USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Nahant > Some annals of Nahant, Massachusetts > Part 17
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35
Across Ocean Street from the Gardens was a hotel built by Tudor and called the "Maolis House." It was close to Ocean Street and between the present Maolis Street and Marginal Road. It was built of wood and opened about 1860. Later it was burned and replaced with the brick structure, located a little nearer the water, and which old Nahanters will re- member, as it was standing at Mrs. Tudor's death in 1884. Soon after this it was torn down. Among its managers were Clarence Tibbetts of Lynn, Thomas Whitney, Joseph Libbey, and Mack and Searles. The latter were afterwards proprietors of the Relay House at Bass Point.
The prominent Maolis Gardens feature which remains today is the Rock Temple, or familiarly known "Witch House," on a rocky knoll above the corner of Marginal Road and Ocean Street, and now owned by George L. Richards, whose house is just above it. He has repaired it and restored it as well as could be done after its many years of neglect. It was designed and built for Tudor by John Q. Hammond. Hammond's son, Charles A. Hammond, then a boy of four- teen, designed its details of carved figures. Tudor wanted something the like of which had never before been seen, and gave Hammond carte blanche to go on and erect it.
In plan it is octagonal, with eight gables, each alternate one truncated, and all radiating from the center. The supports at each angle are columns of rough stone blocks. Each of these was carefully selected, chosen for some peculiarity of color or marking, water worn, or showing strange strata or veins. All were from the shores of Nahant, some brought from the farthest parts of the town. The superstructure was strongly framed and bolted down stoutly to the foundation ledge. Thus it has stood the gales of two-thirds of a century, though only supported on rock columns.
187
THE MAOLIS GARDENS
The roofs and gables were covered with hemlock bark and in each full gable was a round medallion, with one of octagonal shape in the truncated gables. These medallions were made of wood finely executed and gilded. At the peak of the building was a large wood carving of a beautiful shell with scalloped edges, upborne by two satyrs, and the whole gilded. The drawings for these were made by Charles A. Hammond from subjects taken from the "English Art Journal."
A few yards from the Witch House, to the westward, was a cleft in the ledge. A tradition has it that during the Salem Witchcraft orgy a woman and her daughter, refugees from that place of terror, lived in this cave for a time. With a little excavating this was made into a den eight or ten feet deep and a yard high and wide. This Tudor named the "Cave of the Lion" after which he provided the lion. Encouraging home talent he commissioned David Hunt, a rough stone mason who had worked for him, to carve in granite a life-size figure of a lion. By immense labor and perseverance, Hunt did two masterpieces, creations fearfully and wonderfully made. Placed in the cave one grinned out through stout iron bars, striking more or less terror into youngsters. The other was set up within the Gardens, facing the entrance gate.
The ornaments of the old Witch House loosened and fell as years rolled on, and it is a simpler structure today. But it still remains a dignified, stately pavilion, exciting comment for its wild natural beauty.
Around the curving corner of these two streets, and enclos- ing the Witch House lot, was a wooden fence, slatted with wide slats so that Tudor saw a chance to paint a sea serpent upon it, for Nahant was the favorite visiting place of this king of serpents, or should it now be called "ace" of serpents. He called out young Charles A. Hammond again, impressed with what he had done on the Rock Temple. He turned the boy loose in Dr. Warren's library in Boston, where he studied sea serpent lore, and then was painted this hundred foot serpent along the fence, a sight which old Nahanters still remember. It remained on view for several years, or as long
.
188
SOME ANNALS OF NAHANT
as the fence lasted. By a familiar optical illusion caused by the slatted fence, the serpent at certain angles of vision mostly disappeared, leaving only a mass of several colors of paint. This added to its interest for children.
The Maolis Garden was a formidable piece of development by itself, as the hobby of a man engaged in large business of another nature. Added to what Tudor did elsewhere in Nahant, it shows the tremendous activity of the man. Doubt- less it was his pleasure or his recreation to do these things, but it is fortunate for Nahant that his interests brought such a benefit to the town all down through these later years, yielding her chief beauty even today. Frederic Tudor was a great benefactor of Nahant. This considerable space is given to the enterprise because it was a very early example of amuse- ment parks.
