BC: SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW
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Watch Hill is significant as a well preserved example of a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century summer resort, reflecting the popularization of vacations during that period as an aspect of modern urban industrial:: life. The village is a manifestation of modes of socialization and concepts of leisure, recreation, and even health care that evolved in the Victorian era. The buildings in the Watch Hill Historic District document the area's transformation from an agrarian community to a summer resort. They are notable for their degree of visual unity and compatibility and their skillful integration into the landscape. Certain sections of the village, laid out in the picturesque, fluid manner first adopted for the design of rural cemeteries and suburbs, stand as a good example of one type of nineteenth-century community planning. Watch Hill joins Newport and Narragansett as the three chief exemplars in Rhode Island of the summer resort movement. Narragansett, though larger than Watch Hill, is less intact, with much of its historical fabric destroyed by fires, storms, and urban renewal. Among Rhode Island summer resorts today, Watch Hill is second only to Newport in its environmental character and the architectural quality of its constituent buildings.
The strategic importance of the Watch Hill region was recognized from an early date. The Niantic Indians reputedly used the area as a lookout in the early seventeenth century, to watch for attack parties of Montauk Indians. In the 1740s a watch post was established on the highest knoll here by the colony of Rhode Island during King George's War. These activities are memorialized today in the name of the community. The first European settlement at Watch Hill came in the 1660s, when present-day Washington County, Rhode Island, was known as the King's Province, a territory claimed by Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. In 1662 the Massachusetts Bay Colony granted 500 acres on the easterly side of the Pequot (Pawcatuck) River to Captain Daniel Gookin, encompassing the Watch Hill peninsula.
Captain Gookin erected a dwelling on the property for a tenant farmer. Through the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, the property changed hands and was eventually subdivided. For the most part, however, it remained in large tracts owned by only a few families. Among the early landholders were the Hannah and the Pendleton families. By the late eighteenth century, the area southwesterly of the Syndicate Line (see district map and definition below) had been divided into twelve lots, consolidated in the possession of the Foster and Willcox families. Two eighteenth-century censuses list thel heads of households residing at Watch Hill: Jonathan Foster, Jonathan Foster, Jr. , and Hezekiah Willcox in 1774; and George Foster, Hezekiah Willcox, and Peleg Willcox In 1790. In addition to the residences of these men there were other houses on the various parcels, but the total number of dwellings was probably no more than six or seven.
In 1793 the customs collector of the Port of Pawcatuck first approached the U.S. Department of the Treasury concerning the establishment of a lighthouse, preferably at Watch Hill. The federal government purchased Watch Hill Point from George Foster in 1806 and erected a lighthouse on the site two years later. Jonathan Nash was appointed the first keeper of the light. Watch Hill became an important post in a growing network of light stations intended to promote safe navigation and maritime transport along the coast. The original lighthouse was replaced by the present structure in 1856 and a life-saving station was added in 1879 (supplanted by a newer building in 1907-08; both now demolished), the latter in recognition of Watch Hill's key position.
The impetus for more intensive development of the Watch Hill peninsula came from the advent and growth of tourism in the nineteenth century. The practice of vacationing was a consequence of industrialization and urbanization and the changes they wrought in American society. The stress and hectic pace of modern life in congested, dirty, and noisy manufacturing cities prompted a desir.e on the part of people to escape to more congenial surroundings for relaxation and recreation, which contributed to the evolution of resorts as places offering a respite from quotidian existence. During this period, a break from daily routine was seen not merely as advisable but imperative to the maintenance of physical and mental well being. In the words of a Watch Hill promotional pamphlet, published in 1887: ..
".Why do we all want to leave our comfortable homes in summer, and what kind of change do we want? It is hardly necessary to answer the first question, so universal is the desire for such a change. The busy man needs rest from the overtaxing cares and worry of the active and often anxious commercial demands on his physical powers during the busy season; the wife and mother relief from the cares of housekeeping, and the enervating duties of her position in society; the children, weaned of their books, need recuperation for their tired brains, so overtaxed by the stuffing and cramming of our modern schools, and need a fresh supply of oxygen to put red blood in their veins, a healthy color into their cheeks, and a measure of vigor into their muscles. What is wanted is freedom from care, a complete rest, a cool, bracing atmosphere, change of scene, and opportunities for healthful recreation."
