Stllleton %Btreet, Peacon @II, @Orston, 1950
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STllleton%btreet, Peacon @II, @orSton,1950 a@e#attern of jtekuQlhglanb %bettIement a$ @hcempIifieb ip l$e#roperties: of tfjeBmrietp: togetfier kuitr,a cmparifdon of atuient anb mobem routes’ of trabel BY FELICZA DOUGHTY KINGSBURY Curator of Properties,S.P.N.E.A. HE peoples of the world today seek, were it not that the responsibility are perceiving their own desires for modern objectives is ours, and not that T with a new clarity. Europe and of our ancestors. Asia, hardly accustomed to making plans The forebears who started the weav- for themselves, and certainly not yet able ing of our national fabric in the seven- to create states which serve individual teenth and eighteenth centuries, and left it lives, nevertheless are setting out toward to us to continue, did, however, leave us a goal where the responsibility of the as a tool with which to work the ex- state is for the welfare of the people. The perience and precept of lives spent in gain- previous conditioning of. these masseshas ing the same simple and humble ends that been so strongly against individual re- today the whole world at last is seeking. sponsibility that the trail breakers some- There is a very obvious and inevitable times discover they have been going in parallel between the ideologiesof the suc- circles only to find themselvesconfronted cessive generations of those who have by a new dictator. To increasing num- made the western voyage acrossthe At- bers, panic and confusion suggestremoval lantic. To none of them has the percep- to a country where they believe that these tion of personal responsibility nor of pos- problems were solved successfully two sible accomplishment been so clear as it hundred years ago. Those who stay be- was to those who came knowing that no hind experiment with attachments to civilization awaited them here; that on leaders who claim to have found the only these unfamiliar shores there would be path toward the improvement of every- land to clear, a house to build, a town to day life. We on this shore who are not organize, and a nation, or communal such recent immigrants, but who feel our ideology, to fight for; and that their sur- way of life to be a personal family tradi- vival and successwould be measured by tion, are inclined to forget that with the their own physical and moral strength as exception of those who seek wealth individuals. through power, and power through lead- Their lives have left an imprint upon ership, that all peoples throughout the ours: sometimes confusing, like superim- world want only those things described posed footprints, sometimes clearly de- in “The Four Freedoms.” It is for us to fined, as in the document of our Consti- help them find it, not to draw our (in- tution. There is always a question herited) mantles about us and seek to whether their national ideals should sur- avoid pollution. vive or whether new ones will evolve. It We could feel justly snobbishabout the is a time for re-evaluation. fact that our own predecessorsaccom- How can we evaluate our heritage with- plished two hundred years ago what our out an inventory of our heirlooms, how- new arrivals have only recently come to ever? How can we keep house without 201 knowing what is in the attic? What is this Suffolk County Courthouse rising above national fabric which we have inherited? the gabled roofs of old brick houseslike Is it homespun, or satin, or both? What the vision of some eighteenth-century were the desires, traditions, and handi- dreamer. capswhich made up the lives of our pred- ecessorsand formulated the culture of New England and the other American colonies, and which so strongly color our way of life today? Is there, any sense in the fact that the chain stores, in Novem- ber, are full of women with kerchiefs on their heads, negotiating in broken English for turkeys and cranberries? Here is a Society engaged in preserv- ing the antiquities of New England. How many of its some seventeen hundred members really feel sure that they are not @lb anb Beta on %uon HI merely pandering to an individual weak- SUFFOLK COUNTY COURTHOUSE FROM BULFINCH ST., BOSTON nessin cherishing the dusty objects which are the detritus of past lives? Should we The properties of the Society for the not, if we were abreast of the times, wel- Preservation of New England Antiqui- come bulldozers to 141 Cambridge Street ties, like libraries, are only worth visiting to make way for a new housing develop- as sourcesof information. They are only ment of chromium and plate glass? significant to the degree in which they Would the people who lived in such a offer data useful to us today. Like the ob- building know or care whether they were jects in a museum, these housesare only living in Boston or Budapest? of value as they are original and genuine A house is an outer garment to our- products of a specific culture of interest selves: it can be flamboyant, according to to us today, and we can only expect them our tastes, or designed to shelter, accord- to be visited, like a museum, by people in ing to our environment. It takes on the search of information assimilable by their shape and odor of our lives. Such is your own cultural appetite. These houses do, house today; such were the housesof our however, preserve and exhibit concepts forebears. Only to the very young or very which today are of specific usefulness, unimaginative are houses of an earlier and of which the significance will increase day or an unfamiliar culture interesting in the future. merely as curiosities. The side show of a Our literature, our history, and the circus’would be more rewarding to such physical products that remain, such as a person; or among architectural curiosi- these houses,are the sourcesfrom which ties, no ancient buildings could approach the modern citizen can gain insight into the amazing features of the mid-nine- the beliefs and customs by which he is teenth-century’s towered Victorian man- busy living. These houses are the prod- sions, the magic wand of the great radio ucts, and were an integral part, of the tower which ironically stands as a termi- communities in which they were built. nal.axial feature to Longfellow Park in The materials and methods by which they Cambridge, or the misty heights of the were constructed reveal the physical char- Qfit‘ #3attm of *to &ngIanb b)tttCtuunt 203 acter and resources of the neighborhood vide great variety among themselves and in which they stood. The character and also in the differing scenic character of contents of the houses record the char- the parts of New England concerned, for acter of the communities which sur- the range which both represent is wide in rounded them. The taste and style in chronological sequence, economic de- which the houses were designed and fur- velopment and native character. nished record as clearly as in a book the The New England scene as wrought beliefs and objectives of their builders, the upon by man, like that of all settled areas, cultural horizons of their eras, and, in- is the combined result of human objec- deed, the state of the nation in their day. tives at work upon the geologic base. Be- This year, as never before, the Society’s tween the works of nature and those of houses are drawn closer together by the man, the balance gradually changes with speed of automobiles and by the smooth- length of occupancy, until we have cities ness of paved highways. When some of like New York where the works of nature them were built there were no roads; at first glance are hard to find. And yet linking others were single-track dirt each ton of concrete and steel which to- roads, Few of them were built when day stands there is a proclamation that there were more than a few turnpikes New York has the Atlantic seaboard’s joined by side roads. Only the later ones best harbor, and even the names in its were built when it was known what lay telephone book are areminder of the fact. beyond the Mississippi. It is possible now In this article the author will try to to retrace in a day or an afternoon a jour- provide a guidebook to the past, to scratch ney that would have taken a week or a away some of the later works, and lead month in 1800, and for that reason one the reader back to the original ledges, has to take all the more pains to visualize streams and forests, by means of footpath the intervening spaces which gave the and ferry, turnpike and stagecoach, stop- houses their setting. ping at an ordinary or two for re- It seems appropriate at the outset of freshment and gossip. The reader must our season for summer travel for this So- be warned, however, not to expect to ciety to consider the opportunities offered pass his time listening to rustic humor, its members in visiting the Society’s prop- for the peoplewhom he might find in such erties throughout New England. A study placeswere as much affected by European of the map will suggest the possibility of politics, and as much concerned about na- grouping such visits in areas suitable for tional policies, as any of us today-in- pleasant trips of a day or more as desired, deed, more so. and at the close of this article will be As for the scenery: what we mean in found a chart giving such groupings and the words “typically New England” re- mentioning eating places along the way sults from a racially monobasic settlement where food is served in a setting appro- existing for a comparatively long time in priate to such a journey.