CHAPTER XIV
NATURE AND MAN
THE earliest landing place used extensively on Nahant was around the present steamboat wharf at the end of Wharf Street, near Marjoram Hill, and now often known as Tudor Wharf. This rocky point was called Nipper Stage, apparently from the quantities of "nippers," or perch, around it. It broke the undertow, as well as the force of the sea, from its full effect on the two sand beaches to the northward. The farther one, in front of Hotel Tudor, is now oftenest called Willow Beach. Willow Road skirts it, and both were named from a fine row of old willows, long since gone, along the water side of the road. Newer trees have been planted but are not yet of the size of the good old row of willows that old Nahanters remember. A steep bank, loose and shelving, was between the road and the beach. Gradually this was eroded by the sea, and in 1900 the town built the present concrete sea wall from about abreast of where Valley Road enters Willow Road, east- ward along by Hotel Tudor. In 1905 the wall was extended westward as far as cottages now standing on the water side of the road, and in 1911 another section continued the wall to the eastward. The selectmen's report to the town, in the 1900 town report, says that all necessary relinquishments of private rights to the beach, or to the strip of land between the road and this sea wall, should be obtained before con- struction is started. The Hotel Tudor always had a bath- house structure on the bank, and this privilege was continued. Later a claim was set up to another part of this newly made strip of land, but apparently it was not effective.
This Willow Beach was originally known as Dorothy's Cove, named for Dorothy Mills, daughter of James Mills, early
190
SOME ANNALS OF NAHANT
Nahanter. Old maps of the town carry this name, and it is a little unfortunate that old names with historic meaning cannot be kept. Recently a new road was named South Field Road, a dignified title recalling Tudor and old Nahant. A little later the name was changed, and the street now bears a pleasant name, Intervale Road, but with less meaning, either in appropriateness or historic value. It runs next above Willow Road between Winter and Ocean Streets. Per- haps it is as good a Nahant name as those of Summer and Winter Streets.
The beach nearest Nipper Stage is a little beach sometimes known as Sandy Beach and earlier as Crystal Beach. This is much protected by the Nipper Stage ledges, and was the most used early landing place, doubtless, for Nahant. Perhaps from here wood was carried off to Lynn and Boston two or three centuries ago. Here was the landing place for the fishing industry of Nahant, and on the slopes near by were the fish flakes for drying fish. From here it was loaded into boats again to be carried to Boston, although much was sold on the spot to those who came to buy it. Mrs. Abner Hood, known as Mrs. "Nabby" Hood, has told that many country people came to Nahant to buy both dry and fresh fish, lodging at the Breed Tavern. There was a spring near by that yielded plenty of good water. From here a path led up across field and swamp to the old Johnson homestead on the main road across from the present Town Hall. A cart path wound from this beach out around Marjoram Hill about as the road now goes, and continued westward along Dorothy's Cove, and seems to have gone up Valley Road to Calf Spring Road, which was a part of the main street of the town. Connecting with this a cart path, now Summer Street, went up to the main road. By these ways for years were fish and many kinds of stores, brought in by boat, carried to the homes of the town.
Off this Nipper Stage point was moored the fishing fleet, much as the yachts and boats of the town are now moored. In 1817 there was some sort of landing, for it was here that
191
NATURE AND MAN
the "Eagle" came, and it appears to have been used as a steamboat landing until the opening of the new "Nahant Hotel" in 1823. It seems doubtful if the "Eagle" came up to any dock, at least, unless in very smooth water, and one old account speaks of landing from the steamer in dories. Some sort of a float was here, however, and irons in the ledges remained long after as evidences of this. In 1823, with the opening of the great hotel, this landing was less convenient than one near what was sometimes called the "Swallows House," partly because there was no road. Only the cart path, starting from the main road at Summer Street, wound around to Nipper Stage. At the new landing dories seem to have been used, also, but construction of a wharf was soon begun. A new road, now called Swallows Cave Road, was built by the hotel people and Cornelius Coolidge, up the hill as it goes today. From near the top a broad footpath and steps led westward down to what is now called the Old Wharf. A house later built upon it was the summer home of the late Ellerton James. According to E. J. Johnson's description the waiting rooms for this wharf were on the side hill and not down at the wharf level. He says the building was an open, six-sided structure with seats on the sides and end. "A passageway ran through to a long flight of stairs which led over the ledge to a narrow walk. Two ship spars had been laid from the foot of these steps to a square wooden frame made of logs pinned together. This framework was then filled with stones, making a barrier against the sea, and upon this the ends of the spars were fastened, and piles were driven, slanting in a westerly direction, to deep water. On these piles a long plank walk was made, at the end of which the steamboats made a landing at all times of the tides. Subsequently Mr. Coolidge built the sea wall, filling the space between the wall and ledge with stone and gravel, which gave plenty of room for the wharf and for the passageway from the wharf." The construction by Coolidge is the present-day stonework with which Nahanters are familiar. The early wharf described by Johnson appears to be a small stone-filled log cribbing connected with land at
192
SOME ANNALS OF NAHANT
the ledges by a narrow runway made on two spars. Some piling and another runway, doubtless a "drop," gave access to the steamer at all tides.
