Tag:

Revere

Six Quick Facts About the Valentine in History

The Valentine has pleased and perturbed people since Charles, Duke of Orleans, sent one to his wife from the Tower of London in 1415. (He’d been captured at the Battle of Agincourt.)

European colonists brought Valentine’s Day with them to New England in the 1700s, and New Englanders have celebrated — and profited from — the holiday.

An Esther Howland Valentine

Here are six quick facts about Valentine’s Day, Valentine greetings and Valentine events:

Perhaps the most notorious Valentine ever was sent by John Wilkes Booth to Lucy Lambert Hale, the daughter of John Parker Hale, U.S. senator from New Hampshire. Lincoln’s assassin sent the Valentine to Lucy anonymously in 1862. “To see you has indeed afforded me a melancholy pleasure,” he wrote. They flirted, they courted and then they got engaged. According to some accounts, Lucy dined with Booth two hours before he killed President Lincoln. A picture of Lucy Lambert Hale was found on his body. Lucy left the country after the assassination and married a New Hampshire lawyer nine years later.
Worcester, Mass., once reigned as the Valentine Capital of the United States. Esther Howland, born in Worcester in 1828, went into the Valentine business in her home town after graduating from Mount Holyoke. It grew into the largest greeting card factory in the world, until World War II caused paper shortages that put an end to the business.
Lucy Lambert Hale

After the Civil War, the vinegar Valentine came into fashion. They were cheap cards that insulted the recipient. George Whitney, who carried on Esther Howland’s Valentine empire, refused to make them. Typical of a vinegar valentine was this:

You’ve got more curves than a roller-coaster
Your clothes fit like a glove
There’s one thing wrong – Glamorpuss
You’ve a face—
Only a mother could love!
A vinegar Valentine from the Civil War era

Conversation hearts are still made the way they were in 1901, when the New England Confectionary Co. began to print witty sayings on heart-shaped candies. People loved them. Only eight years after they were introduced, they appeared in the novel Anne of Green Gables as a pink sweetheart saying “You are sweet.” Starting in 1927, the conversation hearts were made in the world’s largest candy factory in Cambridge, Mass. Today a factory in Revere, Mass., churns 8 billion of them every year.
One of the most memorable storms in New England history barreled into the region just 15 months after the The Great New England Hurricane of 1938. The Valentine’s Day Storm of 1940 struck Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts without warning. It killed 31, paralyzed travel and stranded thousands for days. Two thousand people who came to see Sonja Henie perform at the Boston Gardenwere stuck in the city overnight. It took 17,000 men with shovels to dig Boston out.
Louis May Alcott found a way to enjoy Valentine’s Day in 1868. She was 35, unmarried, in poor health and trying to support herself while living in a small room in Boston. In three months she would start to write Little Women. On that Valentine’s Day, she wrote an essay about old maids like herself called Happy Women. She listed busy, useful, independent spinsters like herself, and commented, ‘liberty is a better husband than love to many of us.’

1 comment 275 views

Remembering the 1978 Blizzard

In Connecticut they called it ‘Storm Larry.’ But to anyone old enough to remember, the words ‘1978 blizzard’ conjure up some very snowy memories.

The 1978 blizzard started with snow during the morning of February 6. It didn’t stop for 33 hours, dumping two feet of snow on New England. Sometimes it fell as fast as four inches an hour. Parts of Boston’s South Shore and Woonsocket, R.I., got hit with the most: 54 inches.

Two feet of snow had already fallen in previous storms, causing the collapse of the Hartford Civic Center the month before.

A residential street after the 1978 blizzard in Woonsocket, R.I.

The 1978 blizzard killed about 100 people and injured about 4,500. In central and southern New England, the snowfall turned to ice at night, leaving everything covered with ice. The snow turned to rain on Cape Cod, but the wind wreaked plenty of havoc.

Wind speeds reached 79 mph at Logan Airport, 92 mph at Chatham Weather Station on Cape Cod, and unofficial reports said wind gusts exceeded 100 mph. From Provincetown to Eastern Maine, the northeasterly winds flooded the coast. Ten thousand people evacuated.

In Connecticut, 547 National Guardsmen cleared roads and returned people to their homes – if they still had homes. In Massachusetts, a massive effort to clear Logan’s runway allowed 200 troops from Ft. Bragg and Ft. Devens to manage the emergency response.

1978 Blizzard

The snow took New England by surprise. No one advised people to stay home. Weather forecasters knew something was coming, they just didn’t know what. Only CBS’s Harvey Leonard seemed to have a clue: “We are going to get hit hard.”

Boston City Hall

The sun and moon aligned to cause spring high tides that produced record floods. In Massachusetts, the flood destroyed 2,000 homes between Marblehead and Plymouth and damaged another 10,000. One flood tide ran into the next; with four successive flood tides, it seemed the tide never went out. The South Shore and Revere, Mass., took the hardest hits from the flood tides and towering waves.

When Mrs. Joseph Conley returned to her home in Scituate after the storm, the tide surge demolished everything but the toilet. She was lucky. A giant wave ripped five-year-old Amy Lanzikas from her mother’s arms while they were being rescued in a firefighters’ skiff. Amy and a Scituate neighbor, Edward Hart, drowned during the rescue attempt.

Some Snow Day

People left school and work early so they could get home, but the snow fell so fast that staying put would have been safer. Thousands of cars had to be abandoned on the highways. Snowdrifts trapped 3,000 cars and 500 trucks along eight miles of Rte. 128 alone. Fourteen people died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in their snowbound vehicles.

