Harvard Sells Off Houses In Maine

Harvard sold two Maine vacation houses last fall that were donated decades ago for faculty use, drawing criticism from professors who had used the houses as summer get-aways.

The University sold the properties—known as the Kendall and Paine Houses—last fall, after successfully petitioning a Maine Probate Court to waive restrictions on the Kendall property, which had been willed to Harvard with the stipulation that the University offer it “for occupancy, free of rent” to faculty members.

The Kendall and Paine Houses, which were donated in 1942 and 1958 and are located on the remote Sutton Island, generated $2.1 million and $2.5 million, respectively, for the University.

Professors fondly recalled time spent at the houses, and expressed displeasure both with the sale and the manner in which it was communicated to the faculty.

“I was disappointed,” said David A. Evans, a chemistry professor who said he used Kendall House four times but never received any notice from Harvard about the sale. “A lot of faculty over the years have enjoyed spending some time up there.”

Though the properties were given to Harvard specifically for faculty use, the University argued in court filings that the “costs of maintaining Kendall have become prohibitive,” and that the maintenance fund provided by the donor, William M. Kendall, covered less than half of the total cost of keeping up the property.

Harvard had to dip into its own reserves for the roughly $20,000 needed to make up the difference, in large part because the island is so remote that the University had to commission a barge to ferry equipment to the island, which has no paved roads.

Evans also noted that there was a discrepancy between the will’s directive that faculty have rent-free access to the property and the fact that he and other professors were charged for using the site.

But University spokesman Joe Wrinn said that the decision to begin requiring rent was not Harvard’s, attributing the change to an Internal Revenue Service ruling in the mid-1990s that affected gifts to university professors.

While the Maine probate court allowed Harvard to sell the property, it required in its ruling that the proceeds from the sale and the left over maintenance endowment be used to create “a separate endowment fund to be used exclusively to support the rest, recreation, and sabbatical study of Harvard University faculty.”

Wrinn said the fund had been set up, but that he did not know how it would be spent.

The other property—donated by George L. Paine, also for the purpose of faculty vacations—came with a clause allowing the University to sell it after 15 years if the property had “become impractical to retain.” Paine’s will permitted profits from the sale to be used for “the general purposes of the University.”

News of the sale of the Maine homes followed rumors of a transaction involving another restricted gift: the 99-acre Harvard Forest in Hamilton, Mass, located about 30 miles northeast of the Cambridge campus.

Fearing a sale, local residents criticized the University this winter, but Harvard officials denied that they ever seriously considered selling the property.

—Staff writer Clifford M. Marks can be reached at cmarks@fas.harvard.edu.