Photo of the Day: Quackenbush Barn, Mahwah NJ

I came upon this barn in early October, in Winter’s Park, Mahwah, NJ. Dating back to around 1850, it was originally located on Sparrowbush Road in the Masonicus section of the town. 

Once belonging to the Wey family, it was sold to Cornelius A. Quackenbush in 1868 and continued in that family’s hands for nearly 75 years. During this period, the barn looked and functioned in a different manner than now, in a two-level structure with animals below and produce and equipment kept above.

The barn was moved to its present site on East Ramapo Avenue in Winter’s Park in 1998 by the Mahwah Historic Preservation Commission.

Photo of the Day: Longfellow House, Cambridge MA

Even approaching this handsome example of Georgian architecture from the Charles River, as I did when I visited and photographed the site nearly a dozen years ago, Longfellow House commands attention.

With works such as “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” “The Song of Hiawatha” and “Evangeline,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow remains the preeminent poet of American history. But his career extended far beyond these verses practically baked into Americans’ imaginations for the last century and a half, just as use of his house extended beyond even his long life.

Once the specter of COVID-19 fades, I urge readers who visit the Boston metro area to venture over to Cambridge for a stop at Longfellow House. It offers a chance to engage in history across several eras.

That history began well before Longfellow lived here. The home’s formal name, the Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House, reflects its eight decades even before Longfellow got there.

John Vassall, a wealthy landowner, built the mansion as a colonial example of conspicuous consumption in 1759, only to flee it more than a decade later when his Loyalist sympathies made him persona non grata with neighbors.

Once Vassall left, the house didn’t stay vacant for long. George Washington used it as his headquarters for nine months as he successfully planned to drive the British out of Boston at the start of the American Revolution. (In 1844, Longfellow and his wife Fanny acquired a plaster case of a bust of the general by the French sculptor Houdon.)

Washington’s apothecary general, Andrew Craigie, modified the Brattle Street mansion in the early Federal period of the new republic. His renovations—including a large ell addition on the back of the house, as well as two symmetrical verandas on either side—provided the mansion with the basic structure and footprint it’s had ever since.

Craigie House, as it had become known, came on the market just when Longfellow, who had been renting near Harvard Square, needed a home for the family he was about to start with Fanny. The poet’s father-in-law, Boston industrialist Nathan Appleton, bought it for the young couple.

In this house achieved such fame and prosperity that he became the first American poet who could earn a living entirely on his writing. The seemingly easy grace of his literary style was matched by private contentment, as he and Fanny raised five children here.

All of that was shattered by a fire in 1861, when Fanny accidentally knocked over a candle as she was melting wax to seal locks of her children's hair. The resulting burns took her life and scarred Henry’s face to such an extent that he grew a beard to cover it.

In addition to explaining the domestic life and Henry and Fanny, the tour I took a dozen years ago also recounted colorful details in the lives of the Longfellow children. (One son, Charles, survived a terrible wound while serving in the Union Army in the Civil War, going on to write extensively about his experiences traveling in Asia in the postwar period.)

The house’s website also discusses how the family home was preserved into the 20^th century—notably through the poet’s grandson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, a preservationist, scholar, pacifist and labor activist, who collected objects, photos, correspondence and other items that have helped guides at the house tell its story to succeeding generations of visitors.

A Wonderful Life Recalled: The Jimmy Stewart Museum, Indiana, PA

Upteen broadcasts of It’s a Wonderful Life this past month have surely heightened interest (not that it was ever lagging) in its star, Jimmy Stewart. Scott Eyman’s dual bio of the actor and his longtime friend Henry Fonda, Hank and Jim, will go part of the way toward satisfying that appetite. 

But physical artifacts linger longer in the mind. So, if you want a visceral sense of what made this embodiment of American values tick, you should, if you have the chance, travel to the town of Indiana, PA, the actor’s birthplace, where his life and career are celebrated in the Jimmy Stewart Museum.

In keeping with the star’s own wishes, the building in his honor is understated and intended to boost the fortunes of his town (about an hour’s drive east of Pittsburgh). But casual fans of the actor will find a vast assortment of eye-opening material in this space (converted from the third floor of the borough’s public library, and adjacent to the original site of the Philadelphia Street hardware store his father owned and operated for years). And even I, a more intense devotee, wanted to linger longer when I visited the museum in October.