In New England’s cities, the 1978 blizzard stranded thousands more cars that took days to dig out. Connecticut Gov. Ella Grasso abandoned her car on the highway and walked to the Hartford Armory.

Women standing on top of a snowbank in Boston.

Boston Mayor Kevin White could only make his way home slowly from Palm Beach. He won little sympathy by complaining about the cold weather in Florida and that he ‘didn’t even swim in the pool.’

Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, on the other hand, was everywhere during the 1978 blizzard — in his cardigan sweater. He happened to be on a radio call-in show with David Brudnoy on the evening of February 6. He heard from Revere residents on the second-floor of their houses wondering whether they’d survive. As panic set in, Dukakis began to direct the emergency response on the Brudnoy show. “I am pleading with Winthrop Shore Drive residents to evacuate their homes!” he said, between calls from constituents complaining about discrimination enforcement and civil service exams.

Trapped

Many people ended up trapped in their workplaces, living off vending machine food during the 1978 blizzard. People slept in pews at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Needham, Mass., which sheltered 2,000.

In Dedham, Mass., 300 stranded motorists ate popcorn and watched movies at the Showcase Cinema just off the highway.

Hockey fans in Boston who came to watch the Beanpot college tournament got stranded at Boston Garden. For several days they ate hot dogs, slept in the bleachers and, as Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessey pointed out, used ‘combs and deodorant left behind by Terry O’Reilly and Wayne Cashman.’

National Guardsmen and Boston residents during the cleanup after the 1978 blizzard.

In Massachusetts, the flood tides and giant waves dragged Motif No. 1, Rockport’s famous fishing shack, into the harbor. The high tides wiped out the Outermost House on Cape Cod and submerged the Peter Stuyvesaant, a restored riverboat outside of Anthony’s Pier 4 in Boston. Motif No. 1 was restored, but the Peter Stuyvesant was not.

One of many homes damaged by the 1978 blizzard.

Disaster Area

The postal service couldn’t deliver the mail for the first time since the Great 1938 Hurricane. One letter carrier got stranded in Providence, so he slept on sacks at the post office for two nights. He had to field a phone call from a woman complaining she didn’t get her mail.

In Massachusetts, the MBTA actually performed well. On the Monday after the storm, the driving ban was still in effect. The MBTA carried 50 percent more riders than it did on an ordinary day. The load strained the equipment so that the MBTA had to curtail commuter rail service by 25 percent for two months.

In Montville, Conn., someone wrote a plea to the governor — ‘ELLA HELP’ — in the snow on a lake. Grasso saw the message from a helicopter. She then transmitted a communique through the National Weather Service asking anyone with a four-wheel-drive vehicle to volunteer. Many did. Grasso ordered all roads and highways closed to everything but emergency vehicles, and asked schools and businesses to shut down. So did Gov. Michael Dukakis in Massachusetts and Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy in Rhode Island.

President Carter declared Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut federal disaster areas.

Community

Many remember the storm fondly because it built a sense of community. In Cumberland, R.I., for example, it took 10 days to plow out the roads. People gave a neighbor money to go shopping. He hauled a sled two miles to the IGA and back with food. Cross-country skiers and snowmobilers evacuated people from cars stranded on I-95. Snowmobiles and sleds took people to hospitals.

In Hull, Mass., Lillian Willis and Joanne Fallon prepared meals in a local middle school for 1,400 people in 36-hour shifts over 10 days. On the fourth day, Willis’ shoes fell apart.

Cars stranded on Rte. 128 after the 1978 blizzard.

The storm suspended work and school, so people played in the snow. UConn students made Star Wars sculptures. Brown students jumped out of dorm windows into the snow and made an eight-foot-high snowball. But according to one report, 4 percent of the Brown students and employees needed medical attention during the 1978 blizzard. Peter Gosselin, 10, jumped off his porch roof into the deep snow, hit his head and died in a snowbank. He wasn’t found for three weeks.

Cashing In

After the 1978 blizzard ended, entrepreneurs quickly capitalized on it. One company made a board game called the Great Blizzard Travel Game, which at one point you could buy for $59 on eBay. Others made T-shirts that said, “I Survived the Blizzard of 1978.” And “We Survived the Blizzard of ‘78” bumper stickers were as ubiquitous as Michael Dukakis’ cardigan sweater.

Dukakis actually had four or five cardigans. After the 1978 blizzard, people gave him a sweater when he appeared at a speaking event. He eventually gave 40 cardigans to the Goodwill. (Rhode Islanders, by the way, were treated to the sight of Gov. Joseph Garrihy in a flannel shirt.)

To see a video of the 1978 storm, click here. This story was updated in 2023.

Images: Boston City Hall By City of Boston Archives from West Roxbury, United States – Snow near City Hall, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65429193; Boston during cleanup By City of Boston Archives from West Roxbury, United States – Workers and residents during blizzard cleanup, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65420068. Women on top of snowbank, By City of Boston Archives from West Roxbury, United States – Women on top of snow drift near City Hall, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65420027

10 comments 3.4k views

Six Places Where a Revolutionary Hero Lived

You didn’t have to show courage in battle to be a revolutionary hero. But if you were, it probably took more than a century for historians and builders to restore your house and turn it into a museum.

Benjamin Edes and his partner, John Gill, did more to stir up revolutionary fervor in the American colonies than any other publisher. On the night of Dec. 16, 1771, Sons of Liberty secretly assembled at Edes’ home in Boston. They disguised themselves as Indians and walked down to the wharves. There a crowd gathered while they chopped open the tea chests on three ships and dumped all the tea into the harbor.

Today, you can visit Benjamin Edes’ old print shop, next to the Old North Church on the Freedom Trail.

