Bar Harbor's Parks
Bar Harbor has several public parks and green spaces for locals and visitors to enjoy.
AGAMONT PARK
Agamont Park is one of the most known green space in downtown Bar Harbor. The sloping hill looks down toward Frenchman Bay, porcupine islands and town pier.
It’s nestled at the end of Main Street next to the Bar Harbor Inn. It features a fountain, walkways, free Wi-Fi and is a great entrance to the privately-owned, but publicly used Shore Path.
“The Agamont Fountain was made by Eric Sodderholtz, an artist best known for designing and creating urns, planters and fountains out of concrete,” the Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association writes. “Well-wishing visitors frequently toss coins into the fountains, and the change is periodically collected by the VIA. In 2014, three seasons worth of coins were hauled, emptied, soaked, screened, washed, dried and reloaded into 12 large buckets. Each bucket weighed over 90 lbs., and it took a coin machine three hours to sort it all out!”
BARKER PARK
This small but adorable park sits right next to the U.S. Post Office on Cottage Street, again downtown.
There are park benches, a trash bin and a sculpture from the Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium in 2010. It’s made of Maine granite.
GLEN MARY WOODS
Located in a residential neighborhood in the southwest corner of downtown proper, 7.5-acre Glen Mary Park, in Mary Shannon, September 18, 1894 conveyed this park to the Bar Harbor Village Improvement Society.
It sits between Spring Street, Glen Mary Road, Waldron Road, Norris Ave, and Spring Street.
The Town leases the property from the VIA and built a wading pool /ice skating rink. That pool and rink is not currently functioning.
GRANT PARK
Grant Park sports happy dogs (on leashes) a view of the bay and islands and mainland Hancock County. It’s at the end of Albert Meadow, which begins on Main Street across from the Village Green. It’s a mid-access point for the Shore Path and was extensively renovated in 2017 and then rebuilt after the 2024 January storms. There is limited 2-hour parking.
HARBORVIEW PARK
This small park and promenade on West Street right at the end of Main Street (turn left). There are benches to watch water goings-ons and it’s a fast walk to multiple restaurants and shops.
PARK STREET ATHLETIC FIELDS
Athletic fields on the far end of downtown proper on Park Street (across from the MDI YMCA) host ball games, Fourth of July celebrations, Corvette shows, and so much more.
THE VILLAGE GREEN
The green sits at downtown’s center though many tourists seldom venture past it. We don’t know why. Please venture past it.
It hosts holiday celebrations, protests, the town band, art shows. It has Wi-Fi, too. It’s free. It also has an amazing fountain and some cool bits of history as well as a community piano.
“The town’s truly oldest antiquity is the bronze fountain on the Village Green which was purchased from an Italian villa garden by Philip Livingston during his winter trip to Europe in early 1909,” the Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association writes on its website. “The seventeenth century antique fountain was given to the Association and placed in the green in the summer of 1909 in memory of Mr. Livingston’s late wife.”
“In 1921, renowned landscape architect and gardener, Beatrix Farrand, was consulted and provided plans for a diagonal broadwalk to be established and to improve and move the bandstand a distance of twenty feet. The bandstand was moved and a flagpole erected at their present locations,” the association states.
THE BAR HARBOR VILLAGE IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION
The Bar Harbor VIA helps the town maintain several of its outdoor properties and has been instrumental in the creation and restoration of many. You can find out more about this historic nonprofit agent of good here.