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Portsmouth N.H.

The Portsmouth Fires That Turned the City to Brick

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Three Portsmouth fires, all at Christmas, destroyed 500 buildings within a decade in the early 19th century. Miraculously, no one died in the blazes.

Portsmouth, N.H., was then a gracious seacoast town, home to wealthy merchants and the first federal shipyard. It had served as the colony’s seat of government before the Revolution, and remained so until 1808.

The fires would spare the wooden mansions of the wealthy, separated by wide lawns. But the poor and middle class who lived in crowded quarters would find themselves out on the street, again and again.

1st Portsmouth Fire

The first of the Portsmouth fires started early in the morning of Dec. 26, 1802. It began in an old wooden building downtown, swept through the city and destroyed 100 homes.

Firefighting then amounted to ‘engines’ – water pumps on wheels – which fed the bucket brigades. Homeowners hung leather fire buckets (now highly collectible) near their doors for use in the bucket brigades. ‘Rescue’ involved fire societies, who salvaged items from burning homes. Members carried bags to rescue household valuables and bed keys to quickly dismantle beds and remove them.

Women and men fought the fire in bucket brigades until they dropped, relieved by volunteers from neighboring towns. When it was all over, only the North Church and the Old State House still stood. “The whole beauty of the town is gone! is gone!!!” wailed The New Hampshire Gazette.

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Artists’ conception of the old New Hampshire Statehouse in Portsmouth (after the fire of 1813).

Most of the building owners had no insurance, and they had to rely on private charity to recover. Donations came in from near and far, amounting to f $45,410.43.

Congress stepped in – for the first disaster relief ever. In January 1803, Congress passed a law to temporarily suspend “the collection of bonds due by merchants of Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, who have suffered by the late conflagration of that town.”

Historic North Church in downtown Portsmouth.

New Hampshire businessmen also responded by incorporating the N.H. Fire and Marine Insurance Co.

2nd of the Portsmouth Fires

Four years later, the second of the Portsmouth fires broke out on Bow Street, raced up Market Street and gobbled up a row of wooden commercial buildings along the Piscataqua River.

The blaze wiped out Market Square, which had barely recovered from the previous fire, as well as St. John’s Episcopal Church, built in 1732. The damage was estimated at $130,000, about $2.7 million in today’s dollars.

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Portsmouth’s Market Square in 1853.

The disastrous fire preceded two more blows to the city: the Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812. Both events sent Portsmouth, heavily dependent on shipping and trade, on a long downward slide. The industrial revolution bypassed Portsmouth, spurring growth in nearby mill towns like Dover and Rochester.

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Gov. John Langdon’s house in Portsmouth, N.H., spared by the fires.

Last of the Portsmouth Fires

Then almost exactly seven years after the second fire, on Dec. 22, 1813, the worst of the Portsmouth fires caused more devastation.  The blaze started in Mrs. Woodward’s barn at the corner of Court and Church streets, allegedly set on purpose by an angry servant.

The fire then marched down to the river, burning everything in its path.  The conflagration wiped out 300 buildings, reducing 15 acres to smoking rubble and, as one resident put it, ‘a forest of naked chimneys.’

The huge fire could be seen as far away as Salem, Mass. Volunteers from that town traveled 48 miles in six hours to help put out the blaze. Help also came from Newburyport, Mass., and the New Hampshire towns of Dover, Exeter and Durham.

Market Square, well after the Portsmouth fires

The fire sent the N.H. Fire and Marine Insurance Co. into bankruptcy. It destroyed many businesses that had relocated after the first fire of 1802.

After the Fires

Portsmouth had been growing at a good clip before the fires. Its population increased 13.1 percent from 1790 to 1800, and then at a spectacular 29.9 percent from 1800 to 1810. After the fire of 1813, the city’s growth slowed to only 5.7 percent from 1810-1820. to 7,327. Some people, including a young lawyer named Daniel Webster, packed up and left.

In 1814, the New Hampshire General Court passed the Brick Act, requiring every building over 12 feet high to be built of brick with a slate roof. Portsmouth rebuilt its downtown in brick, and tried to enjoy the holidays.

Jefferson Street in Portsmouth’s Strawbery Banke Museum.

You can still get a feel for what Portsmouth was like before it went brick at the Strawbery Banke collection of house museums, right in the middle of the city.


