USA > Massachusetts > Dukes County > Marthas Vineyard > Martha's Vineyard, summer resort, 1835-1935 > Part 21
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Cedar Bluff is also the nearest point on the Island to the ter- minus of the
VINEYARD SOUND RAILROAD
so near that the cars can be seen from this point, going in and out of the depot at Woods Hole.
Thomas Bradley died the year after he issued this advertisement, in the eighty-seventh year of his age. Little, if anything at all, was heard further of Cedar Bluff; but an adjacent tract, laid out in 1872 also, was advertised for some time as West Point Grove. This was the tract purchased by Captains James L. Smith and Shubael Hawes Norton for $400, and sold by them within a few weeks for $10,000.
The promoters of West Point Grove were Smith, Lewis and Carpenter, a real estate firm formed as an offshoot of the Oak Bluffs development, and acting as sales agent for the Oak Bluffs Company.
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The partners were Capt. William Lewis, G. A. Carpenter of Foxboro, a son of the Hon. Erastus P. Carpenter, and Lewis Smith of Fox- boro, a protege of the Carpenters. The inevitable avenues were laid out, a wharf was built, and the tract was plotted for cottages, but although the promoters had chosen their site well, they had taken the wrong time. The boom collapsed, and West Point Grove, far from the camp ground and Oak Bluffs, suffered stagnation.
But in 1887 Captain Lewis, who had come into possession of the entire property, conveyed it to a syndicate of Boston promoters and capitalists. The initiator and leading spirit of the new company, which was called, inclusively enough, the West Chop Land and Water Company, was O. G. Stanley, an engineer who had come to Vineyard Haven to renew an acquaintance with Harry A. Castello of that town with whom he had been associated in installing a water system at Canyon City, Colorado. It seemed to Mr. Stanley that little stood in the way of a successful resort development at West Chop except the lack of a good water supply.
Besides the Boston capitalists, Mr. Stanley associated with him Capt. Leander C. Owen of Vineyard Haven, a successful whaling master, and his son, William Barry Owen, who at that time was a lawyer with an office in Boston. However, of a necessary capital of $30,000 which was raised for the building of a West Chop and Vine- yard Haven water system, only $100 was invested by Vineyard Haven. The depression of 1873 had cast a long shadow.
For a time, the water system tended to overshadow the land devel- opment at West Chop. Collecting basins were constructed at Tashmoo Springs, at the head of Tashmoo Pond, and a pumping station and stand pipe were built; mains were laid to the town, and beyond to West Chop, and in December, 1887, a grand celebration was held to mark the completion of the first public water supply on the Island of Martha's Vineyard. Streams from a hydrant were thrown far into the air, and a jubilation banquet followed, at which a gold watch and chain were presented to Mr. Stanley. Toasts were pro- posed, among them "Holmes Hole-though lost to sight, to mem- ory dear," to which Ichabod N. Luce responded, pointing out that no native of Martha's Vineyard had ever been sent to state's prison; and "The Press," to which Samuel Keniston of the Vineyard Gazette
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made a response which concluded, "The Press, whether foreign or domestic, metropolitan or provincial, continental or insular, urban or suburban, coatswise or inland, is a big thing, and don't you forget it."
The land syndicate had purchased the former Cedar Bluff, and now held something more than a square mile of shore and woodland, including the red cedars, high bluffs, shelving beaches of sand, oak woods, and tall pines. The West Chop wharf was made a regular landing of the steamboat line, two hotels were built, a bowling alley, a billiard hall and tennis courts. Through the woods a white shell road was built to Vineyard Haven.
The success of West Chop from that time was never in doubt. One by one, large summer homes were built, and between the center of Vineyard Haven and West Chop the gradually increasing summer colony stretched along the water until the whole harborside and the whole point were included.
XXXVI
Makonikey
Not far to the west of West Chop, following along the Vineyard Sound shore, one came to the high point of land and rising ground above the shore known as Makonikey, a name by which the Indians had signified old place, or ancient place. There was nothing in evidence more ancient than the boulders left by the glacier, or more recent than the oak trees, beach plum bushes, blackberry vines, wild roses and beach grass. A group of mainland capitalists who deter- mined to develop Makonikey said of it: "Makonikey Heights, the new property of the Martha's Vineyard Company, stands out bold and fair against the eastern horizon. The southwestern extremity is marked by towering cliffs, one hundred feet high, all aglow in the western light, with lovely gray, dazzling gold, and dark red and blue shadows, at whose base, bold and jagged rocks ever battle for supremacy with the ocean, a picture once seen long to be remem- bered."
