Their wedding gifts, according to The Summer Cottages of Islesboro, by Earle Shettleworth, Jr., included "a diamond necklace, a diamond tiara, and a string of pearls valued at $500,000." Oh, and a check for $1 million.

Designed by Stewardson & Page of Philadelphia, the long white structure took shape during the years Woodrow Wilson struggled to keep the U.S. out of World War I and nestled into the evergreens as naturally as an osprey might alight, looking across Dark Harbor toward Camden.

Seventy six years later, another Princeton grad from Philadelphia purchased the place with his bride. His name is Parker Stevenson.

Stevenson, Kirstie Alley, and their two children spent close to 10 summers here.

This spring he’s selling the Mitchell Cottage – the former Islesboro Inn – for $7.8 million.

"I remember the first time I saw it," Stevenson says.

Stunning is hardly an exaggeration. Upon disembarking from the Maine State Ferry ($20.25 round trip for 2 people with auto, and 10 of the prettiest minutes you’ll ever spend in Maine), you must drive through swooping peregrinations along narrow road and dark forest before you break into the clearing to see the white Federal revival house with Doric columns, guest house, tennis court, dock, and gardens. During the 1960s, this 4.5-acre estate used to be known to Mainers as the Islesboro Inn.

Entering through the massive front door below a fan with sidelights, visitors are greeted by an enormous central hall with a graceful staircase curling to a masterpiece of a Georgian Palladian window.

The living room, to the left, runs the depth of the house. Everywhere there are exquisite high Federal revival dentils, pilasters, pediments, corbels, capitals, and crown moldings that would have done Salem’s Samuel McIntire proud. The floors glow in original dark fir.

As for the luckiest spot in the house, Stevenson says, "It’s everyone’s favorite spot. You walk in that entry and see that whole line of [french] doors that go to the back porch. The cottage faces Gickey Harbor, with views of Birch, Spruce, Warren, and Seven Hundred Acre islands. There’s Bald Mountain to the left, Ducktrap Mountain to the right. There’s Ferry Landing. It’s that view that draws everybody, with the sun setting over the Camden Hills. You don’t ‘make plans’ to rendezvous there, but that’s where you all end up. It’s also where the windjammers come in to anchor, right in front of us. I’ve seen six up there."

Inspired and in love in 1992, he and Kirstie Alley (who starred together in the TV miniseries North and South II) jumped into redecorating in bold yellows, florals, and peppermint stripes. At the time, actor-director Stevenson (The Lifeguard, Hardy Boys Mysteries, Stroker Ace, Falcon Crest, and Baywatch) had a regular role on Melrose Place.

"My favorite part was converting it back to a private home. It was as obvious as taking out the pay phone in the hallway. A bar service blocked the entrance to the dining room, so we took it out. There were a lot of systems to make the inn a commercial entreprise, and restoring it to its original grace gave us a lot of pleasure."

Today, even winter visitors are amazed at the snugness of the Mitchell Cottage. Not a scrap of sunshine goes to waste. "I’ve been here all times of the year. Even in winter, when we arrive in the evening and it’s dark, my kids feel cozy in every corner of the house, which really shocks me, because I might have thought it daunting."

Stevenson, an avid tennis player, immediately found himself drawn to "the tennis court, built right into the ledge against the water, with a [Japanese garden-inspired] trellis and pagoda." Losing a ball here is an existential experience as you watch it float away. "I’d never had that experience before. Below the court, there’s a wooded path to the docks where you look across the harbor and see this big lineup of 15 American flags flying to mark the piers of estates along the coastline."

Stevenson wasn’t in Maine during 9/11, "but that image came back to me, of Islesboro being the safest place in the world.

"There’s nothing like it. I looked along the San Juan Islands and the coast of California, but I couldn’t find the palette of green, granite, and dark blue that you can only find in Maine."

"It was more like my recollections of Northeast Harbor in the 1950s. When I saw the inn, I thought, Wow, this is what I remember Maine being like."

Even when he sells it, the memories "will hinge on my experiences here with the kids. What I wanted was for my children to have the same exposure to the water I had. [Stevenson rowed on the Varsity 8 at Princeton.] My strongest memories of Northeast Harbor are not of tea dances and regattas but going in a small Whaler with my dad and looking for osprey. It was venturing outside the harbor in a rowboat for the first time, thinking ‘Oh my God, what am I doing?’ I wanted them to run along the shore and pick up shells, make friends with the lobstermen and maybe go out with them, see stuff come up in the traps. Run through blueberry fields. I experienced that all over again, standing next to them."

For the new owners, the puckish Stevenson has left a few vestiges of the Islesboro Inn, in spite of himself.

"I left the numbers up on the doors, painted them over. They were funny. It’s not as if people say, ‘I’m staying in Number 9’ or anything. But I left them on purpose because it kind of cracked me up and guests enjoyed it."

"It’s not as if they scratched their initials in a windowpane... it’s more around the grounds.

"Sister Parish [a legendary Islesboro resident], who passed away a few years ago, played with the Mitchell children as a young girl, and she showed me where a log cabin used to be down on the water. It burned down in the 1950s, but the footing is still there.

"There’s a lot of ‘still there’ about the Mitchells. Sister Parish showed me where their formal gardens were once outlined in cedar bushes. Now they’re tall cedar trees, 80 feet high. I’ve planted wildflowers in places on my own, but there’s something grander here" -- a rough but eloquent sense of continuity. "The remnants of the formal gardens all over the property are still here if you know what to look for."

Sister Parish encouraged Stevenson and Alley to restore the cottage’s tri-cameral sun porch in particular. It’s the most extraordinary nook in the house, with interior basketweave lattice, vaulted cove ceilings, and a central green marble fireplace.

"The inn had used it for wood storage." It had fallen into total disrepair and begged for fresh drywall. But Sister Parish remembered it as ‘the tea room,’ Stevenson says. "The Mitchells gave teas there, and she insisted it be preserved."

For Stevenson, Maine has always been a family thing.

"My grandmother had spent time in Islesboro. My father’s side had spent time in Vinalhaven. I only realized later there was a Philadelphia connection with this house. The Philadelphians were in Mt. Desert, for the most part."

High-profile visitors from California react just like everyone else upon entering the cottage, he says.

"Everyone’s reaction is ‘Oh my God.’ There’s that intake of breath. Mainers on the island have a personal connection to the property because many of them got married here."

Is the house being sold furnished? It would be a shame to think of the needlework carpet in the yellow master bedroom being anywhere else.

"I will be open to leaving a number of things if it make the difference between someone missing a summer redecorating or coming in after three weeks."

Even so, Stevenson will always find his way back to Maine with his children, even if for a short time. "We were here two and one-half days last year. My work [including appearances in The District and Judging Amy], and our life, is really in Los Angeles now that my kids are further along in school and their routines are set."

Still, you might spy him this summer at his favorite restaurant in Camden, "Cappy’s, because I can take my boat, Bellatrix, there. It’s a 44-foot Bunker & Ellis with a dark hull, made in Mt. Desert in the 1940s."

Directions to the cottage, says Stevenson, are like a magic incantation, like life. "You just keep turning right, turning right, turning right."