With thanks to Dennis Robinson, The Three Fires of Christmas, SeacoastNH.com, 2005. Images: North Church By Billy Hathorn – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34161214. Gov. John Langdon House By Daderot – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5643711. Jefferson Street By Ken Gallager (Ken Gallager from en.wikipedia) – Author, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15734947. This story about the Portsmouth Fires was updated in 2023.

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Fitz John Porter Takes the Fall for the Battle of Bull Run

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Tucked away in Haven Park in Portsmouth, N.H., there is an impressive equestrian statue of Fitz John Porter. He wears his Union Army uniform  atop his horse, just as he would have appeared in battle. Nothing unusual about the statue, except it’s rare to create a monument to someone stripped of command and cashiered from the Army in disgrace.

Fitz John Porter

Fitz John Porter (Library of Congress)

The story of Fitz John Porter’s military career has less to do with battlefield glory and far more with his battle for redemption.

Porter was born into a military family. His cousin was naval hero Adm. David Farragut, who coined the phrase “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” His father commanded the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Fitz John Porter, however, chose to enter the Army. Trained at West Point, he served in the Western territories, winning a brevet rank for bravery during the Mexican War.

Then the Civil War broke out. At age 40 he received a promotion to major general in charge of the Union Army’s 5th Army Corps.

In 1862 with a newly minted command, Porter allied himself with Gen. George McClellan. McClellan would rise to the rank of commanding general of the United States Army, the same position held by George Washington during the American Revolution. Later in the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant would rise to that role, with more success than McClellan.

But in 1862, the Union Army was run by men of strong personality, but limited experience. Those included Gen. John Pope, a favorite of President Lincoln. Porter and many of Pope’s critics considered Pope arrogant and stupid.

Fitz John Porter at Bull Run

Fitz John Porter (seated in chair). Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

At the second Battle of Bull Run on Aug. 29-30, the confederates routed Pope’s army in Manassas, Va., just outside of Washington, D.C. History has long concluded that Pope was over-matched in the battle. He didn’t know his enemy’s position and misinterpreted their actions and intentions throughout the fighting. But what he lacked in intelligence, he more than made up for in bluster and bravado.

Pope blamed Porter for the defeat. Had Porter responded in a timely manner to his orders, the battle would have gone differently, he charged. And Pope characterized Porter’s actions as insubordinate and cowardly.

Pope, a Republican, had allies within the Lincoln Administration. Porter, as a Democrat, made a perfect scapegoat for Pope’s failings.

In January, 1863, a court martial panel convicted Porter of disobeying an order and misbehavior in the face of an enemy — essentially cowardice. He was stripped of his command and cashiered, as humiliating a way to end a military career as there is.

Pope soon would drift downward in the ranks of the military as other generals rose to prominence and the Civil War raged on.

Porter, meanwhile, returned abruptly to civilian life. But he and his many friends refused to let the decision against him stand. A seesaw battle to clear his name then followed.

The Second Battle of Bull Run, Fought August 29, 1862

Porter personally mapped the entire Manassas battlefield to illustrate his case. President Rutherford Hayes then appointed the Schofield Commission to review the court martial of Fitz John Porter.

Exoneration at Last

In 1879 the Schofield Commission found that Pope had issued contradictory orders in the heat of battle. Unable to carry out two conflicting orders at the same time, Porter had sought clarity. And he didn’t delay because of cowardice, but rather because he, Porter, had a clearer understanding of the enemy’s position than Pope.

Rather than insubordination, the commission declared that Porter’s actions had actually minimized the Union Army loss at Bull Run. It placed responsibility for the loss squarely on Pope.

Even Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet contributed to Porter’s defense. Yet Hayes lacked the political support to pardon Porter. Then James Garfield succeeded Hayes as president. Garfield had served on the panel of judges that convicted Porter of wrongdoing. But when Garfield was assassinated and Chester Arthur assumed the presidency, Porter finally had an ally.

Statue of Fitz John Porter in Haven Park

In 1882 Arthur commuted Porter’s sentence, which restored his rights to citizenship and his right to hold office. And finally, in 1886, President Grover Cleveland signed a bill passed by Congress that restored 64-year-old Fitz John Porter to the position of colonel in the U.S. Army. Two days later, Porter resigned his position with the Army, vindicated at last.