Every New England state has a home or an office belonging to a hero of the American Revolution. Here are six of them, one for each state. All but one existed in obscurity for more than a century, their association with a revolutionary hero forgotten. The colonial revival stimulated interest in the old buildings, and historians transformed them into museums.

If you know of a landmark associated with a revolutionary hero, please share it in the comments section.

Nathan Hale Homestead

The Nathan Hale Homestead, which memorializes Connecticut’s most cherished revolutionary hero, in Coventry, Conn.

Every schoolchild knows the story of Nathan Hale, the young schoolmaster turned spy for George Washington. The famous Indian fighter Robert Rogers captured him on Long Island, and the British hanged him without a trial. The State of Connecticut considers him a revolutionary hero for his defiant last words, “I only regret that I have but one life to live for my country.”

When the Hale family hadn’t heard from Nathan in a while, his brother went to Old Saybrook, Conn., to track him down. He learned Nathan was killed and was given a trunk of his belongings.

The Hale family eventually sold the house and it passed through several hands. Then a Connecticut lawyer named George Dudley Seymour got caught up in the Nathan Hale story. He found out the house, sadly in need of repair, was for sale. Seymour bought it, restored it and filled it with Connecticut antiques, including Nathan’s trunk.

Nathan Hale never lived in the Nathan Hale Homestead, but he did live in a house on the same location. His family tore it down during the war to build the bigger house, which survived.

The Hale Homestead grounds are open year round from dawn to dusk, and the house itself is open for tours from May to October.

2299 South St., Coventry, Conn.

Wadsworth-Longfellow House

The Wadsworth-Longfellow House, home to a revolutionary hero and a poet.

Peleg Wadsworth, grandfather of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, served in the Continental Army as a brigadier general. His greatest moment in the war came during the disastrous Penobscot Expedition. As British warships drove American forces up the Penobscot River, Wadsworth saved his men by leading a retreat by land back to Boston.

The British later captured Wadsworth from his headquarters in Thomaston, Maine, and confined him at Fort George in Castine, Maine. He escaped by cutting a hole in the ceiling and crawling along the joists.

Wadsworth went home to Plymouth, Mass., but he returned to Maine and bought property in what is now Portland. He built the first brick house in the city, now known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House. His son and wife lived in the house, where they raised their children.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s sister owned the house until her death in 1901, when she bequeathed it to the Maine Historical Society. The historical society runs it as a house museum – Maine’s first, as a matter of fact. It’s open May through October.

489 Congress St., Portland, Maine

Printing Office of Edes & Gill

Where Benjamin Edes published the Boston Gazette.

Benjamin Edes, along with his partner John Gill, didn’t fight in the war, but he was nonetheless a revolutionary hero. Edes, more than any other publisher, stoked public indignation over Parliament’s abuse of the American colonies.

Edes and Gill worked out of a print shop in Boston’s North End, near Paul Revere’s house and next to the Old North Church. The Old North Church now owns the building where Edes and Gill ran their printing press.

Edes escaped Boston during the siege and moved to Watertown, Mass., where he continued to publish the Boston Gazette until 1798. The British arrested his 17-year-old son Peter for 3-1/2 months, mostly because they hated his father.

The North End went from a fashionable neighborhood to a slum, then back to fashionable.The Printing Office of Edes & Gill opened as a museum in 2011. Interpreters show how colonial printers worked their trade on the museum’s historic equipment. They also explain how Boston’s patriot press incited the American colonies to rebellion.

21 Unity St., Boston, Mass.

Gen. John Stark House

The home of Indian fighter and revolutionary hero John Stark in Manchester, N.H.

Gen. John Stark gave New Hampshire its motto, which you’ve no doubt seen on its license plates: Live Free or Die.

The old Indian fighter marched his New Hampshire militia to Boston as soon as he heard about the Battles of Lexington and Concord. During the Battle of Bunker Hill, he led his men to a spot where he anticipated the British would attack. He may or may not have said, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” Someone did; it just isn’t clear who.

He was an unsung revolutionary hero of the Battle of Saratoga, where he and his men prevented the British from retreating north. His heroics at the Battle of Bennington are more widely remembered. Even today, many New Hampshirites can quote him: “There they are boys! We beat them today or Molly Stark sleeps a widow tonight!”

Stark famously went home to his farm in Derryfield (now Manchester) after the war and died at age 93. The Stark family sold his boyhood home in 1821, and then the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company bought it in 1835 to use as worker housing. In 1937, the company gave the building to the Daughters of the American Revolution, who restored it. They moved it to the original Stark farm in 1968 and turned it into a house museum.

2000 Elm St., Manchester, N.H.

Nathaniel Greene Homestead

The home of Nathanael Greene, revolutionary hero.

Nathanael Greene had asthma, walked with a pronounced limp and belonged to the pacifist Quaker religion.

None of that stopped him from becoming a revolutionary hero doing some of the toughest jobs of the war for independence.

When Americans despaired of ever evicting the British, Nathanael Greene lured Gen. Cornwallis away from his supply lines and into battles that inflicted heavy casualties. Greene took control of most of the South away from British forces and returned to his home in Rhode Island.

Nathanael Greene built the house in 1770, and his family lived there through the war. Greene moved his family to Newport at the war’s end in 1783, but then relocated to Georgia and died soon thereafter.

He had sold the Coventry house to his brother Jacob, and it remained in the Greene family until 1899. The family, though, rented it as a tenement house and neglected to keep it up.

In 1919, the Nathanael Greene Homestead Association formed to restore the former home of Rhode Island’s best known revolutionary hero. Today it’s a house museum, and part of the Anthony Village Historic District. Open for tours from April through October.