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Here there was an effort to borrow from Gay Head. Although the colored shadows of the escarpment of sand could be seen at favorable times, the sand itself was commonplace and yellow; the boulders, too, were polished by the waves instead of jagged, and glistening with sea mosses. Nor was it the ocean at the foot of the cliffs, but Vineyard Sound, which was quite another matter.
The first announcement of the Makonikey project was made in June, 1891, but for two years there was no action. Then construction work began on a large hotel, to have twenty rooms, and a wharf in Vineyard Sound. Eventually, there were to be fifteen or twenty cottages as well. The company launching this enterprise was made up entirely of mainland business men who had not been linked with the Vineyard in more than a casual way. One of the directors was E. H. Capen, president of Tufts College.
As the new hotel took form, an observer wrote: "In appearance it resembles an ocean steamer, only it is more delicate in design and finish." The hotel still stands, but the resemblance, if it ever existed, has been lost with the years. In the center a sort of turret, was elevated above the verandas, and this may have looked vaguely like a smokestack. The building was of three stories, and a piazza ten feet wide ran across the front and lapped over the sides; there were also some curving bay windows. The ceilings of the first floor were of embossed steel, a type of construction which for some reason occasioned considerable pride. An electric plant was installed, and provisions were made for fresh or salt water baths.
As the grounds about the hotel were laid out, they threatened to become a sort of labyrinth. Some of the avenues were named Memphremagog, Aquedockton, Winnecoette, Passamaquoddy, Mas- sabesic and Umbago, indicating the unerring kinship of land develop- ers and engineers. The streets and parks formed loops and curves of a surprising sort. Meantime, a survey was made for a driveway to link Makonikey with West Chop.
As the summer of 1893 came on, work was rushed in order to open the hotel for the season's business. Many Italian laborers were employed, especially on grading and the work of clearing land for streets. These men were still on the ground when the hotel was opened to the public. Apparently the opening was auspicious, and
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most of the twenty rooms were occupied, and the prospect seemed to be untroubled. Then one August night, the Italian laborers, remaining unpaid-apparently because of the company's dwindling cash reserves-gathered in the lobby and demanded money. No money was forthcoming, and the men became excited, their voices clamoring against the embossed steel ceiling overhead. As the dispute became hotter, some of the ringleaders threatened to set fire to the hotel.
This news spread quickly among the guests, and they were soon filled with panic. In the still darkness, a file of frightened people emerged from the hotel and took flight toward Vineyard Haven, some of them partly dressed, some dragging suitcases and other belongings, some leaving almost everything behind. Their ankles torn by briars and bushes, the guests cut across fields and through thickets, not pausing to feel out paths or roads. The stragglers reached Vineyard Haven at last and were received and sheltered. But the Makonikey Inn, so recently completed, closed its doors on August 24, 1893, never to be reopened as a summer hotel. In all the history of summer projects on Martha's Vineyard, failure had never struck so swiftly or in so ludicrous a form.
A year later the lumber company which had supplied materials for the hotel attempted to follow out the original plan. Several cottages were built, on the supposition that they would attract tenants or investors. But the situation was not so easily saved, and in July, 1897, Makonikey was sold for $12,500 at auction, hotel, cottages and all. By this sale the holders of $65,000 in bonds were enabled to realize a dividend of about four per cent. The lumber com- pany was the nominal purchaser, and in 1901, through a trustee, the property was again sold, this time to a Boston architect who planned to reopen the hotel. His plan did not materialize, however.
Still later, George A. Matthews, a retired preacher, and his son Roy, took over the tract in order to develop the clay beds which were near the surface. It was announced that a great field of lignite had been found at Makonikey, and that this fuel supply, used in the proportion of one quarter Pocahontas coal and three quarters lignite, would enable a brick plant to operate at small expense. The Kaolin and Clay Products Company was organized with a capitalization of
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... . .