Porter died in 1901 after an active civilian career in mining and construction. He also served as New York police commissioner, fire commissioner and public works commissioner. In 1906, the statue to his memory was dedicated in Portsmouth, paid for by his longtime friend R.H. Hadley.

Image of Fitz John Porter statue: By C. Carr, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49209431

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like Maine’s Elijah Lovejoy: The First Casualty of the Civil War.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Great 1727 Earthquake and the Wrath of God

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Northern New Englanders ran for cover in late October as the 1727 earthquake, more powerful than any they had experienced, shook the region late one night.

Distressed livestock went running around fields and terrified people packed into churches.

The epicenter of the 1727 earthquake was off the New Hampshire and Massachusetts coast. It jolted buildings from Maine to Connecticut. People far down the coast and up into Canada felt the quake, though the most severe damage was recorded between Cape Cod and Portsmouth, N.H.

Ministers interpreted the 1727 earthquake as the wrath of God, though the more science-minded looked for other explanations.

“It is hard to express the consternation that fell,” said the Rev. Nathaniel Gookin of Hampton, N.H., in a sermon. He quoted Psalm 55:5: ‘Fearfulness and terror hath come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me.’”

The 1727 Earthquake

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Cotton Mather

In Boston, Rev. Cotton Mather reported there had never, in the memory of man, been a night like the one that followed the 29th of October.

“The air never more calm, the sky never more fair; everything in all imaginable tranquility,” he wrote.

Then in Boston at 10:45 pm people hear ‘a horrid rumbling like the noise of many coaches together driving on the paved stones with the utmost rapidity.’ Along with the noise came a most awful trembling of the earth that rocked houses. Smaller things fell down both inside and outside, reported Mather.

The Weekly News-Letter reported,

It came with a loud noise like thunder. The earth reel’d & trembled to a great degree. The houses rock’d & crackl’d as if they were tumbling into ruins. Many of they inhabitants were wakened out of their sleep, with the utmost astonishment: and others affrighted run into the streets for safety.

Four or five shocks followed the first one, the last of which came between 5 am and 6 am.

“What added unto the terrors of it, were the terrible flames of light in the atmosphere, which accompanied it,” Mather wrote. “The vessels on the coast were also made sensible of it by shivering that seized on them.”

Strange Sightings

In Newbury, Mass., the 1727 earthquake left large fissures in the ground. The inhabitants described the quake’s roaring as a massive cannon firing. Henry Sewall noted the sand from the cracks in the ground, when heated, created a bluish flame.

1727-earthquake

In Guildford, Conn., the quake was ‘so violent that is shook down a chimney, threw open a door of a minister’s house, toll’d a bell, remov’d blocks in a chimney corner, and a chest about the floor, and shook the houses to a great degree,” the Weekly News-Letter reported.

After the 1727 earthquake subsided, New Castle, N.H., residents gathered outside and observed an eerie occurrence. In the church tower, the bell rang out. While some believed it was simply the result of the tower having been shaken, others insisted it was a supernatural act.

On Nantucket, one of the town’s boat builders ran to the harbor and put to sea in one of his boats, afraid the island would sink.

nantucket

18th-century Nantucket

As daylight came, New Englanders grew calmer, but the following night fear returned that the earth would open up and engulf the cities. Frightened citizens packed the churches through the night.

In the end, no one was even seriously hurt by the 1727 earthquake, though chimneys toppled and buildings cracked. Some observed other changes in the natural landscape. The quake elevated unplantable marshland in some spots and turned it into useful acreage. It altered springs, and some wells improved in quality.

The ministers, meanwhile, used the 1727 earthquake to inspire the recalcitrant to return to church. They urged the pious to rededicate themselves to living godly lives. Medford, Mass., like many other towns, held a day of fasting.

Scientific Explanations

One theory tied thunderstorms to earthquakes. The summer had been plagued by dryness and thunderstorms that brought a lot of lightning but little rain. Maybe that caused earthquakes.

Boston minister Thomas Foxcroft suggested underground caverns filled with flammable vapors exploded to cause the earthquake.

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Thomas Prince

Thomas Prince, another Boston minister, conjectured the explosions underground did not force the land upward. Rather, he thought, they created pockets of vacuums underground into which the land collapsed.

John Barnard, minister in Marblehead, Mass., pretty much got it right. He concluded the earth’s surface shifted in response to subterranean shocks. That’s a fair approximation of what scientists today know about the movement of tectonic plates.