20 Taft St., Coventry, R.I.

Ethan Allen Homestead Museum

The Ethan Allen Homestead, home of Vermont’s greatest revolutionary hero.

Ethan Allen could claim stature as a revolutionary hero for capturing Fort Ticonderoga with Benedict Arnold in 1775. But he spent most of the war imprisoned by the British and then, after his release, ferreting out Loyalists in Vermont.

He spent the years after his imprisonment pursuing politics, writing books and speculating in land. He and his family moved to a new house overlooking the Winooski River in Burlington in 1787, but he only lived there until his death in 1789. His survivors sold the house, which passed through several hands. Local people always knew the house had belonged to Ethan Allen, but no one did much about it until a Burlington resident named William J. Van Patten bought it in 1902.

Van Patten donated 12 acres of the property to the Sons of the American Revolution on condition they maintain it as a park and build a tower to Vermont’s revolutionary hero. They did, and Van Patten lived in the house and ran the rest of the property as a dairy farm.

In the late 1980s, a surviving remnant of the farm was turned into The Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. It now functions as a house museum with living history events and lectures on Vermont’s history. Open May through October.

1 Ethan Allen Homestead, Burlington, Vt.

Images: By Sphilbrick – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11802250; Clough House By MLHalsey – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23197901; Gen. John Stark House By User:Magicpiano – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19357747; Nathanael Greene Homestead By Camanda at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18112163; Ethan Allen Homestead By Mfwills; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:11, 24 October 2013 (UTC) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29160603

1 comment 358 views

Six Stunning Gothic Revival Buildings By Henry Vaughan

Henry Vaughan didn’t leave much in the way of paper records, but he did change the face of Puritan New England with dozens of striking and much-admired Gothic Revival churches, schools and mansions.

He worked on two of the most important cathedrals in the United States, Washington National and St. John the Divine. His chapels at the Groton and St. Paul’s schools are considered two of the most beautiful Gothic churches in America.

Henry Vaughan around 1907

Henry Vaughan

Born in Cheshire, England, in 1845, he likely trained with British architect George Frederick Bodley, the leading architect working in the Gothic Revival style. Vaughan also worked as Bodley’s head draftsman.

In 1881, 36-year-old Henry Vaughan came to Boston representing Bodley. He would then design the chapel for the Sisters of St. Margaret, associated with the Anglican monastic order, Society of St. John the Evangelist.

Very few Gothic Revival architects had his training and sophistication. Whether he intended to stay in America isn’t clear, but he quickly launched a successful architectural career — though he never sought commissions.

The Episcopal church gave him plenty of work. So did eccentric millionaire Edward Searles.

Henry Vaughan, Throwback

Henry Vaughan’s style of work was as much a throwback as the buildings themselves. When Vaughan was working on the Washington National Cathedral, recalls an employee, everything was done in a very ‘old time way.’ He viewed the telephone as an intrusion, and the head draftsman occasionally typed out a letter with one finger.

Described as shy and withdrawn, Henry Vaughan attended daily Mass. He lived in a boardinghouse on Beacon Hill, had few friends and rarely appeared in public. After dinner, he always returned to the office to feed the mice with leftover rolls. His employees were forbidden from coming in then because they might disturb the creatures.

Though Henry Vaughan’s architectural designs dated to the Middle Ages, they were actually quite new for the region. New England had its roots in Puritanism, but the old hatred of Catholicism and High Anglicanism was fading.

When Henry Vaughan died in 1917, Episcopal Bishop William Lawrence suggested a change had come over the people. “Many of them are turning back to the prayer book, the dignified forms and rich associations of the church of our English ancestors,” he wrote in Vaughan’s obituary.

Here, then, are six Henry Vaughan buildings, one in each state (plus a few bonus mentions). If you know of other Henry Vaughan buildings worth mention, please share them in the comments section.

Christ Church

Christ Church, New Haven

The Gothic Christ Church is a landmark in downtown New Haven. It combines a ‘bells-and-smells’ high Anglo-Catholic tradition with a soup kitchen and a residence for homeless young people.

Henry Vaughan designed Christ Church with a stone tower modeled after Magdalen College in Oxford. He chose the artists to decorate the interior, including Johannes Kirchmayer for the wooden carving and C.E. Kempe to create the stained glass windows. The high altar was inspired by Winchester Cathedral and St. Alban’s in England.

Vaughan’s follower Ralph Adams Cram wrote that Christ Church was ‘worked out on lines that are absolutely right’

“It could not be taken for a country church; yet is pure and scholarly Gothic, both modern in feeling and medieval—the enduring style adapted to new conditions,” wrote Cram.

Christ Church holds Solemn High Mass at 11 a.m. every Sunday. A large crowd comes to Compline, or night prayer, at 9 pm September through May. Christ Church is the headquarters for the North American branch of the Society of Catholic Priests, Episcopal clergy who practice the Anglo-Catholic tradition.

70 Broadway, New Haven, Conn.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

St. Andrew’s Church in Newcastle

Henry Vaughan’s first parish church, St. Andrew’s, is one of at least two notable churches in tiny Newcastle, Maine. The other is New England’s oldest Catholic Church in continuous use, St. Patrick’s, proud owner of a Revere bell.

He sailed to the United States in 1881 on the packet ship American Clipper, owned by Capt. and Mrs. William Glidden of Newcastle. Vaughan probably met them on the voyage.

Glidden and his partner owned clipper ships that sailed between Boston and San Francisco starting in the Gold Rush of 1849. The Gliddens commissioned Vaughan to design St. Andrew’s, and he lived with them while he worked on the church in 1883.

