Yarmouth’s heritage is often hidden from view
by Debi Boucher StetsonWhen it comes to Yarmouth’s historical offerings, Duncan Oliver wants more people to realize how much Yarmouth’s past can enhance its future.
“The unfortunate thing is that a whole lot of people drive down Route 28 and think that that’s all there is to Yarmouth. If they’d just go down Old Main Street or over on Route 6A and other areas, they’d see so much more.”
As president of the Historical Society of Old Yarmouth, Oliver views history as a cultural and economic asset, especially as more and more tourists seek out cultural sites and events – not only in the summer, but also during the shoulder season.
That viewpoint is shared by a growing number of Yarmouth officials, business owners and residents.
Historic homes along Old Main Street and Pleasant Street are expected to be highlighted in a new South Yarmouth Village District the town hopes to create around Packet Landing, a proposed park on Bass River. Plans for the district are on hold while a new committee reworks a related bylaw withdrawn at last year’s Town Meeting.
Meanwhile, the riverside park and new village district will tie in with the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, which recently opened across the street from the South Yarmouth Library.
Priscilla Gregory, chairman of the town’s historical commission and a member of the Yarmouth Community Preservation Act committee, anticipates that CPA funds – which helped finance the cultural center – also will help build a replica of the old Cellar House. It would house restrooms, meeting rooms and a new office for the harbormaster.
Gregory is pleased with plans for Packet Landing, which already has an active marina for charter boats and private vessels. “It can be a lovely park,” she said.
Also, the planned Parker’s River Marine Park will spotlight the town’s seafaring culture with interpretive exhibits in the aquaculture and education center.
Meanwhile, the historical society plans to identify buildings in both South Yarmouth and West Yarmouth in an initiative similar to the successful Captains’ Mile along Route 6A.
Captains’ Mile is comprised of 54 historic sea captains’ homes – some open to the public as inns, restaurants or historic sites – identified and described in a brochure. “We printed 15,000 of them, and they’re just about gone,” Oliver said.
Each house along Captain’s Mile has a historical plaque purchased by the Historical Society – not by the homeowner, Oliver noted, to ensure that it stays with the house.
For South Yarmouth, the society plans to develop a separate brochure for self-guided tours that maps out each historic building. It also plans to spotlight historic buildings in West Yarmouth, which has been largely overlooked in terms of historical sites. The society published a book in 1999 titled “West Yarmouth: A Village Ignored, 1639-1939,” by Laurence L. Barber.
With a new research and administrative center in the Gorham Cobbler Shop, an 1840’s building that once was a doctor’s house and a church “ditty box, the Historical Society of Old Yarmouth is more active than ever.
The Cobbler Shop building was donated by the owners of the Old Yarmouth Inn, where it was last located (it has been moved four times). Using Community Preservation Act funds and private donations, the society moved and renovated the building, adding a much-needed climate-controlled archives room in the back.
Open since last October, the Cobbler Shop is on the 50-acre plot the society owns that includes the Yarmouth Port Post Office, the Captain Bangs Hallet House Museum and the Kelley Chapel, which the society rents out for weddings.
Being landlord to a post office helps the Historical Society, which has an annual budget of $100,000, fund projects like Captains’ Mile. But as Oliver points out, it’s expensive maintaining old buildings.
He points to plans to insulate and heat the Bangs Hallet House, which will cost between $60,000 and $70,000.
The Historical Society last year formed a consortium with three other groups with sites within walking distance of each other: the Yarmouth New Church Preservation Foundation, the Edward Gorey House and the Winslow Crocker House, owned by Historic New England (formerly the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities).
The Edward Gorey House, an 1820 residence where the author, artist and playwright spent his last years, opened in 2002 and had a banner year in 2006, with a record number of visitors – 6,600, a 37-percent increase from the previous year.
Director and curator Rick Jones said the Gorey House has benefited tremendously from a flood of publicity, both local and national, including an Associated Press piece and articles in the New York Times and Harper’s Bazaar.
The museum added new features, including a wildly popular scavenger hunt around the beloved “Gashlycrumb Tinies” (involving characters representing alphabet letters that met an untimely demise). The featured exhibit for 2007 will be on “The Doubtful Guest,” one of Gorey’s most popular works.
“It’s fun,” Jones said. “People leave here laughing all the time.”
Jones said the consortium has worked well, increasing visitors to all four sites and raising awareness of the town’s rich history.
It also has given rise to more events, such as the All Around the Common day when homes are open, with free admission.
Last year, the Historical Society of Old Yarmouth published a book of Yarmouthport ghost stories, and held a mid-summer ghost ships night on June 23, said to be the most haunted night of the year for mariners.
The Historical Society also teaches an adult education course on Cape history focusing on the Mid-Cape and Yarmouth, and it sponsors a lecture series at the South Yarmouth Library.
Gregory, the town’s historic commission chair, said more people now realize the value of historic sites and buildings, which goes beyond the aesthetic. “It all ties into economic development,” she said. “There’s historic tourism, which I think is overlooked to a large degree. People think [tourism] is all beaches, but we get a huge number of visitors in the fall” who are looking for more than beaches. “The historic buildings are important. People like to look at them, they
She points to Bray Farm – a restored working farm on the north side owned by the town – the Historical Society buildings, the Gorey House, the Baker Windmill in South Yarmouth and Baxter Mill in West Yarmouth.
“They are attractions and assets to the town,” she said.
Published in The Villages of Yarmouth May/June 2007
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