God of Nature

All agreed, though, that while the mechanics of the earthquake were not understood, it definitely emanated from God. And while God had not punished New Englanders with a deadly quake, he was nonetheless expressing his displeasure.

Writers attributed the 1727 earthquake to a laundry list of sins: adultery, sodomy, excessive consumption of alcohol, failing to keep the Sabbath, failing to support one’s family, swearing and disrespect of ministers.

As Cotton Mather put it: “Let the natural causes of earthquake be what the wise men of enquiry please, they and their causes are still under the government of Him that is God of nature”

Note: The earthquake of 1727 occurred on November 10, 1727, though it’s referred to here as occurring October 29. This discrepancy reflects the change from the Julian to Gregorian calendar.

Thanks to: Historic Storms of New England, Sidney Perley; The Literature of the 1727 New England Earthquake, William D. Andrews and The Life and Times of Cotton Mather, Abijah Perkins Marvin. This story about the 1727 earthquake last updated in 2022. 

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Benning Wentworth Grabs the King’s Masts, Along With Vermont

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If it weren’t for Benning Wentworth, Vermont probably wouldn’t exist.

Gov. Benning Wentworth

Wentworth was the Colony of New Hampshire’s first governor, and on Jan. 3, 1749, he issued the first of 135 land grants west of the Connecticut River.  Unfortunately for the settlers on the land, New York also issued land grants for the same territory. Decades later, the settlers themselves resolved the land dispute. They declared Vermont an independent republic.

Benning Wentworth had at least two good reasons to expand New Hampshire westward.  He got reimbursed for the land grants, and he could sell the giant white pines – known as the King’s Masts — on the land.

After 25 years as governor, Wentworth left office in 1766 a very wealthy man.

As Good as the Money

How Benning Wentworh became New Hampshire’s governor is a story in itself. He was a Portsmouth, N.H.,  merchant, the son of the provincial lieutenant governor. He had shipped timber to the government of Spain, which refused to pay him because of hostilities toward England. So he went to London and lobbied the British government to reimburse him for his loss. Instead of the money, he was given the governorship of New Hampshire, newly separate from Massachusetts.

The governorship was as good as the money. Maybe better.

Wentworth returned from London to Portsmouth, where he took up residence as governor. In that office, he had the right to reserve pine trees for himself and to grant – that is, sell – townships in the undeveloped part of the colony.

The Pine Tree

The pine trees were a big deal. Britain no longer had forests that produced trees like the ones in New England — 120 feet high and at least 24 inches in diameter, ideal for masts and spars. Britain’s military strength depended on sea power, and so the British government tried to commandeer American timber for building its ships. In 1691, the Royal Government forbade anyone in the Province of Massachusetts Bay to cut any pine over 24 inches in diameter, except on private property. In 1760, “all white and other pine trees fit for masting the Royal Navy” were declared off limits.  The prohibition was honored more in the breach than in the observance.

One of the first things Benning Wentworth did as governor was to buy the title and office of the surveyor general. The surveyor deputy and his deputies were supposed to identify and mark the King’s Masts with three slashes representing the King’s Broad Arrow, a traditional mark of the Crown’s property.  They were also supposed to seize illegal timber and prosecute offenders.

Wentworth had a brother, Mark, who had contracts with the British Royal Navy for masts and timber. As governor, Wentworth took advantage of his rights to the giant white pines while ignoring his responsibility as surveyor general to reserve them for the king.

Dragging a Tree Through a Primeval Forest

It wasn’t easy bringing white pine from the New England wilderness to the coast, where cargo ships specially fitted out would carry them to England.

Marking trees with the King’s Broad Arrow

The tall white pines near the seacoast had already been cut down. As time went on, woodsmen had to go farther and farther inland to find trees big, tall and straight enough for masts.

First they had to find a solid, sound tree. Then they had to cut it down, usually in the winter because the snow leveled off the ground. Lumbermen had to cut a straight road to a river because a 120-foot log couldn’t go around corners.

Then the woodsmen would hoist the timber onto a sled or onto wheels 18 feet high. A team of oxen, as many as 200, would then haul the timber through the wilderness to the water.

