of the outdoor pool (half the size of an Olympic swimming pool), located 10 feet from the ocean’s edge. The pool sits in the footprint of the former outdoor pool, which used to be maintained by the original canoe club in the early 1900s. The canoe club was also the organization that built the original poolhouse, which underwent a renovation of its own in 2009.
6 Number of spa treatment rooms in the club’s Tudor-style building, featuring soothing tones of yellow and green and large windows that overlook the ocean. Treatments range from custom facials and massages to specialty pedicures for expectant mothers. Complete the experience by sprawling out on one of the waiting room’s goose-down chaise lounges with a cup of Belgian sipping chocolate.
50 Number of people who can fit in the club’s 25,000-gallon hot tub at one time, which is located right down by the edge of Frenchman Bay. Parents can take a soak and keep an eye on their children in the adjacent one-and-a-half-foot-deep kiddie pool or watch them search for crabs and critters in the clam flats at low tide, located just steps away.
$328,790.66 Amount that was poured into the club when it officially reopened on July 1, 1930. Had the subscribers’ fund not been raised in September 1929, just one month before Wall Street crashed and the Great Depression set in, the new club likely would never have been built.
Where to Stay Harborside Hotel, Spa & Marina