There was a whole gallery here devoted to It’s a Wonderful Life. But the material I found most of interest related to his own family growing up. In an almost tangible way, Stewart was able to invest so much in George Bailey because he related so much to him.

Watching It’s a Wonderful Life over the holidays (again!), I was struck more than previously by the relationship between George and his father Peter. There was the quiet but palpable paternal pride in an intelligent, ambitious son; the transmission of the values of hard work and looking out for others; the hope/expectation that the son would eventually take over the business; and the son’s fear that the daily grind of eking out a living in a small town that had daily sapped his father’s vitality would happen to him, too, if he didn’t escape. 

Like George Bailey, young Jimmy Stewart saw his original dream—building something big—frustrated. But unlike George, Jimmy did manage to get away from his hometown. Shortly after graduation from Princeton University, believing opportunities for advancing as an architect in the Great Depression would be limited, he decided to pursue an interest that had increasingly captivated his interest in college: acting. Stints in summer stock and Broadway led eventually to his journey out to Hollywood and, eventually, stardom. 

Jimmy’s son Michael noted that both his parents carried to Hollywood a “small-town Christian Presbyterian ethic that nobody owes you a living. If you have bad breaks, get up and move on.” Jimmy had seen how his own father, Alexander Stewart, had taken one blow after another—first a fire, then the Depression—and managed to keep his business afloat. He maintained the same work ethic.

Hard work was not the only belief instilled in the Stewart family. So was patriotism, best exemplified by service to one’s country. His ancestors served in the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Civil War, and during WWII Stewart became the most prominent Hollywood professional to serve in combat missions.

All of that translated to the screen, particularly in three films with his favorite director, Frank Capra (You Can’t Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It’s a Wonderful Life), in which Stewart carved out a remarkably enduring image as the embodiment of American decency and integrity. 

A timeline guides visitors chronologically through Stewart’s life, a 50-seat theater runs films about him, and a gift show includes must-have items for fans. 

Even so, I found most interesting the museum’s artifacts (many donated by the actor or his family), which testify both to Stewart’s near-endless variations on his Everyman image, as well as his film peers’ respect for his versatility, professionalism and kindness.

Among the items on display here are:

*Several of Stewart’s Army Air Corps and Strategic Air Command Reserve uniforms, including a military tuxedo;

*A gray, sweat-stained cowboy hat worn in seven of his westerns that he considered a good-luck charm;

*Scripts for several films, including his Oscar-nominated turn as the gentle tippler Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey;

*A room setting with original items from the office he kept in Hollywood;

*A replica of the booth where he usually dined with his wife in the famous Beverly Hills celebrity eatery Chasen’s; and,

*A fiberglass statue of Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

A sign in the museum prominently features the advice Stewart gave each of his daughters as they went away to college: “Always remember: be nice to people.” Words simple, unpretentious and true, taken to heart forever in the town where he grew up.

Photo of the Day: Herman Melville’s ‘Arrowhead,” Pittsfield MA—In Honor of the Novelist’s Bicentennial

This week, America celebrates the 200th birthday of Herman Melville. Like Walt Whitman, another foundational American writer with a bicentennial this year, the creator of Moby Dick, Billy Budd and other tales was born in New York State and wrote numerous poems during the Civil War. Unlike the “Sage of Camden,” Melville wrote from a dark vision of humanity in general and America’s mission in particular, and died with his reputation in such eclipse that it would take another three decades for it to emerge from the shadows.

Nearly two years ago, for the third time over the past 30 years, I visited “Arrowhead,” the rambling homestead in Pittsfield, Mass., where Melville lived with his family for 13 years. I took the attached photo during that late-summer 2017 visit. 

I’ve always been fascinated by the notion that Melville could write about the sea so much in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, but maybe I shouldn’t be: his imagination was so fertile that he likened Mount Greylock, visible from his second-floor study window, to the white whale that obsessed him. 