The charming half-timbered stucco church lies on the banks of the Damariscotta River. Its simple exterior is a rare example of rural late English Gothic, the first cottage Gothic Revival church in the United States, according to Vaughan’s biographer William Morgan.

Rich, colored stenciling and carved woodwork decorate the interior. Henry Vaughan had insisted the nave and chancel ceiling be stenciled according to his design. The vestry wouldn’t pay for the work, so Vaughan painted it himself over an entire summer on his back.

In 1908, a fire devastated downtown and the Newcastle National Bank found a temporary home in the St. Andrew’s parish house.

The church has a Henry Vaughan Fund to maintain and preserve the church; you can actually buy a Henry Vaughan gift card.

11 Glidden Street, Newcastle, Maine

Searles High School

Methuen High School, now City Hall

Edward Searles, an interior decorator born in Methuen, Mass., hired Searles for almost as many projects as the Episcopal Church did.

Searles married the fabulously wealthy widow (and much older) Mrs. Mark Hopkins one year before she died. She left him a quarter of the Southern Pacific Railroad and $21 million in property. Searles then indulged his whim for building on a grand, even excessive scale, almost always with the help of Henry Vaughan.

Searles sponsored dozens of projects—schools, churches, castles, organ cases, tombs and remodeling.

Pine Lodge in Methuen

Henry Vaughan expanded Searles’ home in Methuen into a huge estate, including a 74-room house and chapel surrounded by castle walls. Today the estate, Pine Lodge, houses Presentation of Mary Academy, a private Catholic high school.

Though rarely seen in town, and then only in his gold-trimmed Pierce-Arrow, Searles made many gifts to his birthplace. He paid Methuen’s $65,000 debt and gave it thousands of trees, a monumental statue of George Washington, three churches, the railroad station, a battlemented bridge across the Spiket River, the Red Tavern, a boardinghouse called the Hayloft, the John Hancock Masonic Lodge, the Central Grammar School, Searles High School, two family tombs, an organ factory and the Serlo Organ Hall.

Vaughan designed much of it, including the high school. From the outside it looks like a Jacobean prodigy house, a large, showy mansion built by English nobles. It cost $1 million and required imported Italian workmen. It now serves as Methuen Town Hall.

He also built one of his masterpieces in Massachusetts, but not for Edward Searles.

St. John’s Chapel at the Groton School.

Groton School Rector Endicott Peabody wanted a chapel that would be ‘one of the most beautiful ecclesiastical structures in America.’ Vaughan’s biographer William Morgan called St. John’s Chapel, built in 1900, a ‘milestone in Vaughan’s career as well as being one of America’s major neo-Gothic monuments.’

Methuen City Hall, 41 Pleasant St., Methuen, Mass.

Searles Castle

Searles Castle in Windham, N.H.

By 1905, Searles fixated on one final obsession. He wanted a proper castle. Searles then bought 1400 acres of land in Windham, N.H., to put it on.

Searles had discovered family ties to the Harcourts in Oxfordshire, England. They had a 15th-century manor house, Stanton-Harcourt, mostly destroyed. He supposedly sent Vaughan to England to draw plans of the ruined section of the original house. Vaughan then designed Searles Castle in Windham as a one-quarter-size replica of the English castle, complete with battlements and portcullis.

The Tudor Gothic castle was built of granite, fieldstone and dark red sandstone, most of which came from Searles’ quarries in nearby Pelham, N.H. It took nearly a decade to finish the castle and $1.25 million to furnish it. Eight-foot walls protected the castle from intruders.

Despite the castle’s high walls, Searles thought the village school was too close. So he offered to build Windham a new school if the town gave him the old one. The town then agreed, and Henry Vaughan designed ‘the handsomest and finest small school building in the state.’

Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul at St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H.

Though Searles Castle is one of the most imposing buildings he designed, the Chapel of St. Peter and Paul at St. Paul’s School is his most important. The chapel influenced a long line of school and college chapels and inspired many young architects.

“Had Vaughan died at, say, age fifty and had not lived to design many of his churches or Washington Cathedral, his place in the Gothic Revival in America would still be secure,” wrote Morgan.

For early photographs of the chapel at St. Paul’s, click here.

Searles Castle, 21 Searles Rd., Windham, N.H.

Mansion House, the Lost Henry Vaughan Residence

White Hall, or Mansion House, on Block Island

Searles commissioned Vaughan to build a dream house on Block Island for him and his new bride. Construction began on White Hall in the summer of 1888 and finished in 1890.

Searles spent over $1 million on the project, or about $24 million today. Vaughan designed the mansion as a ‘twin house,’ with each of the Searles having a separate identical side of the mansion. Rumors flew that the marriage was in trouble.

An octagonal dome topped the mammoth white pine house inspired by early 18^th century Palladian designs. The house, dubbed “Searles’ Folly’ and ‘Mansion House’ by the locals, overlooked a pristine beach. A hurricane blew off the dome during the finished house’s first winter.

Mrs. Searles died in 1891, the year after the mansion was finished. Searles rarely visited White Hall after her death. After he died in 1920, White Hall remained empty. Over the years it changed hands until a fire burned it to the ground in 1963.

Today, Rhode Island can only claim as Vaughan’s work the chancel furniture for St. Stephen’s Church in Providence. It was only Vaughan’s second commission in the United States, and it cost $4,000, as much as the entire St. Andrew’s church in Maine.

White Hall, Mansion Beach, New Shoreham, R.I.

St. Peter’s Episcopal Church

St. Peter’s Episcopal Mission in Lyndonville, Vt.

