Wedding Cake House
It was a fire not an upset bride that earned the most photographed house in Maine its “Wedding Cake House” moniker.
Contrary to a popular myth that ship owner George Bourne had to ship out before he could give his bride, Jane, a proper wedding ceremony and honeymoon, the white “icing” that adorns Kennebunk’s “Wedding Cake House,” was not put there in atonement.
In 1852, a fire started in the barn at the Bournes’s Summer Street home. Their Federal-style brick home, built in 1826, was saved by tearing out the shed that connected it to the barn. The barn was a total loss, but the need to rebuild gave George Bourne an opportunity to get creative.
According to local lore, on his travels abroad, Bourne, a ship owner, had seen Milan Cathedral in Italy and been impressed by its ornate Gothic architectural style. When he rebuilt his barn, he took the cathedral’s look as inspiration and added “gingerbread” trim to it, but then his plainer looking house didn’t match the barn. Like homeowners experience today, one house project led to another. He rounded up some carpenters from his shipyard and he and they carved by hand decorative woodwork resembling an elaborately frosted wedding cake.
How the Bournes’s home came to be called the Wedding Cake House isn’t clear, but one widely believed story is that a local businessmen gave it that name for a series of postcards featuring Kennebunk landmarks. Privately owned for more than 150 years, the home’s fairy-tale appearance has attracted generations of tourists, prom attendees, and newlyweds, who continue to pose for photos on the sidewalk outside.