Loading the King’s Masts onto a ship

Robert B. Pike, in Tall Trees, Tough Men, describes what it must have been like: “Imagine the sight – a tree-trunk from three to seven feet through and perhaps 120 feet long being dragged through the primeval forest by a double string of long-horned, heaving oxen strung out over a furlong’s distance, with ‘spare’ steers switching their tails against the mosquitos, or shivering with cold…”

The New Hampshire Grants

By the mid-18th century, there weren’t many King’s Masts left in what is now New Hampshire. But King’s Masts abounded farther west. In 1749, Benning Wentworth issued the first New Hampshire Land Grants for a future town named after himself —  Bennington.

Many of the 134 grants that followed became towns. Wentworth named them after well-known men of the day to win their support for his westward expansion of New Hampshire. He named Rutland, for example, for John Manners, 3rd Duke of Rutland.

The grants averaged six square miles, the size of a town. Middle-class farmers then settled the land.

Flag of Vermont

Flag of Vermont

New York also issued grants for the same land, mostly to wealthy landowners. The dispute over the territory dragged on for years. In 1770, the New York Supreme Court invalidated all the New Hampshire grants, and tried to force many of the New Hampshire grantees to buy their land a second time.

That infuriated Ethan Allen, who formed the Green Mountain Boys militia to protect the interests of the New Hampshire farmers. The American Revolution put the issue on hold until 1777, when Vermont declared itself a Republic. For 11 years, Vermont was its own little country, with courts, a constitution, an assembly and its own currency.

Benning Wentworth died on Oct. 14, 1770, in Portsmouth, at the age of 74. Vermont entered the Union on March 4, 1791. And today at the center of the Flag of Vermont stands a pine tree.

This story was updated in 2022.


Images: Marking trees with the King’s Broad Arrow and Loading masts onto a ship By Manning, S. F. – New England masts and the King’s Broad Arrow. Greenwich, London: Trustees of the National Maritime Museum. (1979), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30267159 and 30267155 respectively. 

 

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Classic Movies Shot in New England, 13 Award-Winners

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Hundreds of filmmakers have come to New England since the turn of the last century and some have shot classic movies here.

It isn’t just because autumn leaves and church steeples make the perfect backdrop for classic movies. New England’s history and literary tradition provide rich material for stories and characters set against quaint fishing villages, gritty mill cities, Gilded Age resorts and Ivy League campuses.

New England’s Classic Movies

Familiar New England themes appear again and again in film. The theme of the salty sea captain fighting a sea monster inspired classic movies from Moby Dick through Jaws to The Perfect Storm. Family secrets inspired Eugene O’Neill’s fictional Ah Wilderness in 1906 as well as the true story of a suspected murder in Reversal of Fortune in 1990. And haunted New England was a favorite theme long before Stephen King arrived on the scene.

New England characters populate many classic movies shot in the region. They include the Boston Brahmin, the rustic Yankee, the stalwart fisherman, the town gossip and the outsider struggling to assimilate.

Characters from New England literature also populate many classic movies. Filmmakers first shot Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in New England in 1909 and remade it four times as a feature film, three as a television production. But because it’s literary doesn’t make it good; Demi Moore starred as Hester Prynne in the 1995 remake of Scarlet Letter. It bombed at the box office and earned seven Golden Raspberries including “Worst Remake or Sequel.”

Here is a baker’s dozen of classic movies shot on location in all six states.

Boomerang

When a murderer takes the life of a kindly priest on a street corner, a prosecutor fights to prove the accused man innocent. The true story of Boomerang actually took place in Bridgeport, Conn., but the filmmakers couldn’t get permission to film there.

Elia Kazan, who directed many classic movies, shot the 1947 film in Stamford, Conn., instead.

He directed an all-star cast including Dana Andrews, Lee J. Cobb, Jane Wyatt and Karl Malden. Playwright Arthur Miller appeared uncredited as a suspect in the police lineup.

Boomerang received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. Kazan also won Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle.

Homer Cummings, the real-life prosecutor who inspired the film, served as U.S. attorney general under Franklin Roosevelt.

Boomerang, filmed in Connecticut, Maine and New Hampshire.

Boomerang, filmed in Connecticut, Maine and New Hampshire.

