Frank Herman Durgin of Chebeague Island, Me., associate director of the Memorial Wind Tunnel at MIT from 1966 to 1992 and a longtime Aquinnah seasonal visitor, died Jan. 13 at the Maine Medical Center in Portland. He was 89.

He was born August 24, 1928, in Exeter, N.H., a son of Frank H. Durgin and Eudora (Gallant) Durgin.

He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1944 and from MIT in 1948. He served in the U.S. Army before returning to MIT for graduate work. Under his direction of the wind tunnel its staff tested and questioned the structural integrity of the 60-story, 790-foot steel and glass John Hancock Tower in Boston that was completed in 1976 and is the highest building in New England. Soon after its opening, glass began falling from the tower in high winds, forcing the closing of streets below. The MIT testing followed and helped lead to alterations in the tower’s construction that made it safe. Mr. Durgin also worked at MIT’s Naval Supersonic Laboratory.

He began coming to the Vineyard in the 1950s as a guest of his Exeter classmate, the late John E. Meras, a third generation East Chop seasonal resident. In time, Frank and his wife, Marianne Hamilton Durgin, purchased waterfront land on Moshup Trail and with the help of the late Herbert Hancock built the multi-colored house that came to be called the Rainbow House. When it was built, they selected the colors for its siding to resemble a Mondrian painting. Each year from 1957 to 1992, he and his wife and their five children would spend a part of the summer in the Rainbow House, enjoying their ocean beach abutting the seafront property of the late Lillian Hellman, and a cranberry bog near which the house is set. Often Marianne and the late Sally Wiener would go cranberry picking in the fall and the Durgins and John and Sally Wiener would warm up after their chilly outing in front of a blazing fire at the Wiener place.

In 1992, after winters spent variously in Belmont and Watertown, and in Largo, Fla., Frank and his wife decided to make their year-round home on Chebeague Island, turning their Aquinnah home over to their children. As tireless a worker on his homes as he had been on his wind tunnel projects, Frank soon was restoring his 200-year-old Maine house. Until last year, he was often to be found at work atop a ladder, making sure that everything about his house was up to snuff. He is remembered by friends and family for his enthusiasm for such projects, for his deftness as an engineer, his love of reading, his smile and laugh and his unfailing kindness.

In addition to his wife he is survived by his children, John Durgin and his wife Joan of Brownsburg, Ind.; Jane and her husband Arnold Hoffmann of Huntersville, N.C.; Laura and her husband Willie Corl of Chesapeake, Va.; Sally and her husband Michael Wrang of Portland, Conn.; Frank Durgin 3rd and his wife Jane Gillham of Swarthmore, Pa.; by 13 grandchildren and his sister, Mary Kline of Midlothian, Va.

A private service was held on Chebeague.

Donations in his memory may be made to the Recompense Fund, P.O. Box 42, Chebeague Island, Me.