Photo by Mosher Photo Service West Chop Vista
Photo by the author
Edgartown under ice and snow.
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$200,000 and an elaborate plant was built. Tracks were laid from the kiln to the wharf, and cars drawn by a small engine were pur- chased to haul bricks for shipment. But it was found, too late, that Vineyard peat-or lignite, as the company liked to call it-would not burn with sufficient heat to fire bricks, even when mixed with coal.
For a time a lonely Armenian potter, Andreas Andreasian, worked the clay and made pitchers, plates and vases, some of them beauti- fully shaped. And then work ceased altogether. When the World War came, the machinery was dismantled and sold; even the water mains of Makonikey were dug up and shipped away.
The Makonikey Inn, however, was opened in 1913 as a summer camp for the Y. W. C. A. Girls from city offices and factories made the most of facilities which had been intended for fashionable belles, until a five year lease had run its course. Then the property was sold again, this time for $25,000.
Makonikey still waits for its crowds of vacationers, and the hotel, aged in idleness, stands empty, its windows commanding long vistas of blue water and fair islands across the Sound, like spectacles through which no eyes are looking.
XXXVII Summer People Up-Island
When a wayfarer started from Edgartown, Oak Bluffs or Vine- yard Haven in the general direction of Gay Head, he was going up- Island. The summer cottagers of the camp ground went up-Island when they drove forth adventurously to visit Nancy Luce, near the Tisbury Great Pond. Even in those early days, this less accessible countryside was attracting summer visitors. For instance, at Squib- nocket-by which the Indians meant "place where the red ground nut grows"-on the ocean extremity of Gay Head, New York sportsmen had built a clubhouse to which they resorted when the striped bass were biting. There were boarding houses at West Tisbury, also, such as the Sea Breeze House in the carly seventies.
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Visitors might board in a West Tisbury or Chilmark home, and the character of the sea captains and their families, the nautical language, the shipshape houses and farmsteads, were an attraction. Chilmark had its hills and boulders, its walls and pastures. West Tisbury had its mill pond about which it lived in the very image of a fertile, contented, independent town. He who penetrated this far found himself in a new world, different in every inflection of atmos- phere from the cities of the main. But visitors who were pleased by the intimate life of the Cottage City were less likely to desire the solitary hills and quiet life of the up-Island region : here was a sort of summer resort development left to pioneers such as Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, who gave a clear enunciation of its principles.
Shaler visited Martha's Vineyard as a boy and never forgot the enchantment of its countryside and shore. When, at last, he was ready to buy a country home, his inclination turned toward the Island, and he made his first purchase in 1888. Then he bought one old farmstead after another, adding to his domain. He wanted "not a half acre lot, but something of the nature of a farm. The love of the country, with its actualities of animals and crops and the local independence, touching the border of exclusiveness, was strong with- in him; indeed, it was a tradition in his region of the country that the good of life was only to be had away from the crowded centres which hindered men from being wise and happy. What he desired was a 'civil wilderness'-that is, spacious possessions tamed to comfort, but not made artificial, nor yet closely packed with human- ity . .. He liked the stateliness of uncrowded fields, the sense of freedom and security from the intrusion of unsought companions while tramping over the land he owned."
"With a bit of land," Shaler himself wrote, "anyone may play the part of a god . . . In this day of experiments, when men see deeper in the world about them, a new field of enjoyment is opened to those who are privileged to possess the earth."
Mrs. Shaler's memoir of her husband dwelt upon his happy rela- tionship with the Island. Its fascination for him, she wrote, "aside from its restorative climate, was in part due to its geological for- mations. There were the peculiar and brilliant beds of clay at Gay Head; on his own place, a long stretch of seashore where he
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could watch the work of the sea; and everywhere traces of glacial action. Unlike most farmers, he coveted the rocks as much as he did the soil; and he bought a special tract of land that he might have, as he said, a moraine of his own . . . Many other stretches of land, for various assigned reasons, but mainly because he had the land hunger of his forebears, were purchased from the widely scattered children of the old folk who, in the intervals of their toiling with the sea, built bowlder walls and scratched the sterile soil for a living. Most of their houses, under stress of weather, had so fallen into decay that in some instances only chimneys and founda- tions remained to mark the spot where a home had once been; or flowers-these in their season blossoming persistently in the lonely places."