Ironically, it was the burgeoning industrial economy itself that created a class of individuals with the financial resources and leisure time to get away from the perceived detrimental aspects of the new socio-economic • order..
Development of the summer colony at Watch Hill followed general trends common to many American resorts. Early visitors, focussing their attention on the area's picturesque setting and pleasant climate, were at first content with boarding- house and hotel accommodations and social activities centered on outdoor recreation and hotel functions. In time, whose who desired more privacy and comfort than the hotels offered built their own vacation houses. Seasonal dwellings were also built by real-estate investors who rented to families that wanted the advantages of a private residence but did not want to or could not afford to incur the expense of maintaining their own cottage. As the community became more established, additional facilities and institutions were created, many of which replicated features of life back home which the sojourners were ostensibly trying to leave behind them.
Light Keeper Jonathan Nash apparently saw the potential for development of the spectacular seaside landscape at Watch Hill, for he began to acquire property. By 1920 his holdings extended across the neck from Little Narragansett Bay to the ocean/bordered on the north and south by lands of George Foster. The tourist industry had its inception in the 1830s when Jonathan Nash began to take boarders in his house. About 1835 he retired as light keeper and built the first hotel, the Watch Hill House. This was followed by the construction of the Narragansett House in 1844, the Atlantic House in 1855-56, the Plympton House in 1865, the Ocean House and Larkin House in 1868, and the Bay-View House about 1870.
Tourists were attracted to Watch Hill primarily from the west and north. Most came from Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, and others from Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Hartford, Connecticut, and Springfield, Massachusetts. Few came from Providence or Boston—the latter with fashionable resorts in closer proximity on the North Shore of Massachusetts Bay. The visitors traveled by rail, detraining at Stonington, Connecticut, to complete the journey by steamer across Little Narragansett Bay, a threemile trip which was easier than the six-mile ride overland from the station at Westerly center. The early evolution of the community is documented in the 1870 Beers Atlas of Rhode Island. From the old winding road leading from Westerly Village to Watch Hill Point (present-day Watch Hill and Westerly Roads and Bluff Avenue), two cross streets (Plympton and Larkin) connected to a street along the bay shore (Bay Street}* The map shows six hotels; eight dwellings, including one used as a boarding house, the Dickens House; and a school house (built 1852). The houses were all owned by the year-round residents.
Four decades after its beginning as a vacation spot, Watch Hill was still a hotel resort, with no seasonal summer cottages. The first dwelling designed and built specifically as a summer residence was put up for Connecticut Governor James L. Howard of Hartford, on land west of the Watch Hill House. Some of the existing year-round houses were subsequently purchased for use as summer homes--such as the Fitch House, bought by Mrs. J.P. Harvey (now partlydestroyed by fire), and Albert W. Crandall's house, occupied by Governor Julius Catlin--and a few seasonal cottages were built. Extensive development, however, was hampered by the lack of available building sites. Most land in the village was held by the hotel owners, who were reluctant to sell lots to enable the construction of houses that would block their sea vistas. Immediately northeast of the village, a section of the former George Foster homestead, since sold out of the family and known as the Everett Farm, ran across the neck from the bay to the ocean, blocking the natural expansion of the village up the neck. In 1886 three Cincinnati businessmen, Lyneas Norton, Jacob S. Burnet, and Walter St. John Jones, joined together to purchase the Everett Farm. These gentlemen, commonly known as the Cincinnati Syndicate, hired M.D. Burke, a land surveyor from their Ohio home town, to subdivide the Everett estate into house lots. The plan that Burke drew included 101 lots ranging from 4891 to 160,000 square feet, disposed along winding streets arranged to harmonize with and capitalize upon the rolling terrain.
In the words of a promotional text published by the syndicate:
"This estate, which has so long retarded the growth of Watch Hill,...has recently been purchased for the express purpose of division into cottage sites, of dimensions, situation, and prices to suit all tastes. Persons of very moderate means and economical habits may now enjoy the...ocean air and scenery at Watch Hill, in common with the wealthy"....