Because Pittsfield was so inextricably tied to his family’s fortunes, Melville invested an enormous amount psychologically in these grounds. He first came to the area in 1837, at a time when his father’s death had plunged the surviving family members into debt. Working for his uncle Thomas that year, teenage Herman found the experience far different from what he knew in New York: eating well and working in the fields. 

More than a decade later, still with these fond memories, he thought it was an opportune time to relocate here from Gotham. This time, though, he had nothing like his earlier carefree experiences.

Herman thought sales of his books would enable him and his family to live comfortably. Inspired by a brief friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne (described in this prior blog post of mine), a fellow Berkshires resident, he created a book on the short list of Great American Novels, Moby Dick. But this turn from adventure fiction to more symbolic, experimental fare sent his sales plunging.

Arrowhead (named after an Indian artifact that Melville found on the property) was, and is, a site of pastoral beauty. But increasingly, it produced problems for the Melvilles. 

With wife Lizzie and son Malcolm soon joined by three more children, plus his mother and several sisters, it could not have been an easy environment for Herman to create. His indefatigable attempts to carve out time—notably, writing till 9 pm, when he couldn’t see anymore—strained his health and, his family feared, his sanity. (Afflicted by hay fever, Lizzie had her own health issues in the home.)

In 1863, a financially strapped Melville sold his home to his brother Allan, who expressed his admiration through an inscription on the chimney from Herman’s Piazza Tales story, “I and My Chimney.”

When Melville died in 1891, only a single obit noted his passing. He is read constantly in high schools and colleges now, of course. 

But  a visit to Arrowhead is a must for any Berkshires travelers, as well as just anyone who wants to better understand this essential writer who still has so much to say to us today about unfulfilling work (“Bartleby the Scrivener”), American race relations (“Benito Cereno”), a leader who drives his followers to catastrophe (Moby Dick), and the national tendency to fall for empty promises and fraud (The Confidence Man).

Photo of the Day: Carriage Ride, Beaufort, SC

This image illustrates one of the many ways in which tourism has come to play a major role in the economy of Beaufort, SC. It tells a great deal in a short space about the picturesque, preserved antebellum homes and the lovely, improbably enduring Spanish moss of this coastal community that so many came to love over the years (including a longtime resident, the late novelist Pat Conroy). 

I confess to falling under its spell myself when I visited the town on a longer vacation to Hilton Head back in November 2014 (so much so that I took a ton of photos, such as this one).

The guides tended to dwell more on the period before and during the Civil War—understandable, in one sense, as the homes are a compelling argument for historic preservation (even being featured in films such as The Big Chill), and the story of these buildings were told primarily by wealthy white slaveowners. But from now on, I think more people—and more effort on the part of the community—will focus on a later period that has not received as much attention: Reconstruction.

This was brought to my attention forcefully toward as I listened on C-Span to a panel discussion hosted by the American Historical Association (AHA), “Commemorating the Reconstruction Era.” The panelists mentioned how, in the waning days of the Obama administration, the President had designated Beaufort the first National Park Service site dedicated to Reconstruction.

This period of American history was long mischaracterized as an era of vengeful Northern carpetbaggers and their self-interested collaborators, corrupt Southern scalawags, who initiated a period of debasement of the defeated South. Over the last 60 years or so, with the onset of the Civil Rights movement, that stereotype is now the subject of necessary revisionism.

Beaufort is an excellent place to start with educating people about what really went on: a thwarted but heroic effort to extend the full rights of American citizens to former slaves. Taken over by the Union Army in 1861, Beaufort and its environs became a kind of laboratory for a Second American Revolution, where African-Americans could vote, buy property and create institutions such as churches and schools that would build their community. 

One of the AHA panelists, former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, and Columbia University historian Eric Foner, began to press for the NPS designation for Beaufort more than a decade and a half ago. The campaign had to overcome stiff opposition from the Sons of Confederate Veterans and others before Barack Obama created the monument through the Antiquities Act. 

The Web site for Beaufort prominently mentions a few key points of interest related to this much-misunderstood period of American history: Penn Center, site of the first academic school for freed slaves; and Tabernacle Baptist Church, the burial ground for Robert Smalls, a slave who, in 1863, pulled off a daring capture of a Confederate steam ship before turning it over to Union forces, and, in the postwar period, served in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.