Poland Spring Beach House

The former Poland Spring Beach House stands on the south side of Maine Street (SR 26), on a narrow isthmus separating Middle Range Pond (to the south) and Lower Range Pond (to the north). It is a shingled two story wood frame structure, with a hip-roofed central section flanked by single-story wings, each also covered by a hip roof. The central section is topped by a cupola, and has wide porches extending across its width on both sides. The porch features scroll-sawn decorative elements, including balusters and brackets on the cornice. The porch on the lake side has been enclosed. On the inside, the wings, which originally housed changing areas, have had partitions removed to create living spaces as part of the building's conversion to residential use. Despite this and other alterations, the building interior retains a significant number of period Colonial Revival and Late Victorian features.[2]

The Poland Spring resort complex was developed on the east side of Middle Range Pond in the second half of the 19th century, capitalizing on claims of restorative cures provided by waters from a spring, still in use today by the Poland Spring bottling operation. Its principal feature, the Poland Spring House, declined in the 20th century and burned in 1975. This beach house was built in 1909, and was originally floated on Middle Range Pond on pontoons during the busy summer tourist season. In the 1930s, it was permanently sited at its present location at the northern end of the lake. It remained in use as a beach house until the 1970s, when it was converted to private residential use. It is one of a small number of surviving early 20th-century inland resort beach houses in the state.[2]

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Androscoggin County, Maine