During the American Revolution, fishermen and their families abandoned the Isles of Shoals off the coast and floated their homes to the Lower Town waterfront, where they were rebuilt.

In 1807, President Thomas Jefferson's embargo crippled local mercantile trade, and by the Civil War, Stage Neck had deteriorated into a ramshackle slum.

After the Union victory, Nathaniel Grant Marshall (1812-1882), a lawyer, had a vision to convert the poorest section of Lower Town into a first-class summer emporium for wealthy tourists.

[4] Steamers began arriving with families drawn to the Maine shore from the heat and pollution in Boston, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

It offered telephone and telegraph offices, a livery stable, riding and bathing facilities, tennis courts, barbershop, billiards room, ballroom, sailing, fishing excursions and canoes for picnics up the York River.

The Marshalls started both an electric and water company, and headed the effort to build the York Harbor & Beach Railroad, opened in 1887.

When the Marshall House burned in 1916, it was rebuilt in fire-resistant brick the following year to designs by noted Portland architect John Calvin Stevens.

At its porte-cochère, chauffeur-driven limousines from the estates deposited their owners in evening gowns and tuxedoes, to be joined by hotel patrons for dinner at 7:30 p.m. Post-prandial entertainments included chamber music by a Boston Symphony ensemble in the lobby, or Saturday dancing and costume parties in the ballroom.

[5] Development here began in the 1870s and virtually ended in the 1920s, leaving York Harbor a microcosm of period resort architecture, now converted for year-round use.

The Marshall House was sold in 1957 and demolished in 1972, to be replaced with condominiums and the Stage Neck Inn (designed by Sasaki, Dawson, DeMay Associates).