Some of Shaler's observations had a missionary quality and a conviction not always found in the most carefully calculated summer resort advertisements. Thus, a typical promotional appeal reads :
"If you are looking for a permanent home and a pleasant place to spend your vacation, come to Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard. Located six miles from the mainland and easily reached from New York . . . Miles of seashore. Fresh water lakes. Climate invigorating and healthful . . . Every breeze a sea breeze. Churches, public schools, first class hotels, up-to date moving picture theatres, dancing pavilions and public amusements . Excellent bathing beaches, average tem- perature of water 72 degrees, no undertow, considered the best bathing on the Atlantic Coast. A yachtsman's paradise, yacht- ing, sailing, rowing or canoeing on sea, or lake, absolutely safe .
But Shaler wrote :
"Besides this, the island is an oasis of salubrity in our New England bad climate . . . The summer climate, at least, is the freest from exasperation, the most calming I have ever felt, without producing lassitude. It brings a physical repose which it is impossible to get in our mountains or northern seashores. If the reader will glance at a map he will perceive that there is no other point on our coast where these insular conditions are possible to the same extent as upon this great salient angle of the continent. The difficulty with our climate
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arises from the unbroken mass of land, which becomes the store- house of heat during summer and of cold during the winter season. Those who seek a change from its conditions should get as far from its influence as they may be able. To do this without perching one's self on some inhospitable rock like the Isles of Shoals, or getting into the remote summer climate of Florida, is impossible except on either Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. Of these, the latter is very much the better, as it gives a rich soil, beautiful drives, brooks and woods, features denied to its bleaker sister to the east.
"Water in all its phases is at its best on Martha's Vineyard. The Vineyard Sound on the north shore gives the perfection of quiet-water bathing. It is warm enough to tempt and hold the lover of sea bathing; warm enough to require more courage to leave than to enter it. The faint swing it has, for it is not altogether still, is as soothing as a cradle's rocking. If this be too tame for the sturdy bather, he has only to cross the island to the south shore to find another face on the sea. The long shore, straight as if drawn by a rule for fifteen miles or more-stand in the middle and it runs to the horizon as straight as a prairie railway-is beaten by the surges which can roll directly down upon it from six thousand miles of water. . . The great waves roll with solemn regularity on the shore; they are never still . .. Nowhere is the calm so great as in this half impris- onment by the sea."
A study of summer resort advertisements from 1870 down to 1935 seems to show that, at the first touch of the commercial motive, enthusiasm becomes sugary and suspect. With the strong, intelli- gently eloquent pages of a great summer visitor before them, pro- moters have turned aside and from their own creative throes pro- duced effusions about "The Isle of Dreams" or "A Little Bit of Heaven" borrowed for the occasion and coupled incongruously to the usual jerky statements about hotels, boarding places, churches, and baggage and express service.
When Shaler first drove to his summer home, he had to open and close seven gates; thus his Vineyard estate became Seven Gates Farm, and after his death the whole tract which he had accumulated -no mean share of the whole area of the North Shore of the Island- was transformed into a trust, for the purpose of providing summer homes in the manner of his own conception. This was an entirely
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new kind of summer resort development, so much so that the word "development" did not seem to apply. The owners of summer homes on Seven Gates became members of a community which controlled and preserved the great estate. The corporate form of ownership made possible a continuation of this sane and beneficent control beyond the limits of an individual lifetime. Here was an answer, successful within its range, to the question of how to enjoy-even to exploit, since exploitation cannot be separated entirely from any summer home in the countryside-the shores and hills of Martha's Vineyard without sooner or later destroying their attractiveness.
In Shaler's own day, he had as a sort of neighbor-some miles intervening on the North Shore between the two homes-his brother- in-law, Col. Albert Seaton Berry of Kentucky. Colonel Berry's place was not far from Indian Hill, close in proximity to the remaining Indians of Christiantown, a community of gray shingled houses in which lived the descendants of the praying Indians of Governor Mayhew's day. To his Vineyard summer home, Colonel Berry carried the warm hospitality and genial dignity of his own state. Sometimes as he stopped at the North Tisbury post office, when the mail stage was soon to arrive, he offered to the group of villagers his own flask of Bourbon. Thus Kentucky custom made strange meeting with the constraint of New England and the latter, though saddened and weakened, held its immemorial lines. Colonel Berry, while he served in Congress, was the tallest member, and he was known as the "Tall Sycamore of the Licking"-the Licking being a river upon which Newport, his Kentucky home, was situated.