Cornelius Coolidge built the Nahant House about 1820. It was the building which later became the residence of George Peabody, and still later of Dudley B. Fay. There were ex- tensive remodellings, so that no semblance of the original building remains. A rivalry came between this Nahant House and the Nahant Hotel on East Point. The former was nearer the wharf and might be reaping a benefit from its location. Accordingly, the Nahant Hotel people built another wharf off from the beach adjacent to East Point southward, abreast of what is now known as the Paine Field. This was used in 1828 by the steamer "Housatonic." By this time Dr. Edward H. Robbins and Thomas H. Perkins had become chief owners of the Nahant Hotel, and this wharf was popularly known as Dr. Robbin's Wharf. The situation was too exposed, both for the durability of the structure and the comfortable docking by steamers, and it was promptly abandoned. The hotel company bought out the Coolidge interest in the former wharf, and by piling and timber extensions, which are shown in old photographs, made a good landing place which was used by the Nahant steamers until about 1870. E. J. Johnson says: "Lines of steamboats were now running their regular trips between Boston and Nahant, the 'Eagle' making one hundred and fifty trips that season." The statement cannot mean the season after 1828, for it appears that what F. B. C. Bradlee says in "Essex Institute Historical Collections," volume 50, for July, 1914, is reliable. The "Eagle" was sold and broken up after the season of 1821.
After the hotel at East Point was gone, the crowds travelling by steamboat were more likely to be seeking the Maolis Gardens on the north side of the town between Ocean and Pond Streets. The wharf needed repairs, and Mrs. Tudor, who carried on at Nahant after Frederic Tudor's death in 1864, built or recon- structed a wharf at the old first landing place near Nipper Stage. This was called Central Wharf, and was used for a
MONSTROUS SEA SERPENT AS SEEN AT CAPE ANN 1822
Once a North Shore Sight?
The "Old" Wharf, off Vernon Street
Stern-wheel steamer
193
NATURE AND MAN
steamboat landing up to 1916. Subsequently it has gradually yielded to age and infirmity, and little attempt has been made to keep it in good condition. Mrs. Tudor died in 1884, and after correspondence and discussion, her executors gave this wharf to the town of Nahant. Since that time it has been known as Tudor Wharf. Articles in Town Warrants mention it as Tudor Wharf. The absence of any sign, or particular need for a distinguishing title, has prevented the name from common use.
The wharf seems to have been important in the 70's, fur- nishing, with the steamboats, a desirable way to get to Nahant. At a special town meeting in September, 1873, it was voted that the selectmen be a committee to see if any suitable arrangements can be made for the existing wharves of the town; and if not, it was voted to petition the State Legislature for a special act permitting the town to build a wharf, and the committee was to report to the town recommending a location, if one could be built, and giving the cost.
At the annual town meeting in March, 1874, this committee reported a proposition from Mrs. Tudor to sell Central Wharf for $30,000 and the town voted to buy it. But in the March meeting of 1875 the selectmen reported that the purchase as authorized was inadvisable, as the wharf needed repairs and the amount of land to be ceded with it was too restricted. E. J. Johnson says that it was in 1875, after this deal failed of consummation, that Mrs. Tudor rebuilt the wharf, making it of about the size it is today, but the abandonment of the "old wharf" for steamer service was earlier, at least as early as 1870, and perhaps a year or two before that. The evidence is that Mrs. Tudor built the wharf in 1869 and further added to it a few years later.
Inside the wharf, toward Crystal Beach, there is maintained a raft and runway up to the wharf level for the use of small boats. On the same side of the wharf, or the approach to it, a masonry runway reaches from the road level down to low- water mark. This was built by the town in 1900 for the convenience of small craft, which could be drawn up on it for
.
