During the summer of 1912, the Boston School Committee was hoping to convince Franklin B. Dyer to become the city’s new superintendent of schools. Dyer, then superintendent of schools in Cincinnati, was not eager to come to Boston. But by mid-July, Dyer and the School Committee came to terms, sealed with the offer of a then quite-generous annual salary of $10,000.
As the negotiations between Dyer and Boston progressed, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor caught up with him resting in Rockport, where the reporter found Dyer “sitting on the veranda of ‘Whispering Pines,’ overlooking the beautiful waters of Pigeon Cove.”
This is the only express reference I’ve been able to find to the house depicted in this postcard. I assume the house was a private residence, because I have not found it in any listings of hotels from that era. I also assume that Dyer was a visitor, not the owner, since I can find nothing else connecting him to Pigeon Cove.
I did also find an 1886 map of Pigeon Cove that appears to show this same house — with the same distinctive turret and front porch — standing directly at the intersection of Phillips Avenue and Point De Chene Avenue. The old map also shows a street just behind the house named Pine Avenue. That street is no longer there (except maybe as a foot path) but would have been parallel to Linwood Avenue.
The postcard was published by Rockport Photo Bureau and printed in Germany. The card is not dated but based on markings on the reverse side, I estimate it to be from around 1912.
We owned the property from 1983 until 1997. It was a great place for our two boys to grow up. A. Passaic night would be having friends sleepover and in the middle of the night they would climb down a pine tree next to their deck and be running around the house until we brought them in. Great fun for the kids!
Did you live in the house pictured in the photo? Trying to learn more about it if I can.
If you’d be interested, I just purchased a great stereoview showing the full Whispering Pines home, with people sitting in the yard. I’d be happy to share a jpg of the image, and a couple other related stereoview images that show portions of the home from down the street.
Would love to learn more of its history, and it was doing a search for exactly that which lead me to this post.
Yes, please share. I’d love to see them.
yes, very interested in stereoviews.
we purchased the house from the thayers in 1998 and lived there until 2003. many fond memories. lots of current pix at https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/63-Phillips-Ave-Rockport-MA-01966/56957787_zpid/?
as i recall, there is a sketch of andrew’s point that shows the house on the frontispiece of this book. Town on Sandy Bay : a history of Rockport, Massachusetts. i had a copy but not sure where it is now.
Not sure why I only just received notices via email about replies to my comment from 2020 (the replies were posted that year, and in 2021), but here are the stereoview images from my collection. If you want to see more Cape Ann stereoviews, I have a whole section of them on my Shute & Merchant website … plus other history items [https://www.shuteandmerchant.com]
Have always been sorry this great old place no longer exists, but glad to have these images so it can be remembered. Progress and upkeep make it hard to save them all.
Mary Palmstrom
Mary, I was doing some back-end work on the blog and I think it caused some long-ago comments to regenerate. As I’ve said before, I love your Shute & Merchant website and the images you’ve preserved.