Two tall Kentuckians, both of them unforgettable for their gallant carriage, their white hair, their genuine courtesy, brought a new contribution to the summer resort growth of the Island. There was never any awareness that Professor Shaler or Colonel Berry, as summer visitors, were of a race apart; indeed, Shaler was a close friend of Henry L. Whiting, a distinguished geographer and scientist, who happened to be a resident of West Tisbury, and their common interests were cemented by a devotion to the Island.
These up-Island towns were always fruitful in their rewards to visitors. At West Tisbury settled Captain Joshua Slocum, he who
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circumnavigated the world in the small sloop Spray, and had the whole world to choose from.
The first conscious beginnings of the town of Chilmark as a summer resort are inextricably entangled with the story of a gold- plated bathroom. "The Sanfords" came to the Island as summer visitors at Edgartown. In the early nineties the Congregational minister, Rev. Caleb L. Rotch, took them for a drive to Gay Head behind a span of horses. On the way, the minister, who knew the Island well, pointed out the houses and told of the owners; but one house in Chilmark seemed strange to him. The sightseers spent the night at Gay Head and drove homeward the next day, stopping at Chilmark to examine the place which had aroused Mr. Rotch's interest. They took down a pair of bars and drove into surroundings which so charmed the Sanfords that they soon bought the house and the land which stretched from the travelled road to the bluffs of Wequobsket, signifying "at the ending rock."
After her husband's death, Mrs. Lucy Sanford and her daughter, also a widow, began a series of lavish and eccentric expenditures which made Windy Gates a name of fascination for more than one generation. They built a new summer home, a low, rambling struc- ture which combined architectural ideas of the Elizabethan, Colonial and Southern European styles. There were inlaid floors of quartered oak, finely finished woodwork, massive brass fittings, enormous doors. A wing was joined to the house by a combined passage and conservatory with tile floors and a liberal use of marble and glass. But the final flourish was in the wing itself: set in a space about twelve by fourteen feet was a bathroom with floor and wainscoting of hand-painted tile, and every metal bathroom fixture, pipes, faucets, hooks, even the hinges of the door, was plated with gleaming gold.
Outside the house, terraces were cut in the great hills, and thous- ands of tons of earth and rocks were moved in order to make a smooth, grassy lawn. All this fantasy of wealth was under the eye of the swooping gulls, and within close earshot of the surf at the foot of the Wequobsket cliffs. There had been no such combination of elements since the provincial authorities of New York had agreed long before to the establishment of the manorial system on the
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Island, and had set up Tisbury Manor and the feudal system in these same glacial hills with a few casual words. The golden bath- room proved more enduring than feudalism among the gusty spaces of Chilmark.
The undoing of Mrs. Sanford and her daughter was a dark foreigner, reputed to be an Italian count or duke, whose interests ran to South American railroads and other remoter speculations. After the Sanfords-now embodied in summer resort tradition in just that phrase-Windy Gates passed into the ownership of William M. Butler, who, as a boy, had sat upon Grant's knee at the camp meeting, and was yet to be United States Senator. So it came down to the present day.
Somewhat later, Mr. Butler, who had been a leading summer resident of Edgartown (where, indeed, he had sold newspapers to the whaling captains as a boy) began to acquire property at Lam- bert's Cove, on the North Shore, somewhat west of Makonikey. Here he built a summer home and brought into being another large estate of the modern day.
In the annals of up-Island and its summer resort development, the hills were to play a prominent part. Early famous was Indian Hill, but the first Indian Hill, scene of old Indian rites, and site of the dancing field which antedated the missionary days, was difficult to reach by road, and the livery stable drivers fell into the custom of taking their patrons to a different hill, more to the west, which was easily accessible. In the course of time, this became the generally accepted Indian Hill, and no violence was done, since it held on its flank the gray stones of an ancient Indian burying ground.
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