194
SOME ANNALS OF NAHANT
access for repairs or painting. In November, 1899, a storm wrecked the building used as an express office and wharfinger's store. A new one was built in the spring of 1900 and is now standing. This is on the shore side of the wharf. The old building, as well as the waiting rooms out on the wharf, were probably built in 1875. The coal pocket was a later addition. Photographs of some of the steamers lying at the wharf show no such structure. It was removed some years ago when it became unsafe. The other building on these premises is the Nahant Dory Club house. It was originally used in part for storage, but is now entirely a club room. It was built in 1906.
This Nipper Stage vicinity has therefore been for a long period the scene of marine activities. This means acci- dents, also, for the sea is often relentless. So there are drownings recorded, even back to early days, but not of old Nahanters. Many stories center around this locality: of the old fishing days; of the "drop" that dropped, letting a score of people into the water with Captain A. W. Calden plunging to the rescue; of a day when a mistaken engine room signal drove a steamer on, bringing destruction to small boats, and almost putting her nose into the beach; of Cap- tain Kemp and "Buster" and "Tony" Taylor. There are always workers and loafers in such a place, and the little activities around a wharf interest young and old, the sea lover and the land lover. Interest in racing and fishing means yarns to tell, even beating those of the hardened golf bug; and they are not all just yarns. Not all fishermen can lie. Think of the Apostles. One of these yarns, usually fastened to a good-natured old Nahanter, often called the best-natured man in town, relates to a man whose wife had been ordered to take salt-water baths. They had never been to the seashore, but the man figured out how to proceed, and bought a pail and a rope one morning, and went to the wharf, which was near by. There he met this old Nahanter, who looked impor- tant and seemed to own something around there, and said, "How much for a pail of water?" "Ten cents" was the answer. He paid the money and drew his pail of water -
195
NATURE AND MAN
not a hard job, as the tide was in. That afternoon he went over again, and met the same man and paid another ten cents. Going to the edge of the wharf he threw over his pail, but the tide was out and it was a longer pull. Thereupon he exclaimed to the proprietor of the sea, "Gosh, what a whale of a business you must have done today."
About the year 1892, when the Bass Point House property was much enlarged, a wharf was built on the westerly side of Bass Point. This point, strictly named, is the point belonging to the Bass Point House, although the name has applied to this whole wing of the town for seventy years or more. From the time of its construction the Boston to Nahant steamers all landed there. A part of the trips, notably on Sundays and holidays, were run directly between Boston and the Bass Point House Wharf. Others made the round trip, landing at both this wharf and Tudor Wharf. Usually the contract with the town, under which the steamers received a subsidy, required certain trips direct between Tudor Wharf and Boston, for the convenience of business men using the service. This Bass Point House Wharf is still standing in its original location and size, though it has deteriorated, and has had new pile lines driven, partly because in certain weathers the exposure was bad.
In this same year, 1892, a wharf was built on the Relay House property, a long narrow runway out over shallows to a head accommodating steamer service to Lynn. There never was depth of water sufficient for the larger Boston boats, for which this wharf was not intended. From 1894 to about 1916 small steamers ran from there to Breed's Wharf in Lynn during a long summer season. In its later years of use steamers ran across the harbor to Revere Beach, where "Ocean Pier" had been built partly as an amusement pier and partly for this service. This Relay House Wharf is now standing in about its original condition.
Then there was another wharf, of which little trace remains, off Black Rock, the first cliff on the harbor side as one goes southerly along Castle Road. This ran to deeper water, and
196
SOME ANNALS OF NAHANT
larger boats occasionally landed there. The "Meta" ran to Lynn from there, and the "Ulysses" touched there from Boston. It was used at one time for a coal wharf by Wel- come J. Johnson, and Tudor Wharf also had coal landed there, but not regularly. H. Shepard Johnson, once in the hay and grain business on Nahant, landed hay at Tudor Wharf for a short time. After it came into possession of the town it was used only for passenger steamers. This wharf at Black Rock was built in the early days of Nahant as a town, and many people can remember the remains of its piling. Its location was not good for service, but apparently was chosen because it was sheltered and reached deep water easily. The waiting room on this wharf was moved back across Castle Road and remodelled into a house and owned and occupied by Dexter Stetson in his later years. Soon after his death his daughter and her two aunts, Misses Julia and Amelia Hood, who lived with him, moved to Lynn. When this building was made over, Stetson built into it some diamond-paned windows which were formerly a part of the old "Log Cabin" elsewhere ยท mentioned.