The average lot size in the Everett Farm subdivision was approximately 35,000 square feet, just under one acre. A number of purchasers bought adjoining lots to ensure adequate space for their requirements. Thirtyeight of the lots were sold in the first six months after the platting of the farm, but construction followed slowly. About thirty-three houses were erected on the Everett tract by 1895, not all by the original purchasers.
Though the Everett. Farm was less than half built up at the turn .of the century, other opportunities for building cottages were opened as well. In 1896 William A. Procter and William P. Anderson of Cincinnati acquired the Potter Farm, northeasterly of the Syndicate Line (the northeasterly border of the Everett Farm) on the northerly side of Westerly Road. The old Potter farmhouse was converted into a guest house, subsequently known as the Misquamicut Inn, and the acreage was divided into house lots. Some time later Stanton S. Pendleton subdivided his property, across Westerly Road from the Potter Farm. In both sections the new streets were laid out along curvilinear paths that continued the Everett Farm development.
As the seasonal population of Watch Hill swelled, various facilities and services were created that catered to the summer inhabitants, in general, institutions that met the needs of both hotel visitors and cottagers were founded earlier, such as the chapel society. As the number of cottagers grew, organizations arose that were more closely related to their way of life, such as the country club and yacht club. The Watch Hill Chapel Society was incorporated in 1875 by forty prominent summer residents. The following year George M. Nash, proprietor of the Ocean House, gave the society a lot across the street from his hotel. A chapel building designed by George Keller of Hartford was completed on the site in 18.87?. It was a union chapel which houses interdenominational Protestant services conducted by visiting clergymen, as well as Catholic masses and separate services for black servants. The Modern Gothic chapel edifice was enlarged in 1902 following the original style of the building, and was completely refurbished into a neo-Colonial structure in 1928. The chapel remains an important center of community life today.
A commercial district evolved along Bay Street. It included dry-goods and specialty shops, restaurants and lunch rooms, and provisions stores that supplied the cottage colony. In 1879 a traveling carnival left behind a flying-horse carousel which became a fixture at the end of Bay Street, an isolated incident that provided the village with what is perhaps its best known landmark. The community was substantial enough to warrant establishment of a post office here in 1883. A trolley line, the Pawcatuck Valley Street Railway, was completed in 1894, linking Watch Hill to Westerly center. This improvement was apparently promoted to Westerly businessmen who sought to draw customers from the area. Many Watch Hill residents considered the trolley a nuisance that obstructed carriage"-and later auto--traffic on the Westerly Road. They also feared that steamer service from Stonington would be discontinued, forcing them to make less convenient train connections through Westerly station via the trolley. The street railway operated summers until 1921, when it was discontinued.
The Watch Hill Improvement Society was founded by a group of gentlemen in 1888 and incorporated a year later. Its stated aims were "...to develop and improve the village of Watch Hill, cultivate public spirit, quicken the social and intellectual life of the people, secure public health, beautify and build up the village, and render Watch Hill a still more inviting and desirable place of residence." The provision of programs for intellectual and cultural enrichment went along with the Victorian notion that leisure time should be spent in educational as well as recreational pursuits. However, as the number of cottages grew, the emphasis of the society shifted to issues of civic betterment and beautification. By 1900 control of the Improvement Society has passed to the women of the community. The village's public sculptures and monuments were placed under the auspices of the group..
The Misquamicut Golf Club was founded in 1895 and the Watch Hill Yacht Club in 1913 to provide recreational and social activities. The golf club laid out a nine-hole course in 1896 on the south side of Ocean View Highway, with a clubhouse converted from an old corn crib on the property. The club subsequently acquired a large tract on the opposite side of the highway, back of the former Pendleton farm. Here a new course was built and a clubhouse was constructed in 1901. The course has since been redesigned and the club building has been enlarged. The Yacht Club erected a building on pilings in Watch Hill Cove in 1922. This structure was destroyed by the hurricane of 1938 and replaced the following year. Both clubs survive today as centers of Watch Hill social life. The growth of Watch Hill ultimately called for the provision of certain basic municipal services. In 1901 the Watch Hill Fire District was incorporated. This organization, funded by a special assessment levied on property owners, provided fire protection and later oversaw construction and maintenance of a system of piped water connected to the Westerly water works, which eliminated the village's reliance on private wells with windmill pumps. The Fire District built an engine house in 1910 that still stands off Bay Street (see entry 33). The present station, on Westerly Road outside the district, was erected as a replacement in 1952. The Fire District organization functions as a sort of local "town council" for management of the village's civic affairs. The shabby condition of the waterfront along Bay Street in the early years of this century prompted the formation in 1908-10 of a Park Commission that developed as an offshoot of the Fire District. The Park Commission was authorized by the Rhode Island General Assembly to acquire and demolish unsightly structures to create a shoreline park that was landscaped and ornamented with public sculptures.