Henry Vaughan designed another small rural church in the northern Vermont town of Lyndonville, St. Peter’s Episcopal Mission. The cornerstone for the simple neo-Gothic building was laid in 1898 on donated land. Today it stands in the midst of a modest residential neighborhood.

51 Elm St., Lyndonville, Vt.

Images: Christ Church (tower) By Delcio GP Filho from Goiânia, Brasil – The First Christ Church of New HavenUploaded by LongLiveRock, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7247526; Christ Church (full view) By Farragutful – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79676982St. Andrew’s By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35548737; St. Paul’s School By FCHarwood – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47027870; St. John’s Chapel By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17866430; Searles Castle By David Kolifrath – Author, CC BY-SA 3.0, By The original uploader was EraserGirl at English Wikipedia(Original text: EraserGirl (talk)) – Own work (Original text: self-made), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3657734https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13339085; Searles High School (Methuen Town Hall)

With thanks to The Almighty Wall: The Architecture of Henry Vaughan by William Morgan. This story last updated in 2022.

2 comments 3.1k views

Little Italy in New England: Some Lost, Some Thriving

Shortly after the American Civil War, a new kind of neighborhood emerged in New England cities: a Little Italy. They were poor, dense, Roman Catholic and very, very family oriented.

The Italians came to escape grinding poverty in Sicily and Southern Italy. They followed the Irish, who came to escape the potato famine and usually moved out when the Italians moved in.

Today, the descendants of Italian immigrants make up more than 10 percent of the population of every New England state except Vermont and Maine. A Little Italy survives in Boston, in New Haven and in Providence, but bulldozers took out the Little Italies of Northern New England to make way for hotels and parking lots.

People flock to the surviving Little Italies for their buoyant street atmospheres, their summer religious festivals and most of all for their food.

Here, then, are six of New England’s Little Italies, both lost and surviving.

Wooster Square

Welcome to New Haven’s Little Italy, Wooster Square

Connecticut is the second most Italian state in the United States, with 18.7 percent of the population claiming Italian ancestry. So you shouldn’t be surprised that roughly half the populations of three New Haven neighborhoods — East Haven, West Haven, and North Haven — are descended from Italian immigrants.

Wooster Square is New Haven’s Little Italy, one of the densest and oldest in the country. It has plenty of Italian pastry shops and restaurants, like Tony & Lucille’s, Da Legna and Consiglio’s. Locals argue about which is better: Frank Pepe’s white clam apizza or Sally’s.

Frank Pepe’s exterior.

The neighborhood was named after Revolutionary War General David Wooster because he owned a warehouse near Water Street. Before the harbor was filled, Wooster Square was close to the waterfront. Ship captains and wholesale grocers built large houses near the port. By the end of the 19th century, factories moved to Wooster Square, making it a less desirable place to live.

Sargent Manufacturing, a hardware maker, moved in to New Haven and brought workers from the Amalfi coast of Italy. More Italians followed, to make corsets at Strouse, Adler, boots at Candee Rubber Co., clocks at the New Haven Clock Company and carriage parts at C. Cowles and other carriage factories. Many families opened small shops out of their homes.

The neighborhood fell into poverty when factories closed during the Great Depression. The city planned to build a highway through Wooster Square during the 1950s and ‘60s, but preservationists rallied. Wooster Square was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

For 117 years, the Society of St. Andrew has held a festa at the end of June to honor St. Andrew, who saved Amalfi from Turkish invaders.

Portland’s Lost Little Italy

Maine is one of the least Italian states in New England (along with Vermont), but nonetheless 50,000 Italian-Americans live within its borders. They began arriving in large numbers around 1900 and moved to Portland’s Little Italy on India Street. They came to work in Portland as barbers, carpenters, fishermen, longshoremen, railroad workers and masons.

St. Peter’s Parish

Life for Italian immigrants centered on St. Peter’s Parish on Federal Street, built in 1929. Eventually Portland’s Italian-Americans moved to the suburbs, and Portland’s Little Italy is nearly gone. St. Peter’s Parish is still active, and Micucci Grocery Co., Est. 1949., is still open on India Street. Amato’s Italian delicatessen, now a chain, still claims to have originated the Italian sandwich.

The North End of Boston

Boston’s North End

People have lived in Boston’s North End since 1630. Paul Revere lived there in a house built on the site of Increase Mather’s house. The Old North Church still stands; Paul Revere saw lanterns hung from its steeple. Thomas Hutchinson, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, lived in a North End mansion before patriots ransacked it in 1765.

By the late 1840s, the North End developed a red light district and prosperous residents moved away. Irish immigrants moved in to the neighborhood, and moved up in the world. Boston Mayor John ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald and his daughter Rose lived there.

Ann Street in Boston’s North End, 1881

By the time Rose married Joe Kennedy and moved to Brookline, Eastern European Jews started moving in. Then came many, many Italians. At one time 44,000 Italians lived in the North End, more than three times the number of Irish at their peak — 14,000, and more than the 17,000 Jews.

Churches, Feasts, Processions

The Italians took over five Protestant churches and built new Catholic ones, including St. Leonard’s, the first Italian-speaking church in New England. They started the first Italian café, Café Vittoria, in 1929. They ran grocery stores and bakeries. Three Italian immigrants started the Prince pasta company on Prince Street, and the Pastene Corporation started in a North End pushcart.

The North End became the center of world attention during the trial and execution in 1927 of Sacco and Vanzetti. The Patriarca crime family operated out of the North End for a time. So did Charles Ponzi.

