Historic Neighborhood Walking Tour: Homes of Bath, Maine’s Sea Captains and Shipbuilders 

Sights and Stories bring “The Avenue” to Life on our Historic Neighborhood Tour

On this fun and fascinating guided tour, you will learn:

• Why Bath, Maine’s first women’s club hosted an anti-suffrage speaker

• Who kept house back in Bath, Maine for New York’s Ice King while he was hobnobbing with the Morgans and Rockefellers

• The contents of a shocking letter a Civil War hero’s sweetheart sent him after learning he was surrounded by the enemy at Antietam

• Why a shipbuilder’s daughter sued her father’s estate - and what happened next

• Why the friends and neighbors of a prominent Bath citizen had to surround his house to protect it from a violent mob

• How Bath, Maine’s billionaire business man almost became vice president of the United States, and what he said about the man who won

About Bath, Maine is home to many majestic private residences built during the town’s 19th century shipping and shipbuilding heyday.  Discover the enduring stories of these homes and their residents on a walk through Bath’s tree-lined Washington Street neighborhood where Greek Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne and Victorian architecture abound. The sights and stories on this thought-provoking tour, led by a local educator, will take you back in time. Groups are small, allowing time for questions, conversation and “ooh-ing” and “ah-ing” over exquisite architectural details.

Details: This 90 minute (leave an extra 15 minutes for the return walk), 3/4 mile walk is on mostly level ground, on sidewalks, and with some slight hills. $25 per person.

Hot tip: Once you book, you will receive a confirmation with more details, but here is a sneak peek of where the tour starts, with information about parking, too.

Nice to know: Bring a water bottle. There are no stores/shops along our route and depending on the time of day, it can be quite sunny. Also, though it is a very friendly street, there are few or no places to rest/sit (unlike our downtown tour.) Finally, we start at Library Park, and finish the formal tour about 3/4 of a mile north on Washington Street, then walk back together, chatting, maybe taking a different street back for some informal sight-seeing. If mobility is an issue for anyone in your group, you might want to pre-position a car near the corner of Washington and Edwards Streets - that is where the formal tour ends and then your group won’t have to walk back to Library Park.