By Sarah Stebbins
Photos by Trent Bell
From our September 2025 issue
At first, Susan Leahy sought only to replace the ramshackle 19th-century cottage she purchased on a small island in Harpswell in 2018. But then the dilapidated cottage next door and falling-down barn across the road went on the market, and she bought them too. “It wasn’t so much that I wanted the barn lot,” Leahy says. “But I didn’t want someone to build a mega house there because I thought that would ruin the island for everybody.” The plot now features a new pine-sided barn, where Leahy hosts community gatherings, and wood-chip paths cutting through waist-high wildflowers, where neighbors are welcome to wander. Leahy also plans to make the barn’s loft a publicly accessible repository of historical photos, maps, and documents she’s compiled over five years of researching the island, which most people know as Oakhurst Island (although most maps mark it as Hen Island). Fred Darling, a descendant of a Black man named Benjamin Darling (whose relatives were among the first to settle on nearby Malaga Island), bought Oakhurst Island in the early 1880s. Later, Fred’s wife, Viola, ran a boarding house there. Leahy admires Viola’s community spirit. “She had a library here, and people came from all over to spend the summer,” Leahy says. “It was quite a place.”
Dining Area
Rob Whitten and Alyssa Moseman, of Portland’s Whitten Architects, and Reggie Lebel, of Bowdoinham’s Emerald Builders, reimagined Leahy’s home and barn (and will soon replace her second cottage with a replica she plans to use as a guest house and rental property). Leahy’s own house was once a rental, known as Sunrise Cottage, owned by Fred Darling. Alas, it was too run-down to save. Her new one-bedroom cottage echoes the old place’s simple, gabled form, but has a modern, open-plan interior. Wraparound windows turn Frost Fish Cove into a mural in the dining space, furnished with a reclaimed-walnut table and L-shaped bench by Biddeford woodworker Derek Preble.
Barn
Only half a dozen residents live on five-acre Oakhurst Island, and Leahy wanted to make a good impression. Before her new house was built, she hosted a party on her property for islanders and folks who live along the road leading to the causeway. “We delivered invitations by hand and people came who had never talked to each other before,” she says. Five years later, she held an anniversary party outside the timber-frame barn, which is equipped with a kitchen to facilitate entertaining. Clad in local pine paneling and hemlock flooring, the airy space also houses gardening supplies and a seating area for indoor gatherings.
Patio
Yarmouth landscape designer Kathleen Fitzgerald, of Tide Walk Designs, and North Yarmouth installer Samuel Knight feathered a rounded granite patio (centered on an old grist stone from the former Portland Architectural Salvage) into the property’s exposed ledge. Flowering plants, including giant Solomon’s seals, sweet woodruff, joe-pye weeds, echinacea, and nepeta, envelop the gathering spot and hum with bees from Leahy’s hives. When less-hospitable insects descend, she retreats to a screened gazebo on the barn lot.
Kitchen
Strategically placed windows in the primary and barn kitchen frame Leahy’s favorite buildings. She designed this cook space around another treasured scene: an encaustic landscape given to her by a friend. Preble crafted the cabinetry with some of the same salvaged walnut used in the dining area, and outfitted the 1,500-square-foot house with a bevy of built-ins, such as a living-room storage bench and mudroom cubbies, that make it feel more spacious. Radiant heat in the oak floors and a Jøtul propane stove keep the downstairs toasty.
Meadow
“I wanted to put something here that couldn’t be mistaken for a house,” says Leahy, who matched the barn with possibly the world’s most attractive outhouse (pictured at top). “Then when we threw out wildflower seeds, it was the icing on the cake. I never expected it to be as beautiful as it is.” Leahy worked with Fitzgerald and Knight on the landscape plan, which includes a granite firepit and raised vegetable beds. Islanders are invited to pick flowers and produce and gather in the barn. “I want this to always be available for neighbors to use,” Leahy says.
Waterfront
Standing on her dock on a recent afternoon, Leahy pointed out where the causeway replaced a wooden bridge that caved in and where another bridge spanned the cove, shortening the island kids’ route to their schoolhouse. She plans to write a book about the island’s history, and is always gathering stories. During our visit, she greeted a lobsterman who said he’d worked for a lobsterman who owned her home back in the ’70s. “I was the last male helper who went with him,” the guy said. “He took a female after that and didn’t get much hauled.” “Oh, wow,” Leahy replied, filing the information away.
