VINALHAVEN, Me. — Forty-one years ago, when Robert Indiana, the artist, came to this remote island spotted with idle granite quarries, he fell in love with the place, and with a Victorian confection that he would make into his home.

Mr. Indiana bought the building, once a meeting hall for the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and turned it into his refuge, not only from the Manhattan art scene he sought to escape but also from those islanders who viewed a rich artist from New York with some suspicion.

“We weren’t a big city,” said James Knowlton, the town’s harbor master. “We were just a little offshore island town, and here he was, right on Main Street.”

Not long after Mr. Indiana’s arrival, young locals broke his front windows, and Mr. Indiana boarded them up. They stayed shuttered through the decades until his death at 89 last year, even as many in this tight knit community of 1,200 eventually warmed to the idea of having a famous artist living in their midst.