The Boston Strangler

This true-crime film about the serial killer who terrorized  the Boston area from 1962-64 starred Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda. As shooting was set to begin in 1968, the man believed to be the Strangler — Albert DeSalvo –escaped from the mental institution where he was held. DeSalvo was captured 33 hours later. Ed Brooke was elected U.S. senator after coordinating the hunt for the killer. “The Boston Strangler” was filmed in Boston, Cambridge and Malden. It received  Eddie, Edgar and Oscar nominations. DeSalvo died in prison (where he made choker necklaces for sale) in 1973. His family is still trying to exonerate him.

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The Boston Strangler was mostly shot in Boston.

The Trouble With Harry

Just about all of Alfred Hitchcock’s films are classic movies, and The Trouble With Harry is no exception. The trouble with Harry in the film is that he was dead. Hitchcock’s 1955 dark comedy starring John Forsythe and Shirley MacLaine was filmed in Morrisville, Barre and Craftsbury Commons.  The crew arrived in Craftsbury on September 27, 1954 to film outdoor shots of fall foliage. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any, so they glued leaves on trees. It was nominated for three awards, including BAFTA, Directors’ Guild and Satellite for “Outstanding Classic DVD” in 2005.

Jerry Mathers in The Trouble With Harry, filmed in Craftsbury, Vermont.

Jerry Mathers in The Trouble With Harry, filmed in Craftsbury, Vermont.

The Stepford Wives

A 1975 take on the theme of haunted New England, the film takes place in the fictional Connecticut town of Stepford. Johanna Eberhart moves there with her family and soon discovers a sinister truth behind the perfect behavior of the town’s housewives — they’re robots.

Bryan Forbes shot the film in Connecticut, including Redding, Fairfield, Westport, Weston, Darien (at the Goodwives Shopping Center) and Norwalk at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion.) Katharine Ross,  who stars as Johanna, won the 1976 Golden Scroll Best Actress award.

Stepford Wives enjoyed moderate success at first, but evolved into a cult classic over time.

The Stepford Wives, filmed at the Goodwives Shopping Center in Darien, Conn.

Lost Boundaries

This 1949 drama fictionalized the true story of Albert Johnson, a light-skinned African-American doctor. Johnson passes for white in a small northern New Hampshire town.

Starring Mel Ferrer and Beatrice Pearson, director Alfred Werker shot Lost Boundaries in Kennebunkport, Me. (church scene), York (Nubble Light) and Portsmouth, N.H.

In one scene, the doctor takes a Coast Guard boat from Portsmouth to the Isles of Shoals, six nautical miles away. He lands in York, however, quite farther away.

The film won Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival in 1949.

Lost Boundaries, fimed in Portsouth, New Hampshire.

Lost Boundaries, fimed in Portsouth, New Hampshire.

Jaws

Jaws was the first of the summer classic movies released in thousands of theaters and advertised heavily. The 1975 blockbuster featured a simple premise — the hunt for a man-eating shark that terrorized beachgoers.

The most successful film in box office history at the time, it set a precedent. Director Steven Spielberg filmed Jaws mostly in  Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard.

It won many awards, including three Academy Awards for Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, and Best Sound. In 2001, Congress voted to include it in the National Film Archive as “culturally significant.”

The author, Peter Benchley, later felt guilty about unfairly maligning the Great White Shark, a creature generally uninterested in eating human beings.

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Jaws, filmed in Menemsha, belongs to the pantheon of classic movies shot in New England.

The Great Gatsby

This 1974 film starring Robert Redford as self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby featured the Newport, R.I., mansion Rosecliff as his home. Another mansion, the Vanderbilt’s Marble House, provided interior scenes.

The original Long Island mansion that inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald to write the novel fell to the wrecking ball in 2011. Stanford White designed Rosecliff in 1902 for  Nevada silver heiress Theresa Fair Oelrichs.

The Great Gatsby also featured Hammersmith Farm, another famous Newport property where Sen. John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier.

The Great Gatsby, which also starred Mia Farrow, received two Academy Awards for Best Costume Design and Best Music. 

Robert Redford in the Great Gatsby, filmed in Newport, Rhode Island.

Robert Redford in the Great Gatsby, filmed in Newport, Rhode Island.

Peyton Place

New Hampshire writer Grace Metalious’ best selling book Peyton Place inspired the 1957 movie of the same name. It starred Lana Turner and Hope Lange.

Director Mark Robson shot the film mostly in Camden, Maine, with some exteriors filmed in  the Maine towns of Belfast and Rockland, Gilmanton, N.H., and Lake Placid, N.Y.

