Here, you the viewer are on the campus of renowned Wooden Boat Publications and School. That’s Great Cove Drive coming down the hill right at you. It ends immediately behind you with a ramp into the waters of Great Cove.
The building in front of you probably is not the most beautiful you have seen; perhaps it’s even boring for you to look at, certainly (and thankfully) it’s not Trumpian. Yet, as they say in architecture school, form follows function. And, this building is beautifully functional.
In a way, this building is a jewel box in the late fall and winter and a place to feel good during the late spring through early fall. The jewels that it protects are finely-crafted WBS boats that sometimes even are gilded in gold by sunlight dollops dripping through the skylights:
It’s a post-and-panel structure and soon all of those green panels on this side and the opposite side of the building will be taken away. The boats will be led eagerly into Great Cove and the plain building will become a lovely pavilion between green woods and blue waters.
Sea airs will waft through the pavilion while classes are taught to students at tables there, or while food is being served there to visitors, or while theatrical performances are being given to local residents, or while people are hanging out, waiting for a spring shower to stop and hoping to see a rainbow over the Cove.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 11, 2026.)