The beach in front of Hotel Tudor, often called Willow Beach, with its concrete sea wall, has been mentioned. This was Dorothy's Cove. Then, next to Tudor Wharf is Crystal Beach, the little beach used earliest by fishermen. Next easterly, between Nipper Stage Point and Clark's Point, is the pebble beach usually called Longfellow Beach because the home of the poet Longfellow was on the side of the hill above it. Early maps call it Curlew Beach. Often it is called Boat House Beach, because here was one of the sheds, with boat and equipment, of the Massachusetts Humane Society. This was given up after the establishment of the Coast Guard Station on Short Beach in 1898. Old inhabitants heard this beach called Bolger's Beach, from Bolger and his little old shoe repairing shop that was there alongside the Humane Society building. The latter was up on the crest, fairly near the road and at the westerly end, against the Fremont property line. "Fremont property" was the old name for the house and land
197
NATURE AND MAN
lately owned by Frank E. Johnson, a son of Francis H. Johnson and grandson of Captain Francis Johnson.
Continuing around Clark's Point, named for Benjamin C. Clark, an early summer resident who owned it and lived there in a house built by Cornelius Coolidge, the next beach is Joseph's Beach, commonly called Joe Beach. Clark's Point is now owned by Arthur Perry. Joe Beach is parallel to Vernon Street and extends to the old wharf, recently the summer home of Ellerton James. Then comes Irene's Grotto and Swallows Cave and Pea Island. The cave is worth seeing, a deep recess easy of access except at high tide, running under- ground a considerable distance, with a typical "chimney" at the inner end giving difficult access to open air again. The next beach stretches mostly abreast of the "Paine Field" near the junction of Swallows Cave Road and Vernon Street, and ends about at the James estate, where ledges again pick up the outline of the shore. The whole of East Point is mostly ledges, and the route around the shore turns westerly again before meeting another beach, which is Canoe Beach, adjacent to the entrance to the Lodge estate on East Point. There are little coves, some usable for bathing or landing, but no real beaches. Canoe Beach was also used by the great hotel, and in those days was sometimes known as Petticoat Beach. The next beach is Bass Beach, and the two are separated by Castle Rock, a projecting point which allows a half acre or more of land between the road and the sea. This whole vicinity was a sort of "Midway" for the hotel. "Midway" is a term used since the 1893 World's Fair at Chicago, to denote amusement enterprises which attract but have not quite the dignity of the main show. Old Nahanters can remember when Indians came to Castle Rock with their summer encampment and sold baskets and other Indian-made articles, just as they do now around summer hotels in the White Mountain region. In 1860 John Denier, a tightrope performer, walked fourteen hundred feet on a rope stretched high above Canoe Beach between Castle Rock and the hill of East Point. Bass Beach is still a favorite bathing beach, as it is well sheltered by pro-
198
SOME ANNALS OF NAHANT
jecting points of rock and is a long beach, sloping gradually to deep water.
Northerly from Bass Beach is another point. Beyond that comes Saunders Ledge, then Spouting Horn and then Black Mine, the latter near the northeast end of Summer Street. These are the black rocks sometimes called the "Iron Mine," which seem to have attracted the attention of the Saugus Iron Works, way back in colonial days. Spouting Horn is a rock conformation that throws spray high in the air, even in a slight sea. Its operation is less spectacular when the channel leading into the horn is choked with seaweed or other sea refuse. Alongside Marginal Road is Stony Beach, so called because it is covered with stones of larger size than usually found on beaches. Between Bass Beach and Stony Beach are other places where landings can be made, and one short sandy beach surprises those who come upon it from the path around that part of the shore. Marginal Road is fortified from Stony Beach by a stout stone wall, which extends from Summer Street to Ocean Street and beyond Ocean Street for a hundred yards or so along the sea side of what was once the Maolis Gardens. Both Marginal Road and this stone wall were built by Frederic Tudor at his own expense. The wall is heavy and in some places twenty feet high. For many years small repairs have been made upon it, but it has finally weakened so that storms of the last decade have badly wrecked it along its easterly end, where the seas reach it most savagely. Why it stood for a half century, only to go to pieces so suddenly, is something of a problem. Apparently the stones on the beach acted as a riprap, as it is called, and broke the force of the sea. Latterly some of these stones have been used for repairs, which may have affected their service as a protection. But the sea often changes beaches, and perhaps the configuration of this one has altered so that the assaults of an ocean enraged are more effective.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.