Peyton Place employed as many as 500 local residents as extras. Most of them donated their earnings — $10 or so — for a new hospital.

The film premiered in Camden two days before everyone else saw it. Peyton Place didn’t do well at the box office for the first four months. Then, Lana Turner’s daughter killed her mother’s mobster lover, Johnny Stompanato. It then became the second-highest grossing film of 1958.

Peyton Place received nine Oscar nominations, including four for supporting performances.

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A scene from Peyton Place shot in Camden, Maine.

Love Story

Love Story, the highest grossing film of 1970, was a romantic tragedy based on the wildly popular novel of the same name. It starred Ryan O’Neal as the preppy Harvard student Oliver Barrett IV. Ali MacGraw played the working-class Italian “Cliffie”  doomed to an early death.

The American Film Institute placed Love Story in its pantheon of classic movies, calling it one of the most romantic films of all time. Production at Harvard caused such damage to the campus that the university denied future requests to film there.

The movie was also shot in Massachusetts at the frame house at 119 Oxford St. in Cambridge. There, MacGraw’s character utters the famous line, “Love means never having to say your sorry.”  Love Story received nominations for seven Academy Awards, winning one for Best Music, Original Score.

Our Town

A 1940 adaptation of Thornton Wilder‘s play Our Town about family conflict in a small town, this classic movie was shot in Peterborough, N.H. It starred William Holden and Martha Scott.

The town served as the real model for the play, written by Wilder while in residence at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough. Wilder probably named the fictional town of Grovers Corners for Peterborough’s Grove Street. The film received six Academy Award nominations. See the full film here.

Captains Courageous

Spencer Tracy — in curls — played a Portuguese fisherman who rescues Harvey Cheyne, played by Freddie Bartholomew. Captains Courageous begins when Cheyne, a railroad magnate’s spoiled son, gets thrown overboard from  an ocean liner.

The 1937 film adapted a book written by Rudyard Kipling in 1897 when he lived in Brattleboro, Vt.

Director Victor Fleming shot scenes in Gloucester, Mass., as well as in California with fish flown in from Alaska and Boston. Gloucester has also provided settings for quite a few classic movies, including Mutiny on the Bounty and The Perfect Storm.

The film received four Oscar nominations. Spencer Tracy won the first of two consecutive Best Actor awards for Captains Courageous; he won for Boys Town in 1938.

Spencer Tracy starred in many classic movies; Captains Courageous, with Freddy Bartholomew, was one of them.

The Thomas Crown Affair

Thomas Crown, a debonair bank executive, thinks he pulled off the perfect bank robbery in this 1968 crime drama.

Steve McQueen starred as Crown, while Faye Dunaway played the insurance investigator who will do anything to get her man.

Director Norman Jewison filmed The Thomas Crown Affair in a number of well-known (and still recognizable) Boston-area locations, including Beacon Hill, the North End, Cambridge Cemetery, the Tobin Bridge, the Allston-Brighton toll booth, Crane Beach in Ipswich and Anthony’s Pier 4 Restaurant.

The second Harrison Gray Otis house, designed by Charles Bulfinch for a congressman, appeared as Crown’s house. The Thomas Crown Affair won an Oscar for Best Song, Windmills of Your Mind.

Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway on Crane Beach in Ipswich, Mass.

Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway on Crane Beach in Ipswich, Mass.

High Society

This 1956 musical remake of The Philadelphia Story starred Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly. Kelly, who starred in many classic movies, retired after making High Society to marry Prince Albert of Monaco.

Cole Porter wrote the score and Louis Armstrong appeared as himself. Sinatra and Kelly appear driving together in a scene along Ocean Boulevard in Newport, R.I.

Director Charles Walters filmed interiors at a Newport mansion later purchased by Sunny von Bulow. Prosecutors later accused her husband Claus von Bulow of murdering her in the mansion.  That story then inspired another film in 1990, Reversal of Fortune.

High Society received nominations for two Oscars, Best Musical, Original Song, and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.

classic-movies-high-society

Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra on the set of High Society.

If you enjoyed this story, you might also want to read about historic New England movie sets and six places New England films were shot. 


Images: Menemsha by User:Elkman – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Menemsha.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1350749. Boston Strangler By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26732719. Our Town By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7159045. Love Story https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6778617.

This story about classic movies shot in New England was updated in 2022.

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