Watch Hill's heyday lasted from the1880s through the early decades of the twentieth century. By the end of this period the hotels had slipped into decline and the community had become primarily a cottage colony. The Plympton House and Larkin House were both demolished in 1906, the latter to clear the way for an enclave of new summer houses. Thereafter, a series of disasters had a significant impact on the physical fabric of the area. A fire in October 1916 destroyed the Watch Hill and Colonial (formerly the Atlantic}; Houses, : the upper floors of the Columbia House, and two dwellings. Another fire in February 1938 consumed eight structures in the village. The worst damage by far was wrought by the hurricane of 21 September 1938. Thirty-nine cottages and. five buildings of the Watch Hill Beach Association were swept off Napatree Point, and eight other houses were damaged by winds gusting up to 200 miles per hour and high seas that flooded buildings atop forty-foot bluffs along East Beach. After the hurricane most homes and shops were repaired and the beach association and yacht club buildings were replaced, but no houses were built on Napatree, and the present undeveloped state of the point is an outcome of this devastating storm. Although a number of new buildings have been constructed here in the past forty-five years. Watch Hill remains primarily a product of its development as a resort during the years from 1870 through 1940.
The houses in the district 'exemplify American domestic architecture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. They illustrate the use of eclecticism to create a form of architectural expression based on an inventive synthesis of elements adapted from historical sources. They reflect the evolution from the more idiosyncratic compositions of the 1880s, which often combined features from different styles, to the more academic designs for period houses in the 1910s and 1920s. Most dwellings from the earlier years are in a hybrid style combining characteristics of the Queen Anne with those of the Modern Colonial or Shingle Style, often with asymmetrical, artfully picturesque massing influenced by European medieval design. The academicism that dominated architectural practice after 1910 brought a change to more studied dwellings in style such as the Colonial Revival, English Cottage, Tudor Revival, and Norman Farmhouse. Still, many houses of the 1910s and 1920s followed a basic format derived from the Colonial Revival with "modern" touches such as deep overhanging eaves with extended-rafter stick bracketing. This country-house architecture for the well-to-do represented the epitome of good taste and served as a model for the design of middle-class suburban residences. The houses at Watch Hill are also notable as a collection of buildings by architects; from all over the United States, a consequence of the common custom in resort communities of seasonal residents bringing in outside architects for commissions, usually but not always from the patrons home towns.
Among the architects who worked at Watch Hill were people distinguished in their own localities and those of national reputation, together with some whose backgrounds cannot be readily traced. The list includes William John Cherry of New York; Gardner, Pyne § Gardner of Springfield, Massachusetts; E.F. Gilbert of New York; Edward F. Hinkle of Philadelphia; Warrington G, Lawrence; Henry W, Wilkinson of Syracuse, New York; Greenleaf .§ Cobb of Boston; George Keller, one o-f the foremost architects of Hartford, Connecticut; Tracey § Magonigle of New York; Mott B. Schmidt, a New York society architect well known in the 1910s and 1920s; William Ralph Emerson of Boston; Grosvenor Atterbury and John A. Tompkins of New York; Wilson Eyre of Philadelphia; and John Russell Pope.
Though the custom of seasonal migration that spawned Watch Hill's development has changed since the turn of the century, the area survives today as a mixed neighborhood of year-round inhabitants with a considerable number of summer residents from greater New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Washington, B.C. Watch Hill is a remarkably well preserved historical community notable for its architectural and environmental quality and its evocation of an important phase in American social history. |
