Bar Harbor Mansion Owner Building 24-Car Garage for Antique Autos

by Bill Trotter/Bangor Daily News

Workers nail down plywood on the roof of a large garage and apartment under construction at the East of Eden mansion property in Bar Harbor on Nov. 8. Credit: Bill Trotter / BDN

BAR HARBOR—A multimillionaire who bought a 114-year-old Bar Harbor mansion in 2020 is constructing another large building on the property for his antique car collection.

The garage, which will have a four-bedroom apartment on the second floor, will have room for 24 cars. It will have 20 parking spaces on the floor and room for four more on lifts that will raise them up so each can have another car parked underneath, according to plans on file at the Bar Harbor town office.

The 15,700-square-foot accessory building is being built for an estimated $1.5 million. The 8,000-square-foot garage will take up the entire first floor, aside from a curving stairwell up to the apartment. The 7,600-square-foot apartment on the second floor will have four bedrooms, each with a private bathroom and walk-in closet. Other amenities will include a half-bath, game room and butler’s pantry, in addition to a family room, a great room and a kitchen-dining room.

Douglas D. Schumann, the founder and majority owner of PQ Controls in Bristol, Connecticut, bought the mansion known as East of Eden for $5 million. The oceanfront Italianate palazzo-style mansion, built in 1910, was owned for years by William Ruger, heir to the Ruger firearms company, before it was sold at auction in 2019 for $4.5 million. Schumann bought it a year later.

An computer-generated illustration of what a new garage/apartment building at the East of Eden mansion property is expected to look like when it is complete is on file at the Bar Harbor town office. The 8,000 square-foot garage space on the first floor will have parking for 24 cars, while the upstairs apartment will have four bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and walk-in closet.

Schumann did not respond Wednesday to messages seeking comment about his car collection or the garage construction project.

The original mansion sits on 9 manicured waterfront acres and has roughly 1,100 feet of shoreline frontage overlooking Frenchman Bay. It has 28 rooms including eight bedrooms, nine full bathrooms, three half baths, a professional-grade kitchen and a wine cellar. The current overall assessed value of the property is $8 million, according to town records.

Schumann, who owns a winter home in Naples, Florida, has posted photos of cars he owns on his Facebook page.

One shows a 1929 Ford truck painted in hot rod style, with flames on its hood and doors, parked in front of the Criterion Theater on Cottage Street. Another shows a 1941 Cadillac “Woody” wagon parked next to the Bar Harbor Inn.

Schumann has had connections to Maine since before he purchased East of Eden.

His company owns and operates a production facility in Dover-Foxcroft. A graduate of Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston and of University of New Haven, Schumann survived a 2002 plane crash at Dexter Regional Airport in which the Cessna he was piloting ran off the end of the runway upon landing and into a mound of dirt, according to Bangor Daily News archives.

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This story appears through a media partnership with the Bangor Daily News.

Cover photo via Platinum Luxury Auctions

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