The global Harwich
by Joseph SantangeloIn Harwich, you might meet a mosaic artist from Texas, professional ballet dancer from California by way of England, a painter from Sweden, a writer from New York or a businessperson from Hartford or Boston.
Visitors come for Harwich’s small-town charm and spectacular water views, and they find the resources of a much larger community. Many decide to stay, start a new career, reinvent themselves in midlife, and create new businesses outside the usual business model.
Many also volunteer time and talent to enhancing the town’s quality of life. In Harwich, a representative of the arts community serves on the chamber of commerce to help promote the business community. Businesspeople work with the school system in creating tomorrow’s leaders. In turn, town government assists the chamber of commerce with funds to market Harwich and its businesses.
Typical of the new Harwich resident is mosaic artist Lynn Moor.
“I came to Cape Cod in 2001 from Texas,” she recalled. “Both of my daughters were in college on the East Coast, and wanting an adventure of my own, I quit my corporate job, loaded the dog in the car and moved first to a beach cottage in Dennisport, and then later, wanting to put down deeper roots, to a home in West Harwich.”
Moor added, “Since coming to the Cape, I have become a full-time mosaic artist, as well as the owner of MosaicSmalti.com, an Internet mosaic supply business, which I run from my home in West Harwich. What I have loved most about living on the Cape are the kindred spirits here. Most of my friends are either professional artists or entrepreneurs – doing what they love and finding creative ways to live their lives here.”
She is not alone. Harwich resident Francis McLaughlin retired as graphic designer for a Barnstable newspaper to paint full-time. Her work “Painting from the Heart” was shown last year at the Cape Cod Museum of Art.
Author Joan Anderson took a year-long break on Cape Cod to reexamine life, moved here and recounted the life-changing experience in a series of best-selling books. Now, as she writes another book, she conducts retreats in locales such as Sonoma, California, Sedona, Arizona and Iona, Scotland, for women at mid-life.
If you look further, you can find an astonishing diversity of Harwich artists, artisans, craftspeople, actors, writers, small business owners and entrepreneurs. Instead of English settlers, farmers, fishermen and Cape Verdean émigrés who worked in whaling and then America’s first commercial cranberry bogs, this former little port town is as likely today to attract people from across the nation and across the globe.
Principal dancers Catherine Batcheller and Joseph Cipolla left the Birmingham Royal Ballet in England to form Configuration Dance, a professional dance ensemble and studio based in Harwich Port, which changes its configuration with various groups of artists in performances on the Cape or on tour. Bjorn Anderson of Sweden could live anywhere in the world, but creates his hand-painted wood, glass and pottery in Harwich Port.
Legendary U.S. House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill spent vacations in Harwich Port and his family still owns property here. Captains of industry such as Cape Air President Dan Wolf call Harwich home.
Now in its fourth century, Harwich is home to nearly 13,000 people, not counting the weekend and seasonal residents who more than double the town’s population in summer. Harwich has grown by 5.15 percent since 2000 and is forecast to grow an additional 5.6 percent by 2010, in contrast to Massachusetts as a whole, which is losing residents.
Households in Harwich are expected to increase by about 1,000 over the decade, from 5,471 in 2000 to a projected 6,402 in 2010. That includes second homes, which account for four of every 10 residences.
To a casual visitor, the name Harwich often evokes picturesque Harwich Port, a 19th-century coastal trading village supplied from long wharves protruding far out into Nantucket Sound in a town devoid of deep harbors. Harwich Port today remains one of the Cape’s premier destinations for strolling, shopping and sightseeing.
In actuality, Harwich is seven distinct villages, each with its own charm and natural beauty that continue to draw visitors, vacationers, second-home owners, retirees and year-round residents. The growing East Harwich area is emerging as a new village center for one-stop shopping, dining, entertainment and financial services.
Harwich boasts three active harbors, numerous freshwater ponds, 15 sandy saltwater beaches, fishing, golfing, boating, bike paths, fine restaurants, shops, galleries, crafters’ workshops, artists and artisans, a regional medical center, good schools, a wide variety of stores and a range of community activities for young and old. Harwich is also a mini transportation center with a summer ferry to Nantucket and new flex bus route to Truro and Provincetown.
It is a town where you can find, do and enjoy almost anything. It is home to the 56-year-old Harwich Junior Theatre and Harwich Winter Theatre, a popular family-oriented production company. The town-owned Cranberry Valley Golf Course has been selected among the best in the United States.
Other amenities include the first-class Brooks Free Library with free Wi-Fi Internet access, two smaller libraries, a modern community center and many senior citizen programs. Sports teams include the Harwich High School Rough Riders, Harwich/Tech Crusaders and Cape Cod Baseball League’s Harwich Mariners.
Settled in about 1665 and incorporated in 1694, Harwich once spread from Cape Cod Bay to Nantucket Sound, but lost its North Parish, which broke off to become the town of Brewster in 1803. The town still wraps around Chatman from West Harwich on Nantucket Sound to East Harwich and Pleasant Bay, where forest land virtually meets the beach, opening to distant views of the Atlantic Ocean beyond.
Harwich is not without its challenges. A town Operations Review Task Force examined improvements to help provide town and school services more efficiently in the face of spiraling costs for labor, health insurance, heating and electricity. A water quality group also is studying how to protect the town’s water resources, around which so much of the town revolves.
Overall, Harwich continues to draw people by the thousands, mostly aged 45 and 64. These residents are affluent, healthy and not yet ready to retire – people who come to enjoy Harwich, rediscover themselves and contribute to a vibrant community.
Published in Cape Business Harwich supplement July/August 2007
Joseph Santangelo Joseph Santangelo has been a statehouse bureau chief, a corporate executive and currently works for the Connecticut Legislature. 
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