Today the narrow dense streets are lined with cafes, pizzerias, small grocery stores and dozens of Italian restaurants, popular among tourists and city dwellers alike. The North End’s religious societies sponsor a dozen feasts and processions during the year. Mass is celebrated, food is served and religious statues covered with dollar bills are paraded through the streets.

The North End of Portsmouth

Daniel Webster’s house. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Portsmouth, N.H., once had a Little Italy that was a tiny version of Boston’s Little Italy. There were 300 homes in 30 acres for about a thousand people. And, as in Boston, Portsmouth’s Little Italy was called the North End.

And if Paul Revere lived in Boston’s North End, Daniel Webster lived in Portsmouth’s.

It was a crowded waterfront neighborhood with narrow, busy streets and dozens of small businesses, restaurants and shops. Families sold beer and lobster rolls from their homes, popcorn and ice cream from pushcarts.

First it was a colonial neighborhood, then Irish. The Irish moved out when a wave of Italians arrived at the beginning of the 20^th century. They worked in the shoe and button factories. Or they worked in the construction trades and later at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

By 1920, Portsmouth’s Little Italy was 95 percent Italian. There were also Chinese, French, Irish, African-Americans, Russians, Jewish, Polish, Canadians, Greeks, Indians. Some people viewed the neighborhood as a slum.

Urban renewal in the 1950s and ’60s leveled many of the homes, replacing them with a municipal parking lot, the Sheraton Hotel and the old Portsmouth Herald Building. Daniel Webster’s home and the Farragut School next door became an A&P and a parking lot, then a hotel. Only a few of the old buildings survive.

Federal Hill

Providence’s Little Italy.

You can still hear Italian spoken in Providence’s Little Italy, known as Federal Hill. The neighborhood followed the typical trajectory of a Little Italy: A colonial neighborhood became a commercial district. Then Irish immigrants filled its tenements during the famines of the mid-19^th century. The Italians began to arrive in the 1870s.

Today Rhode Island is the most Italian state in the country, just ahead of Connecticut, and the Little Italy of Providence is alive and well.

The arch that welcomes people to Providence’s Little Italy on Federal Hill.

The gateway arch that welcomes visitors to Federal Hill is one of the most recognizable Providence landmarks. The neighborhood includes the Columbus Theater, college housing, a piazza, Italian specialty shops and bakeries and Roman Catholic churches.

Italian flags decorate the main thoroughfare, Atwells Avenue. The Columbus Day parade starts on Federal Hill in the middle of the three-day Columbus Day Festival. On March 19, St. Joseph’s Day, Federal Hill’s Italian bakeries churn out a pastry called zeppole.

More than 20 Italian restaurants such as Angelo’s Civita Farnese and Café Mediterraneo line a quarter-mile of Atwells Avenue. They attract skilled chefs because they’re so near Johnson and Wales University.

In 1954, mob kingpin Ray Patriarca moved from Boston’s North End to the National Cigarette Service Company and Coin-O-Matic Distributors on Atwells Avenue. He died of a heart attack in 1984.

Little Italy, Burlington

The Little Italy in Burlington, Vt., mirrors the history of Portsmouth’s North End. Italians arrived at the turn of the 19th century to work in lumber mills and railroad yards. They created a vibrant little neighborhood along the waterfront east of Battery Street.

Burlington’s Little Italy had 140 homes, social clubs, Catholic schools and churches and small businesses like Izzo’s Market, Merola’s and Bellino’s Grocery.

Outsiders thought they could improve Burlington’s Little Italy with urban renewal. In 1966, the final house was razed to make way for the Champlain Street Project. More than 200 people were scattered after the city bought their houses at unfairly low prices. The old neighborhood fell to parking garages and lots, concrete-and-glass office buildings, a hotel and a windowless shopping mall.

Today three interpretive signs are all that’s left of Burlington’s Little Italy. It is fondly remembered as a place where neighbors shared homemade wine and children ran in and out of their neighbors’ houses, which were never locked.

Images: Gateway Arch over Atwells Avenue, By Zigamorph – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 us, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3996788; Atwells Avenue by Jef Nickerson, Flickr; Boston North End By Ingfbruno – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27355267; Frank Pepe’s By Krista – frank pepe exterior, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38640336.

10 comments 782 views

Six of New England’s Most Famous Writers Houses

New England is dotted with famous writers houses, a testament to the Puritan ideal of literacy and the region’s many publishing houses.

Some writers, like Rudyard Kipling, were born elsewhere, but wrote prolifically while living in New England. Some, like Robert Frost, made use of their surroundings in their work.

It wasn’t easy to select just six writers houses, one for each state. Some are blindingly obvious, while others may surprise you. All can be visited.

If you know of writers houses worth mentioning, please share them in the comments section.

Mark Twain House

Hartford had the highest per-capita income in the United States in 1871 when newlyweds Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and his wife Olivia moved there to be near his publisher.

Of Hartford, Mark Twain said, “Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see, this is the chief… You do not know what beauty is if you have not been here.”

In 1873, Twain began building the house described as ‘part Mississippi steamboat, part medieval fortress, part cuckoo clock.’ He lived in the lavish, Gothic Revival mansion for 17 years, the happiest of his life. It was in that house that he wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Mark Twain in 1871

He also socialized with the many authors who lived nearby, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Dean Howells and Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

Twain made some bad investments and in 1891 moved to Europe where the cost of living was cheaper. He lost more money in 1893 and went on the lecture circuit to earn it back. “The lack of money is the root of all evil,” he wrote.

Daughter Susy died in 1896, and the Clemens couldn’t bear to return to the house. After it was sold, it became a library, an apartment house and a school. The house was going to be torn down, but preservationists saved it in 1929.

The Mark Twain House is now a museum open to visitors.

351 Farmington Ave., Hartford.

Wadsworth-Longfellow House

The Wadsworth Longfellow House in 1910

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, like most Mainers, knew a good story when he heard one. And while his poems have been criticized for pandering to popular sentiment, they were never boring.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Longfellow’s best known home is probably in Cambridge, Mass. There he lived in the same house Gen. George Washington had headquartered while commanding the Continental Army.

The Wadsworth-Longfellow House in Portland, Maine, can lay greater claim to inspiring Longfellow. Portland was where he was born and grew up before heading off to Bowdoin College. And it was where he first would have heard many of the stories that he later immortalized in his poems about New England figures such as Miles Standish and Paul Revere.

Today the house is open as a museum in the heart of Portland.

489 Congress St, Portland.

The Homestead

The Homestead

It isn’t easy to select just one of Massachusetts’ many writers houses, but we chose the one the author rarely left: Emily Dickinson’s The Homestead in Amherst, Mass.

Retouched daguerrotype of Emily Dickinson

The Homestead was built in 1813 by Emily’s grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson. He lost his money and sold the house, but his eldest son Edward bought half of it back in 1830. Emily was born in The Homestead on Dec. 10, 1830.

Edward Dickinson had his own money troubles. He sold his share of the Homestead and moved his family away for 15 years. By 1855 he had earned enough to buy back the whole house. In 1856, Edward began building The Evergreens next door as a wedding gift to his son Austin.

Emily became increasingly reclusive and started to communicate with visitors through closed doors, though she tended the flower garden and visited her brother next door. After she died in 1886, her sister Lavinia found her poems in a locked chest. Austin’s mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, along with family friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, edited Emily’s poems and took them to a publisher.

Emily Dickinson’s house was home to Lavinia until she died in 1899. Eventually it was sold to the trustees of Amherst College and used for college housing. In 2003, it was combined with The Evergreens as the Emily Dickinson Museum.

Visitors can take guided or self-guided tours through the Emily Dickinson Museum from April through December.

280 Main Street, Amherst, Mass.

Robert Frost Farm

The Robert Frost Farm

Travelers passing through Derry, N.H., can be forgiven for looking at the passing countryside and wondering, ‘Whose woods are these? I think I know.’ For they may be looking at the Robert Frost Farm.

Robert Frost

New Hampshire’s most famous poet lived on his farm in Derry from 1900 to 1911. The farm was a gift of Frost’s father, and the young poet struggled financially while he lived there. He began building a reputation, working the farm by day, writing by night and teaching at nearby Pinkerton Academy.

Frost, it turned out, was a horrible farmer but a wonderful poet. His Derry years shaped many of the works that would later win him fame for their crisp depictions of the New England spirit.

Frost famously read his work at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy and would die at age 88 before the president was assassinated.

The Frost Farm is now open to visitors who may walk the grounds. They can wonder which tree was the inspiration for Tree at My Window and scores of other poems that Frost wrote during his time in New Hampshire.

122 Rockingham Rd, Derry, N.H.

Fort Adams State Park

Fort Adams State Park just barely qualifies as one of the writers houses.

It’s easy imagine that Newport in its heyday might form a lasting impression on a teenage boy arriving in the city from the west, out for the first time on his own.

That certainly was the case with playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder. Wilder bunked in the barracks at Fort Adams, serving for three months in the Coastal Artillery Corps, before he headed off to college and on to a successful career.

Thornton Wilder, Yale graduation photo

The plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth earned Wilder Pulitzer Prizes, and his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey won the National Book Award.

For his final novel, Wilder let his mind wander back to 1926 Newport. Theophilius North was his last novel. It chronicled the whimsical adventures of a young man navigating through all strata of Newport society, solving problems for others along the way. Humorous and light, critics praised Wilder’s ability to retain a positive outlook even as his life was winding down.

Wilder would die two years later at his home in Hampden, Conn.

Fort Adams, where he had his short Rhode Island stay, is part of Fort Adams State Park at the mouth of Newport Harbor.

90 Fort Adams Drive, Newport, R.I.

Naulakha

Rudyard Kipling wrote some of his best work while living in Dummerston, Vt.: Captains Courageous, the Jungle Books and a book of poetry that included Gunga Din and Mandalay.

Why Vermont for the British-Indian writer? He loved the fall foliage, the snow and the sound of sleigh bells, and his new wife Caroline Balestier had grown up in Vermont. In 1893, they built a South Asian Indian bungalow in the American Shingle style next to her brother’s home. They called it Naulakha after a book he wrote about a precious Indian jewel. .

The house, which is only one room deep, has views of the Connecticut River and Mount Monadnock.

Kipling in his library at Naulakha

Kipling doted on his two young daughters and wrote prolifically in the seclusion of Vermont. British writer Arthur Conan Doyle brought his golf clubs for a visit and taught Kipling to play the game.

A feud with his brother-in-law drove the Kiplings from Vermont in 1896. The Holbrook family for many years owned Naulakha. Today Naulakha is owned by The Landmark Trust USA, which rents it out to vacationers for about $450 a night.

707 Kipling Road, Dummerston, Vt.

Images: Mark Twain house By Cliff – Flickr: Mark Twain House and Museum, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16488910; Robert Frost Farm By grongar – Robert Frost HouseUploaded by Vux, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13817084; Fort Adams By David (dbking) from Washington, DC, USA – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1468534.

This story about writers houses was updated in 2021.

6 comments 1.2k views

Newer Posts

Older Posts